Today was the last day of the exeat. The sun was shining, and Oliver and Mark went off doing Boy Things together to make up for Oliver’s latchkey weekend of working and neglectful parents.
They went up to the farm and played with the car. Oliver can just about see over the steering wheel if he sits in a cushion, and Mark seems to think that it would be nice if he could do wheel spinning and handbrake turns as well as the usual backward and forward sort of activity.
This left me in peace to write letters and hang washing out. Also I had got to dash to the card shop in the village to buy a card for Mother’s Day for my mother. Of course I had forgotten about Mother’s Day altogether, but as it happened I learned from Number One Son-In-Law that this year it is Mothering Tuesday, which is when I can expect my card from them to arrive.
This was very useful information, if it had been Sunday then I would have completely messed it up again, like last year: the thing is that it doesn’t register when you don’t have a five year old coming home from school on Friday clutching a dog-eared sticky object with a doily glued to it for your admiration. As it was I was just in time to pop out today and buy a card and post it so that it will arrive nicely promptly on Tuesday.
The other major job of the day was to get our things packed for our adventure tomorrow.
We are using up the theatre vouchers I had for my last birthday, and we are off to Manchester to stay in the lovely Midland Hotel, regrettably that part was not a birthday present but just a normal reckless extravagance. I really don’t care about this, because the Midland is on my top ten list of favourite places in the whole world, elegant and elderly and predictable and utterly civilised, and we will just have to work harder.
It is especially nice because there is not anything much that we have got to do in Manchester, except buy some shoe polish for Mark’s shoes which are a slightly funny shade of brown not adequately covered by the range of shoe polishes in the ironmonger’s shop in Windermere, and I would like some insoles from Clarks.
Neither of these purchases qualifies as especially thrilling, and I am not expecting to have to apply in-depth anxious consideration to either: and apart from those we have got nothing terribly demanding that needs to be done. It is going to be unspeakably idle and hedonistic. We can get up late and wander about looking at things and read books in the lounge and go to the theatre.
We have got a couple of social events planned as well as the theatre, and this caused me to suffer packing dysfunction again, because of not knowing what to wear. It is terribly difficult to organise clothes that match, and are comfortable, and will make people think you are respectable even if you have accidentally had too much to drink, and what is more they have all got to fit in one suitcase.
I was determined not to make the mistake again that I made when we went to York, where I couldn’t decide what to wear, and hence took pretty much everything that we owned, in an enormous suitcase the size and weight of an occupied coffin. This time I have got our leather overnight bag and have decided to stick to that.
Despite being terribly restrained about everything I had got to ask Mark to squash both halves of the bag together in order to zip it closed, and realised afterwards that I had forgotten to include boots, I want to take the agonising ones that Mark likes, he will have to put them in his pocket.
Oliver enquired about the bag when he saw it. I explained what we were doing, and his face lit up when he realised that he had got school and would not be obliged to accompany us. He likes the theatre, and the Midland, but said that he would rather be doing maths than wandering about Manchester looking at shoe polish and underwear.
I pointed out that I was not looking at underwear.
He said that I was always looking at underwear, and if I wasn’t looking at it I was talking about it, look at the fuss I was always making about his vest.
I dropped him off at school and headed off to work to earn some cash for board and lodging at the Midland.
The picture is the journey home. I thought it was glorious.
Roll on tomorrow.
