Excess baggage

I think it might be true that alcoholism is in fact related to parenthood.

We have had an almost completely dry few months, by which, for the benefit of the pernickety, I do not mean that we have actually not had a drink, of course we have, we are not that sort of obsessive extremist not-drinking-at-all sort of dry.

In fact some of my happier memories of the last few months are of sitting in hotel lounges sipping champagne cocktails and feeling smug about life.

When I say we have been dry, what I mean is that we have not been coming home from work in a state of desperate exhausted longing for a drink that has led us to open a large bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon before we have even taken our coats off.

Despite having a very healthy looking wine cellar, and by cellar actually I mean loft because obviously our cellar is full of kitchen, we have had several months of being not at all bothered about drinking. We have not needed to wash a wine glass at home for weeks and weeks.

Until today.

I have started writing this early, because I know that really in the very near future I am going to pass out and collapse into bed.

We have not been for our usual kilometre swim. We have not gone to work. We have not, at the time of writing, even had our usual gentle turn about the Library Gardens with the dogs.

It is not even six o’clock and I have collapsed at my desk with a glass of wine and a throbbing headache.

We have got a house full of children.

It is glorious to see them.

I really mean that, I am not being polite because you are supposed to be pleased when the fruits of your womb reappear to help you eat your biscuits and increase your car insurance.

It is actually brilliant to have them all at home.

Mark went off to collect Oliver this morning. He offered to do this because he said that I went last week, and then laughed, but I was not sorry to let him. We had got to get up at six o’clock again, and after a hasty coffee he buzzed off and I worked my way through a huge stack of school uniform related ironing, made some biscuits, and then went up to the station to meet Number Two Daughter, arriving home from Japan via Dubai.

She was brown and exhausted, mostly because the booking for the flight had been last minute, and had discovered Business Class to be full and so had been obliged to share a flight with people with children.

She had got rucksacks and crash helmets and skis and snowboards and hand baggage and boots, which she dumped in the living room.

Half an hour later Oliver arrived with sacks of mud-encrusted rugby kit and grime-smeared towels and a pungent odour.

We sat together in the kitchen with cups of coffee and biscuits and listened to travellers’ tales for ages, and I felt rather proud of having such adventurous children.

After that there seemed to be a very great deal of clearing up. We listened to Oliver playing his flute and rescued homework lists and put Number Two Daughter’s passport in a safe place and sent emails to various authorities about police checks and Canadian travel and banks and permits. We emptied washing out of bags and lugged everything else up to the loft, where we squished it all into the corners so that there was still room for Number Two Daughter to swing a ski pole, we dusted SpiderMan down and tucked him in Oliver’s bed, we handed out orange juice and apple juice and more coffee and then I baked some more biscuits.

After that Number Two Daughter went to the doctor to talk about X-rays and I took Lucy to the optician to investigate why she appeared to be incapable of recognising any of her teachers, which problem was resolved by some very much stronger contact lenses and a couple of hundred quid invested in new glasses.

In the end they all drifted off to their separate corners of the house, and as one like minded being Mark and I dived for the wine cupboard in a single bound.

We didn’t go to work.

We are going to go to bed.

Having a family is like that.

I have attached a picture of more luggage. For the artistically minded amongst you it is a visual representation of a headache.