We woke up in Yorkshire.
We fed ourselves, showered and set off late last night and arrived at the bottom of Oliver’s school drive at about half past one in the morning. This might seem late, but of course to us with our muddled sleep patterns it was just fine, and we woke up warm and cheerful with the sun this morning.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day, sunny and not exactly warm, but still and bright and crisp. Yorkshire has had even more snow than we have, and although the fields are clear and beginning to turn spring green, the ditches are still filled to the brim with frozen snow.
We had got lots of time before Oliver finished his morning classes, so we took the dogs out for a long walk, along muddy tracks and quiet lanes. We saw two hares and smelled a fox. The dogs smelled the fox as well, and we had to bellow very authoritatively at Roger Poopy to stop him disappearing down a fox hole to try and dig it out.
We had just got time for a cup of tea and to read our books for a while on the benches at the back of the camper van. We opened the windows and the sun streamed in, until eventually we heard the bell ringing and went to find Oliver.
He burst out of a door with a host of other boys, beaming and bouncing excitedly, and talked all the way to Lucy’s school. It has been, he said, a brilliant few weeks.
They have been having Snow Days instead of lessons. They divided into their houses and had the Aysgarth Snow Olympics, which involved all sorts of exciting activities. There was dog racing, in which teams of boys became dogs and towed a hapless first year around a track on a sledge. There were snowball throwing contests, where you had to get the snowball into a bucket, and there was snow football. To my untutored ear this sounded pretty much like football in the snow, but Oliver assured me that it was wonderful.
The grounds were dotted with the melting remains of what appeared to have been about a dozen massive snowmen. Oliver said happily that it has been fourteen years since the Snow Olympics have been held, because there has just not been enough snow, and what brilliant good fortune he has had to have been at Aysgarth at a time when there was. We agreed, and asked about lessons, which made him look a bit vague, and he said guardedly that he was sure they were all right.
Lucy’s school had laid on a lunch for parents, for which we arrived too late because of collecting Oliver. We went straight into the meetings with teachers, pausing to help ourselves to school coffee on our way.
Parents’ meetings with Lucy’s teachers are invariably a bit dull, as smiling teacher after smiling teacher tells us that she is a perfect pupil and a delight to have in the class. I enlivened this by scowling at her threateningly, in the manner of a Concerned Parent, making teachers anxious to reassure me again how perfect she was, and making her kick me under the table.
It turned out that the subject at which she had excelled was axe-throwing, somewhat to our surprise. I had not recalled that Queen Margaret’s had included such subjects in their admittedly varied curriculum, even for sixth formers. Lucy assured me that they only did it on Sundays, and that they only threw the axes at targets, not at first years or anything, but it was a surprise nevertheless. Schools are definitely not what they were in my day.
Nan and Grandad had got to wait at home for somebody to look at their blown-down fence, and so they did not meet us at the pub for lunch, but in a moment of joyous recklessness we decided that we would go anyway. We had a very happy hour of telling stories and catching up with one another over a glass of wine and huge helpings of dinner.
We needed a little sleep in the car park afterwards.
I did not at all want to come to work later.
