Alas, just as I thought our finances were on the mend I rediscovered Back To School.
Oliver needed cricket equipment. He has already got the school regulation things, but he wanted his own cricket bat, and pads, and gloves, and a helmet and a bag for carrying them all. This was so that he could be like the other boys whose parents are also bankrupt.
Lucy wanted a haircut, which we have booked for tomorrow, and we all had to have a trip to the optician. This is because it is rubbish doing GCSEs when you can’t read the papers, and equally rubbish wearing new cricket pads when you can’t see the ball.
Mark has annual checks anyway, and my old-lady eyesight is becoming worse with every fresh term of nametape sewing: so we made a family outing of it.
We all crowded into the optician’s room. He didn’t have enough chairs for all of us, so those of us not trying to distinguish the letters in the mirror sat on the floor.
Lucy was the worst. Lucy could barely see the letters in the mirror, never mind read any of them. The optician said that it wasn’t fair to ridicule somebody for not being able to see, but obviously we carried on anyway.
He said that her eyes had become worse, and gave her some new contact lenses to try, which she put in there and then. She looked at me and exclaimed how much wrinklier I was than when she last saw me, and we all agreed that the bonus to having rubbish eyesight was that she could marry somebody really ugly and it wouldn’t matter.
Oliver, who has always had perfect vision, discovered to his chagrin that he has become short sighted in one eye. This is not yet very severe, and hence the optician decided that it could probably be ignored for a while.
This was a disappointment to all of us, especially Oliver, because we all liked the idea of a monocle. Oliver has the distinction of being able to waggle both of his eyebrows, and his ears, separately and together, and we all felt that a monocle would be the very thing to enhance this performance. The optician refused to prescribe one anyway and said that Oliver would have to come back for another test in six months.
Mark’s eyes were much the same as last time, and I needed new reading glasses, which I knew anyway because of the depressing experience of trying to read books with small print. He offered to sell me some for ninety quid, but I thought I would look on the internet, and indeed have found some for a fraction of that price which I will purchase once we have finished paying for the cricket kit.
I spent the rest of the day packing trunks and bags. There was hardly any dirty washing at all buried in the bottom of Lucy’s, which was a pleasant surprise. Oliver’s cricket shoes still fitted, which was a relief, and tomorrow the long-avoided business of sewing nametapes will have to recommence.
It has been such a lovely holiday, I am so sad that they are going away. It is funny and happy and contented to be all together. We have had Disneyland and Paris and the most brilliant of shared times.
Lucy goes on Sunday…
