This is going to be a short entry because it is already half an hour past midnight, tomorrow, really, and I have only just started writing.
I have been fully occupied taking the children back to school. This started off this morning with school uniform to be ironed, shoes to be cleaned, etc, and Oliver was dispatched round to the barber with instructions to return looking less like a bird’s nest, which he did.
After that everybody wanted feeding, so I cooked some more egg and bacon sandwiches, and we sat around the table discussing our next adventures, which will probably be the end of term concerts. We will need the camper van for these if we are not to spend a fortune and also not panic about hotel accommodation. The difficulty with hotels and carol services is that everybody in one wants to go to the other, and vice versa.
Of course the camper van is still nowhere near finished, but once we get the engine back in it it could, theoretically at least, be used, if we were to ignore the obvious problems of the bathroom still not being there and the bonnet no longer fitting. I am managing to ignore the whole thing as it is Mark’s responsibility as I am a mere girl, he can just bring it home for me to clean it out and pack it when he has finished.
We washed up, and Oliver was compelled to visit the shower, after which we set off, except Mark, who went to work to try and earn some funds to put towards Christmas and the mortgage. We went back to collect everything we had forgotten and then set off again.
It was an exciting journey over, because on the high road it was snowing. It was snowing quite a lot, in a serious sort of way, not at all like the airy-fairy sleety stuff we were getting in amongst the sheets of rain in Windermere. On the fell tops there was a very businesslike winter blizzard.
The children played I Spy until we all got fed up of the something-beginning-with-S challenge, which obviously was snow every time, since it was the only thing actually visible. Lucy suggested sheep but was shouted down because we couldn’t actually see them through the howling gusts of snowflakes. After that they played counting games until eventually we made our way down the fell side and to Oliver’s school, where the rain had replaced the snow, and was hurling down in great fat raindrops.
I extracted a vest-wearing pledge from Oliver, and we hugged each other. He dashed off to dinner, and Lucy and I splashed hastily back to the car to carry on heading south.
It takes an hour to get to Lucy’s school from Oliver’s, and the roads were night-time quiet and the weather calmer when we got there. She said goodbye cheerfully and bounded off in search of her clean laundry. The next time we will see Lucy will be the Christmas holidays.
Maybe we will even have the camper van.
I drove back slowly through the interesting weather, which had not improved at all on the high fells. The dual carriageway was reduced to a single narrow track, and the snow billowed and swirled around me.
I was not at all sorry to get back to the taxi rank, where Mark was having a quiet evening. We had cups of tea and exchanged stories, and felt anxious and excited because now we are on the countdown to the Christmas holidays.
They will be upon us before we know it, and there is so much to do.
