We were woken up by the telephone.
It was Number One Daughter complaining that she had been woken up in the middle of the night by Number Two Daughter calling from Japan to tell her that she had dislocated her shoulder.
This was alarming, because of course Number Two Daughter’s employment as a skiing instructor rather demands that she have both arms firmly attached to the rest of her, and should anything go amiss with that arrangement quite possibly her services in the Far East would no longer be required.
There is an instant and obvious difficulty that she encounters at this point, given that at the moment she is domiciled in the Hokkaido Hilton which is paid for by her employer.
Given the transient and international nature of Number Two Daughter’s general employment pattern she does not have an alternative fixed address. Or even an unfixed address.
“Ha ha,” said Number One Daughter unsympathetically, having filled me in on all the technical details of X-rays and physiotherapy required to reconnect a shoulder, all of which I failed completely to understand on account of it still being the first sixty seconds of the day.
“Is she all right? Was she upset?” I asked, stupidly.
“For goodness sake, I haven’t got a clue, I was asleep, message her and find out,” Number One Daughter said.
When I got back to bed Mark had made coffee and was considering the entirely practical issue of where he would put his secret stash of good wine and malt whisky if Number Two Daughter came to live in the loft bedroom again, Number Two Daughter being something of an enthusiastic opportunist when it comes to alcohol.
We had some concerned debate on the subject for a while, and eventually decided that we would wait and see what happened next and if necessary create an emergency hiding place in the bottom of our wardrobe.
After that we had got to get on with the day. Once we were up we turned our attention to preparations for our investigative visit to Gordonstoun, which you might remember is happening this week.
It is an awful lot of anxious messing about. I have got to remember things like shoes and Mark’s beard oil and handkerchiefs and all kinds of other small details. It is perfectly possible to take the shine off an entire event by forgetting something tiny but immensely significant, like socks or toothpicks.
Given that at least part of the point of this event is to make a First Impression on Gordonstoun whilst they decide if they can bear to tolerate us at years and years of Speech Days and School Picnics and Carol Services, it would not be at all a good idea accidentally to take a white blouse and black underwear, although it might have been if I had been twenty years younger.
I am very nervous about the whole thing: because it is our son’s future which hangs in the balance here: our boy needs us to remember to say please and thank you and Mark needs not to blow his nose on his napkin at lunch.
In the end we were packed and ready, and Mark brought in firewood and bathed the dogs, and I cleaned the middle floor so that we would have a tidy house to come home to, and eventually it was time to get ready for work.
We were just about to go out of the door when the phone rang and it was Lucy.
Lucy is having Issues at school.
She is having Issues generally related to the futility of life and the eternity of time during which we will not have a life anyway, futile or otherwise. Also she has not done her French essay and does not understand the structure of the past participle.
This made me late for work. Actually it made me an hour late for work.
I suggested, helpfully, that the thing to do was to eat chocolate and watch a film in bed and then talk to the French teacher tomorrow about the past participle.
I pointed out that I did not understand the structure of the past participle either but that had not stopped me living in France for several years and making myself perfectly well understood everywhere, except for one of our more amorous neighbours, who completely failed to understand the point I was trying to get across about which bits of him I did and did not wish to encounter whilst Mark was working away. There are more important bits of a language than verb endings, I explained.
Eventually I went to work.
Time to turn our attention to raising funds for the school fees.
