Freedom

It has been a jolly splendid day.

We are in the camper van.

We are in Ripon, just beside the river. I have had a shower and am curled up in bed, warm, happy, full of home-made takeaway curry, and ever so slightly drunk.

It might be a bit more than slightly.

I can hear the cathedral clock chiming. It is eleven o’ clock.

The senior choir from Oliver’s school had a choral day today, at another school a short drive away from Oliver’s.

We wanted to go very much, and so this morning once we had seen the junior lodger off to school and listened to the senior lodger’s tales of woe about work, we threw everything and the dogs into the camper van and chugged away.

This is such a joyful freedom. It has been a little bit like being that poor octopus in the aquarium, before the wonderful day when he finally realised he could climb out of his tank, escape through the window, climb down the drainpipe and cross over the road to the sea.

He did this, in a squishily determined sort of way. When he was recaptured he did it again, and this time the aquarium quite rightly let him go, and he flapped himself off to freedom.

He had been kindly looked after in his tank, and given lots of shells to decorate his cave, which they seem to like to do, but all the same it wasn’t like freedom.

We trundled off merrily down the road, eating Chinese rice crackers and peanuts for breakfast on our way.

The choir were at a place called Ampleforth Abbey, which is a public school and large Catholic monastery over in the remote wilds of Yorkshire. It was beautiful.

In fact the whole journey was lovely, lots of little houses built of lovely gold-coloured stone with interestingly shaped steep roofs. I know they are like that because of heavy snowfalls, but it could also be perhaps so that the dwarves downstairs could have space to welcome the lost princess to come and sleep in the attic.

It was brilliant to see Oliver. He is tall, and freckled, and possessed of an easy confidence that we both envied a tiny bit. He hugged us and told us about school, and shuddered at Mark’s sawn-off finger before disappearing with the rest of the floppy-haired, tweed-clad choir, to the front of the Abbey to make improbably angelic noises.

It was splendid.

I have done some, although not much, Catholic churchiness, and thought it was properly marvellous. Incense billowed in gorgeously scented clouds from the altar, and the priest, a melodically-voiced young man with soft brown curls, intoned harmoniously from the pulpit, dressed in richly-adorned robes and occasionally waving his hands about in ritualistic holy gestures. He was called, incongruously, Father, which I thought was rather sweet, but the music was breathtaking.

I explained monks to Oliver afterwards, and he was horrified, instantly dismissing it as a career option, for somebody who has a limited experience of marital relations he seems to be in no doubt as to their importance.

We drove him back to school in the camper van, and another small boy told us in tones of genuine sincerity that it was cool.

School was an absolute hubbub of boy-activities. We saw rip-sticks and rugby and table football and charging about and shouting and jumping off things and yelling, and laughing and somebody, somewhere, playing the trumpet.

Oliver hugged us again, and vanished. They all look remarkably similar, in a floppy-hair and freckles sort of way, and the thing to do is to wait for your own child to recognise you, because otherwise you might struggle.

We drove away happily, and parked in Ripon, beside the Cathedral.

We took the dogs for a stroll along the river bank and then came back and watched a film.

I have been wanting to do this for ages.

It has been absolutely glorious.

Being free is wonderful.