Oliver is home.
That is to say, he is at home in an at Elspeth’s house sort of way, because of course we have had to go to work and at least if he is at Elspeth’s house he has got some companionship and also somebody to be helpful if the house catches fire.
It is sad to have to do this but Elspeth has taken him to see her children in a pantomime this evening, so he will have a nice time and a bit of an adventure, and we will see him in the morning.
I collected him from school this lunchtime. He bounced out of the door underneath his enormous rucksack and we hugged each other and I put my face in his hair and breathed in the smell of fresh-from-school-boy. He gets cross usually when I sniff him, but it is allowed for the first hug, so I make the most of it.
On the way back to the car park I asked if he was happy.
“I am so happy I haven’t got enough words to tell you about it,” he said. “School is brilliant.”
This was a relief to hear, not that I thought he might not be, but it is always good to know that things are going all right with your offspring when you are not around, and indeed he occupied the journey telling me story after story until he had finished his tuck and wanted to play on his computer.
It does sound to be a good life for a boy. They have been playing valley games in PE this term whilst the rugby pitch has been too waterlogged to use.
Valley games are – perhaps obviously – played down in the tree-lined valley at the side of the school grounds, and are a combination of rugby and cross country, sometimes you have got to capture the other side’s flag whilst wrestling them to the ground, at other times you just seem to charge up and down the valley and wrestle them to the ground anyway. I am very glad indeed that he isn’t a day boy, and that I don’t have to do his washing.
He said that his shooting is coming along brilliantly and that the teacher said if he calms down and stops getting so excited he will be able to get all ten shots into the bull’s eye, and that some rogue had his torch confiscated by Matron for being rascally after Lights Out, and that it is really good to be in Form Two and get milk and biscuits later than the little boys in Form One who have got to go to bed early because they are only eight. He has been a Spaniard sacrificed by the Aztecs in their topic work and a set of lungs chasing blood around in biology, and he has got his pen licence now and so needs a new pen. It has got to be ink.
I was pleased to hear all of this, after which he moved in to political comment and observation about the current situation in Syria. It has obviously been much discussed at school, where there are a lot of military families, and I was intrigued to hear that mostly he was just relieved not to have ‘that blue man’s job’, meaning, it turned out, Mr. Cameron; because he couldn’t at all work out what was the best thing that we ought to do, about which we were in wholehearted agreement.
We stopped on the way home to meet Mark at the Christmas tree farm, and were reacquainted with the reindeer and bought a Christmas tree, which we haven’t had time to put up yet. It is a beautiful tree, and even though it is still just wrapped up in the old camper van curtains on the floor, it smells glorious when we come in. We will have to try and get it done tomorrow.
I have also got to find some Christmas decorations for Oliver to take back to school because they are having a Best Decorated Dorm competition, and also a day of wearing a brightly coloured jumper. I don’t know what I am going to do about the latter because I have selected all of his clothes using the criteria of how effectively they disguise the inevitable dirty marks, and they are almost all brown or dark green. I think I am going to have to add some tinsel to his camouflage hoodie.
On top of that I have got to buy him some Nesquik to take back because he has run out, adjust and sew the names in his newly arrived trousers, which he has just tried on and which fortunately do fit him apart from needing to be taken in a bit at the waist, but all his trousers always need that, and of course go to work. He is going back on Sunday afternoon.
It is going to be a terribly busy weekend.
