This diary entry has been brought to you at great personal sacrifice. In fact I have got out of bed especially to do it.
Also it has cost me thirty six quid because whilst I was at the computer Oliver appeared downstairs to cash in my rash promise of a new PlayStation game if he behaved himself and was helpful over the holidays. Obviously I had forgotten about this and now I am going to have to explain it to Mark when he gets his credit card statement next week.
We have got to the end of the summer. The last poopy has gone, leaving us with poor Roger, who is grief stricken to find himself suddenly an only-poopy. He keeps going around all the places where they have all been and looking hopefully, just in case one reappears. Lucy took pity on him for a while and took him upstairs for a cuddle, but got cross with him because he cried and complained and then eventually did a wee on her bed, so he has been returned to the kitchen where the garden is not two flights of stairs away.
In place of the poopies we have got a special carpet cleaning machine lent by Mark’s sister. This is a marvellous contraption full of tanks and pipes and wires. We have bought a product called Extreme Shampoo to go inside it, which has got a picture of a guilty-looking puppy on the front and which promises to remove every last trace of misfortune. It is going to be our project for the week, what exciting diary entries you have got to look forward to.
The plan for today was to do some cleaning up, but in fact the major activity turned out to be hunting down socks and towels and trying on of rugby boots, because of course we had to get the children’s school trunks packed. This led to the discovery that despite some intensive needlework activity in the taxi over the last weeks, Oliver’s trousers and Lucy’s swimming costume are still anonymous: and Oliver’s duvet covers have not yet arrived. One of them, when I investigated, has not even been sent yet, which is the cause of a minor panic, it is the one that he really wanted with a picture of a baby penguin on the front.
I am going to have to start writing pleading letters to Amazon and hope that it arrives before Wednesday. If it doesn’t it will be dreadful. It will be plain to Oliver and to Matron and to every other boy and parent in school that I am a disorganised failure who does not sufficiently love their offspring to send them away with a reassuringly new duvet cover with his name carefully stitched on the opening at the end. There are so many perils involved in parenting, the whole fragile endeavour can be crushed at the drop of a tracking number.
Today has long been set aside as a special end-of-summer day. Lucy booked the night off work, and we spent the day slowly starting to restore order to our lives: then we all went round the corner for an end-of-summer dinner at the Indian restaurant.
It is ages since we have eaten a huge pile of food all at once instead of grazing in between taxi customers, and it felt absolutely brilliant. The restaurant is splendid, they filled our wineglasses so brim-full that to our surprise neither of us could contemplate a second. We had beautiful golden-creamy curries and fluffy white rice, and ate ourselves into a state of bulging discomfort without giving our funeral clothes a single thought. The children talked and talked, and we laughed so much that Lucy almost spat out her drink.
We rolled back home around the corner at about seven o’clock, and the children took the dogs out for a walk: and I am obliged to confess that Mark and I went instantly to bed.
We slept for three hours, and eventually got up to have showers and write to you and empty the dogs again. Roger needs quite a bit of emptying.
Now that I have written to you we are going to go back to bed. It is the end of the summer and we have got a lot of sleeping to do.
Carpet cleaning to look forward to next.
See you tomorrow.
