All work on the camper van ground to a halt when we discovered that both of our taxis are due to have MOT tests this week.
They are both destined to fail on various minor but tiresome problems, and so Mark is going to have to stop doing anything interesting and fix them.
He went over to the farm this morning leaving me making phone calls and writing letters, all of which took up so much time that I didn’t get round to washing up. I still haven’t got round to washing up, actually, it is going to have to be tomorrow now.
In fact my project for the day was to take Number Two Daughter’s friend Laura to the railway station in Kendal so that she could catch her train home and I could go to Asda. The children are coming home this weekend and I am going to have to feed them.
Especially I am going to have to feed them because of the junior oligarch-offspring, who cannot simply be given free access to crisps all weekend and is going to have to be fed on things that come on plates with vegetables. This is going to be challenging. Incidentally I do not know really if he is the offspring of an oligarch, nor do I know what an oligarch is anyway, I will have to look it up. In fact I don’t have the first clue about him except that Oliver likes him, which I suppose is all I need to know. Oliver tells me that I have met him but I could not pick him out of a line-up. His entire school population is freckled with floppy hair and enormous toothy grins, when I go to pick Oliver up I have to wait for him to find me.
I got into such a state of anxiety about the supermarket visit that in the end Mark came with me.
We said goodbye to Laura on the station, who thanked me politely for all the pearls of handy wisdom which I shared out so very liberally last night after the wine, then we went to Asda.
It cost a shocking fortune.
Apart from the food for children, and the replenishment of the tuck drawer just in case I have a catering failure anyway, we bought some new pans.
Number Two Daughter likes to have scrambled eggs for breakfast. She does not always remember to wash the pan up.
I think I will love Number Two Daughter much more liberally if I never have to scrub horrible sticky egg off the bottom of a pan again.
The pans that we bought are special ones coated with something scientific called Teflon which stops stuff sticking to them.
I was inspired to this act of reckless expenditure by having borrowed Number One Daughter’s camper van kitchen this week.
I have been using her pans, and have discovered that they are coated with this truly magnificent substance. It is designed to stop the stuff that I am cooking from sticking to the hot bits of the pans, and I can assure you that it works absolutely brilliantly. I was so very impressed that I mentioned it to Mark who is not usually very interested in pans, and he agreed that we should purchase some without delay: so we did.
I was so carried away with the purchase of scrambled-egg-repellent pans that we bought some baking trays as well, also coated with the marvellous anti-stick coating, because mine have become elderly and well-used and not only does stuff stick to them, I am obliged to give them a quick rub down before I use them every time on account of them having become a bit rusty. This is not the sort of thing that I imagine celebrity chefs do when they are explaining how to cook biscuits to the people who don’t have recipe books.
I am very excited indeed about the new pans. Mark offered to put them away when we got home but I declined because I would like to give the pan rack a thorough celebratory clean first.
I am going to do this and all the other child-preparation tasks tomorrow whilst Mark goes to the farm to fix taxis instead of the camper van.
Incidentally, Google tells me that an oligarch is a very rich businessman with a great deal of political influence, especially in Russia.
He might really be one after all.
