Imposter Syndrome

I don’t think my hands will ever be clean again.

We have spent the day at the farm. It was the last time we will ever do this, because we have cleared out the shed now and moved everything out. The shed is empty. All Mark’s tools and useful bits of handy scrap metal are either back at home or stored under plastic sheets in the field.

It is finished.

It is not brilliant or lovely to see our things in the field. At the moment it is very cluttered and disorganised. There is a lot of mud. Mark’s sister had given us a deadline to be out of the shed before this weekend. She did not want to us to leave it any longer, so we had got to rush to get everything up there, and it has made a terrible black muddy slide all the way up the field.

Some things would not go up at all, and are just stuck in the mud part of the way up, but we can’t do anything about it. We have got to store things at the top, because we are going to build our shed there. An agricultural shed must be more than twenty five metres away from the road. This is a long way to drag things uphill through a couple of feet of mud.

The mud is not even mud any more, it is a sort of filthy liquid ooze. Mark said that we will just have to stop doing anything now until the ground dries out a bit.

Fortunately most of the floods have gone, and everywhere is open again. We can drive anywhere except up our field, so things are improving.

All the same, it was a very squelchy, grubby sort of job. We filled my taxi yesterday, and Mark’s taxi today, and stacked the trailer with firewood. When we had finished we chucked our bicycles on top. This made the whole thing about a foot higher than Mark, and very precarious. We had to drive back very carefully indeed, and one bicycle  was sliding slowly downwards all the way home.

We were weary when we got back, but still had to unload. The lodger came and helped for a while, and then made us some coffee before she had to dash out for work. Mark unloaded the wood whilst I made our picnic ready for work. After that I dashed upstairs to check on an embryonic black eye that I had acquired whilst trying and failing  to chuck things on to the roof of the Land Rover.

It is very important indeed that I do not have a black eye, more so than usual at the moment. This is because we have been invited to Oliver’s school at weekend to have dinner with the Headmaster and also the Headmaster from Gordonstoun.

This is not because of any special merit on our part, but because the Headmaster from Gordonstoun is coming to look at Oliver’s prep school and to see if there are any other parents who would like to meet him. He is going to do dinner in the evening and then deliver the sermon in Chapel on Sunday morning.

There are no other parents. The rest of Oliver’s class are going to places like Oundle and Harrow and Repton, all of which are considerably further south.

We are the only ones dispatching our child to Scotland.

I am not surprised about this. In my perfect world I would also like to wear high heels and a big hat for Sports Day, instead of wellies and a Barbour jacket: but Gordonstoun is so perfect for Oliver that I have had to capitulate.

In view of the absence of further interest, there will just be me, and Mark, and the two august Heads and their wives. Therefore, the PA told me this evening, Saturday night’s dinner has been changed to a local pub.

That sounds a lot less alarming than it is. Mark and I looked online at the menu when we got home and discovered that we could barely pronounce half of it, and we didn’t know what most of the rest of it was anyway. What, for instance, might roast garlic aioli be? Or olive tapenade?

I am very glad indeed that I do not have a black eye.

I have got black fingernails at the moment, which is bad enough. I do not know what I can possibly do about that. I have scrubbed them and scrubbed them, but it is engine oil and other shed grime. My fingers have become dry and cracked, and the cracks have filled with horrible black stains. Mark’s are worse.

We have got to go out to dinner on Saturday night instead of going to work. We have got to stay overnight in the camper van because we have got to be at Chapel in the morning. Oliver is going to say the prayers. He does not believe in God. He does not believe in God with a cynicism rather startling in one his age. I have sent him an email imploring him not to let it show.

I am sick with worry about this event. I think it is called Imposter Syndrome, which is when you have the terrible feeling that you are not good enough and don’t belong. I am not sure if it is still called that when you are correct.

I am worried because I am an impecunious taxi driver with black fingernails. I am worried about going out because it is Saturday night, which is when we should be at work because we need the cash. I am worried because I might accidentally get drunk myself, because of being nervous, and then I might behave like a reckless idiot.

Mark said not to worry because there is nobody at all here at the moment, and also I can be very funny when I am drunk. He said that I should not worry about the black eye, because he would just tell everybody that they should see the other bloke. In revenge, I have told him that on no account whatsoever is he to blow his nose on his napkin or talk about boilers.

He just laughed about the whole thing, and said that the headmaster from Gordonstoun is just a person like anybody else.

He might well be, but I bet he has never accidentally blown his nose on his napkin, even when he has had too much to drink.

I am terrified.