This is a shortened entry because of the winter-stillness of the day.
It is true hibernation season, chilled and sleepy and grey, and the day has passed with an almost dreamlike uneventfulness of housework in our quiet little house, and then work, under the misty skies on empty roads.
It has been the last day of Lucy’s school holidays today, to everybody’s sadness. Oliver, for some unexplained reason, but which gladdens his heart nevertheless, does not go back for another ten days. Hence I have done half of the beginning of term jobs and can expect a similar last minute panic in a week’s time.
I think I have pretty much finished the Lucy-related panic now, I have remembered to buy tuck and shampoo, have written her name in the new knickers bought to replace the forty lost pairs, and Mark has cleaned her shoes. She thinks that she has probably done most of her prep and I think I have probably ironed everything that anybody is likely to look at.
We both had to kneel on her trunk to close it, and even then I had to take her shoes out and put them in her tuck box. It was a sad feeling of the holidays being over, they have flown past. Life is such a joyous event, but no matter how much I mean to savour every moment, somehow it flashes past like a late taxi. It is the shortest time since she was such a little girl, white-faced and tearful at the prospect of leaving home for the rough and tumble of an all-girls boarding school: and now she is energetic and robust with confidence leaking out of her ears. Goodness alone knows what she will do when she has finished, turn Prince Harry down and take over China probably.
Apart from packing we have been busy doing house jobs all day. I have manufactured a taxi picnic sandwich spread out of lemon and chickpeas and yoghurt that I can eat with bread instead of the thick chunks of roast ham or beef which Mark prefers, but which I think are greasy. He thought lemon and chickpeas was revolting, even with parsley, but fortunately does not have to eat it, we have a policy of distant tolerance towards one another’s dietary preferences.
We have hoovered and tidied and scrubbed away black mould until the house smells like a nineteen-seventies swimming pool, and in between times we have drunk coffee and looked out at the unceasing rain and longed for the hot winds of Africa and the brilliant Indian sunshine dancing on the waves in Goa, and remembered long bright days under the cherry trees in the French garden, until it was time to go dutifully out to work.
We left the children having a last night riot in the living room, snorting with laughter and rolling over cushions, and thought how fortunate we have been with them, because in all of their lives Lucy and Oliver have never had a single fight with one another: apart from the helpless-giggling sort that goes with end of term high spirits. Both of them loathe any kind of upset, and will run away upstairs to hide if ever I am inspired to shout at Mark.
We left instructions about closing curtains and bringing cups down out of their bedrooms which we fully expected them to forget as soon as we had closed the door behind us, and went off to sit on the taxi rank, where I helpfully showed Mark some interesting pictures of the Nile Valley where you can get Vitamin D, and we wondered seriously about a credit card, and then decided sensibly, but finally, that we liked not having debts more than we minded our bones crumbling to dust due to lack of sunshine.
Soon it will be springtime.
When it stops raining we will dig the allotment over.
We can hibernate until then.
