I can’t remember whether or not I have told you that we are going away next week.
Well anyway, we are.
Oliver goes back to school on Wednesday, but we are setting off on Sunday and going via Gordonstoun so that he can visit them and have a look round and they can decide if they like him or not.
We are staying away from home for three nights. This is not strictly necessary as we could very probably manage the whole journey in two nights, possibly even in one night if we didn’t mind driving in our sleep. However I have used the spurious excuse of it being too much for Oliver to make him travel in the back of the car for hours and hours, and thus persuaded Mark to let us have two nights in Edinburgh, one at each end.
I booked us into a very nice hotel in Edinburgh one afternoon when Mark was out. A few days later the concierge wrote to me and asked what the purpose of our visit and if he could help make it special in any way. This was jolly splendid, and I told him all about it and asked for reservations for dinner, and handy information about the health club, and I got the most charming letter back.
When Mark found out about this he laughed a lot and said that he had better make sure he had got plenty of money for tips because it sounded as though he was going to need it.
Thus on Sunday we are heading to Edinburgh. On Monday we make the long and perilous trip up to the edges of the Arctic and stay there on Monday night. On Tuesday we visit Gordonstoun and drive back to Edinburgh, and on Wednesday we head down to York to get Oliver back to school for Wednesday night.
I am really, really excited.
I have been packing today.
Mark is worried about my packing, because we have got to take all of Oliver’s things for school, as well as his bike because of it being the summer term when bikes are allowed. He has said not to forget that we have got to get everything into the car.
Mark has spent the day over at the farm doing things to the bike to make it roadworthy again. My part of the preparations has been to get all of our clothes ready, which I have not nearly managed to get done.
I have got to take comfortable travelling things, and smart respectable things for visiting Gordonstoun, and swimming things because the Edinburgh hotel has got a swimming pool, and some warm but tidy clothes in case we get chance to go and look round Edinburgh Castle, and of course we might need to change for dinner and I have got to remember Oliver’s school uniform for the very last day. Then of course there are coats and Mark’s tweed jacket, and Oliver’s tweed jacket, and hats and umbrellas, in case it rains.
I didn’t know if I would need a jacket, so I thought I might take my beautiful soft black wool cardigan, but when I looked at it this afternoon I remembered I had been wearing it in the taxi on some winter nights when I wanted something fluffy and reassuring, and it needed washing.
I washed it in the kitchen sink.
I dried it on a big towel and hung it on the bathroom radiator to drip dry. It was still very wet indeed. I am not very confident that it will be dry in time, and keep going past it and squeezing more water out of the sleeves, which seem to be getting very long.
I wasn’t sure which scarf I would like to wear, so I washed all of them as well. Then I ironed Mark’s shirts and flapped about a bit, obliging Oliver to try on different combinations of shirts and ties and trousers until we finally came up with some that we thought looked all right and which he thought he could probably wear without fidgeting too much. He was very patient about this, which was kind of him, because he clearly thought that almost any old trousers at all would be perfectly fine, no matter how grass-stained and short.
We finished his project by printing out all of his photographs and sticking them into his book. I am profoundly relieved to know that he will be going back to school with all of his work done. This has been a parenting triumph and not one that I was especially confident of achieving.
It has even included watering a pot full of completely unidentifiable seedlings that he has brought home, and taking photographs of them at various stages of growth.
I have taken the photographs, because it is on the windowsill next to my desk, but they all look more or less the same, even to me. The pot was horribly crowded, and I should have pricked them out and potted them on, but I have been too idle, and just shoved the cardboard pot in some more compost and left them to fend for themselves, and I suspect they have been slowly strangling one another over the course of the holidays.
Anyway, they look exactly the same at the end of the holiday as they did at the beginning, and I am still no wiser about what they might be. The accompanying diary that we have failed to fill in due to lack of interesting events says that they are beans, but I am quite certain that they are not.
The question which has accompanied the project is to consider what plants need to be successful, and having considered the available evidence I think the answer in this case must be: “to be looked after by somebody else”.
As well as achieving Prep Closure I have now sorted out everything that Mark will wear and everything that Oliver will wear. So far all I have organised for myself is a wet cardigan. I made a gesture towards self-improvement by plucking my eyebrows, which is an unfairly tiresome job. I don’t think Mark, for instance, has ever in his entire life given a single moment’s consideration to concerns about whether his eyebrows look tidy and match one another.
Other than that I am still worrying about what to wear and what to take. Mark says that I must fit everything into some small overnight bags and not an enormous case at all because of having room.
I am not sure I can do this.
I am sure that if I pack a case anyway he will manage to get it in somehow.
