We arrived, of course, at my parents’ house, some time long after the middle of the night and in the middle of a gritty-eyed domestic, not helped by my desperate but completely incompatible longing for both coffee and sleep.
Our domestic, obviously, not theirs, my father was still up but my mother had long retired wearily to bed. My father appeared briefly at the doorway of the camper van where we were still squabbling over the heater’s frozen middle-of-the-night refusal to ignite, and told us to go to bed and come in for breakfast at half past seven.
We didn’t need any encouragement for this and went crossly to sleep only to be startled into a state of consciousness that could not really be described as wakefulness by the alarm, which seemed to start ringing about ten minutes after we went to bed.
We drank some coffee, and went in to see my parents and then drank another couple of cups of coffee, and decided we would take our camper van into town for the hearing and then get changed there. When you have got dogs the thing to do with smart clothes is leave them on the hanger until the very last possible moment, lock the dogs in the bathroom whilst you get dressed and then run away quickly. I imagine the Queen has had to learn to do this as well, otherwise she must have to put her tights on in the porch on the way out after she has said goodbye to the corgis.
We did this, not put tights on in the porch, obviously, since the camper doesn’t have one, but dressed hastily at the very last minute, and thus still looked fairly presentable by the time we made it to the Civic Centre, which is a splendid building filled with fascinating display cases, which I could have looked at for hours.
One of them contained a silver fireman’s helmet, which must have weighed absolutely loads and made your ears terribly hot if you went to work in it, and there were all sorts of trophies and medals, and one massive, gloriously engraved bowl which seemed to have been given to some poor unfortunate as an award for some civic virtue.
I was suddenly relieved to think that I have never been greatly inclined towards actions of civic virtuosity, because a trophy of such stupendously generous proportions would have occupied the whole of the kitchen table and we would have had to eat our breakfasts off the top of the washing machine until the time came around to give it back.
We congregated in the Council Chambers, which were lovely, warm and filled with microphones which served the purpose of a conch shell, you weren’t supposed to speak unless yours was switched on, and if too many of you started to speak all at once they all went off, thus effectively quenching all squabbling into inaudible silence. I thought this was a brilliant idea but discovered later that it was just poor wiring.
Of course we had forgotten all about breakfast in our rush to drink coffee and look presentable, so after about half an hour I was beginning to be distracted from the salient and sensible points that everybody was raising by disturbing physical yearnings for more coffee and some nice warm tea cakes with butter, neither of which the council had provided, if I was a ratepayer in this part of the world I would put it forward as a suggestion, it would have helped to oil the wheels of the democratic process hugely.
Apart from the absence of breakfast, I was fascinated and astonished by the amount of points one could potentially raise on the subject of footpaths. There were experts from the council, and a man who was a planning officer, and a man from a walking group, and another man who had done a survey once, and a man who had once done some deliveries and a man who had once built a wall near it, all the people who lived next to it, and then of course people like me, who had got very little of much use to contribute but who had come along to cheer everybody else on and nod sagely whenever anybody said something sensible.
We stopped for lunch at about one, and Mark and I tore over to the cafe across the road where we pooled our available cash resources, most of which Mark had found handily in his overcoat pockets, where he keeps surprise money for nice things which he finds that he often needs when we are out together in smart clothes. We wolfed down some crisps and an overheated and unidentifiable sandwich, and then felt better
In the end it turned out that there was too much to be said about footpaths just to spend a single day saying it, and so we all promised that we would come back again tomorrow.
I have suddenly developed huge compassion for the people whose job it is to get other people to agree about things like motorways and airport runways. This meeting is about a small country footpath and lots of people are terribly upset. Really really upset, one lady was shaking, and some people were cross, it is so very difficult to run the world so that everybody can feel happy and contented with their share in it.
The lady who was in charge of the meeting was doing her very best, though, she was sensible and thoughtful and asked some clever questions that I would never have thought of, even if I had not been busy trying hard not to think about tea cakes.
We are back in the camper now and will be staying here tonight and going back tomorrow. This is nice because it means I have got plenty of opportunity to try out the new curtains.
Also I am happy to think that it is finally December now.
It is nearly Christmas…
