It is starting to get colder. It has become much quieter now here, probably because not many people want a holiday in the wettest place in England in the middle of November.
I was just dozing off at around five this morning when I heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by clunking noises around the kitchen.
When we got up we discovered the surface liberally covered in milk splashes and gritty sprinkles of sugar.
Oliver explained this morning that he had been so hungry he had been obliged to come down and get something to eat. Then he filled what can only be described as a smallish mixing basin with Cheerios and milk, and retreated again.
On investigation it turned out that he had eaten the entire packet of Cheerios, so I went to the shops. I bought more Cheerios and pizzas and waffles and bananas and more doughnuts.
He ate it all and then hovered around the kitchen wondering about chicken pieces.
I wondered if he might have acquired a tapeworm, but Mark said that he hadn’t, it was just natural Boy Elongation, and indeed over the course of the last twenty four hours he seems to have become taller by an inch or so.
He has become very different.
He brought his washing down without being asked.
I have never come across anything quite like it. He brought his pots down from his room and went back for a spoon that he thought he might have forgotten, and thanked me for tidying his bedroom whilst he was away.
To my relief Harry arrived this afternoon, and they squeaked and thumped and yelled and giggled in an entirely normal sort of manner, and so I know that it is actually my boy and not some clever forgery produced by school and sent back in his stead.
He is growing up.
Mark went off to the farm and left me to supervise feeding and tidying up, and somehow the day flew past more quickly than I could have imagined.
Now that we are in the shadow of winter, the fire is staying lit all of the time now, which means that there is quite a lot more to do. There is more to do than I am actually doing, mostly because the house is a lot dustier. This is because the fire, when lit, releases occasional flurries of ash into the air, which settles in powdery grey drifts on every available surface.
I don’t much like dusting. The dust is settling itself down patiently in slow but inexorable layers to await the day when shame gets the better of me.
That day was not today.
I brought logs in and swept the hearth and refilled the kindling pile. I hung the washing up and fed Oliver again and offered the lodger some handy advice about how best she might live her life.
In the end I got ready for work. Mark came home and told me stories about moving his trailer with the digger and hurling the old sofa off the top floor of the workshop. I told him about washing up, and not dusting.
Mark thought we would probably manage without dusting for a bit longer until somebody started to feel like it.
Fortunately the day has been bright and clear, and when we went out to work it turned out that there had been some visitors after all, so our finances are being restored a bit.
We are not going to starve to death.
Especially not Oliver.
