Today was the day of Oliver’s return to school.
It has taken me all day.
His school uniform needed ironing, and his shoes needed cleaning, which all seemed simple enough, until I remembered that he needed his bag packing for a camping trip.
His class are going to spend next weekend living out in the wild on some country estate somewhere, swimming in lakes and eating beetles, or something. I am hazy about the details but I know he had a fairly comprehensive kit list.
Fortunately we are reasonably well equipped with outdoor survival equipment, much of which seems to have done several tours in Afghanistan, and looks like it.
I could have added webbing and ammo belts and all sorts of handy things to his rucksack, which had once belonged to Number Two Daughter, but decided it would be better not to. Once he put the rucksack on he resembled nothing as much as an oversized beetle, had he landed on his back he would have been there for ever.
We shook sand out of sleeping bags and wrote Ibbetson on everything, washed eating utensils and Mark waterproofed his walking boots. These had once been Lucy’s. Misfortunately they were pink, but they fitted reasonably well, especially when a pair of my thick woollen socks had been added. Oliver said kindly that he did not care in the least about the colour, and that nobody else would say anything because since he had had the Krav Maga unarmed combat classes the others were all nice to him.
This was where things started to go wrong.
Of course you cannot go away for several days of camping with only one pair of thick woollen socks. You need lots, especially if you are going to be traipsing in and out of lakes.
I wear my thick woollen socks all the time, even though it is nearly June, because I have got the heat-retention capacity of a lizard at the North Pole.
I have got six pairs but could only find four, and two of those were in the washing machine.
The stove was not lit, so I had to light the oven and dry them over the door.
Half an hour later one side of the socks was brown and crunchy and the other side was still damp. The kitchen smelled of scorched wool.
As I discovered this misadventure, Mark, who was cleaning Oliver’s school shoes, discovered a hole in them.
Oliver, when challenged about this, nodded equably and agreed that he had known, but had forgotten to draw it to our attention.
By this time it was far too late to dash in to Clarks in Kendal. In any case, I have recklessly paid the council tax and the Autoparts bill this week, and as a result we don’t have any money at all.
Mark found an outgrown pair of Lucy’s shoes and cut a piece off them. He patched Oliver’s shoes very carefully.
He used his favourite glue, which he said should work, but it has got to be left to dry for ages.
We put his shoes in his bag, and Oliver had got to go back to school in Lucy’s walking boots and burned socks.
We had almost reached Kendal before I remembered that my taxi has got two slowly deflating tyres, actually quite rapidly deflating tyres, and that I needed to check them.
As previously mentioned, I didn’t have any money. That is to say, I had a functioning credit card, but the air machine on the garage would not accept it.
We went down the backs of all the seats and found forty nine pence, and then we remembered Oliver’s wallet.
He agreed, reluctantly, to lend me fifty pence, on the absolute condition that I repaid it the very first second that I had some cash.
I am glad he is not my bank manager.
It was pouring with rain.
By the time I had inflated the tyres I was sodden, and grimy, in the sort of way that tyres make you.
I had not dried off by the time we reached school.
When we got to school the headmaster eyed Oliver’s pink walking boots and burned socks with a raised eyebrow.
Brushing my wet hair out of my eyes with a filthy hand I explained that it was only until the glue for the patches on his school shoes had dried.
The headmaster looked at me for a moment and hurried away.
There are some times in your life when you know that if there were a pass mark for parenting you would not have achieved it.
What a jolly good job there isn’t.
