18 April

Yesterday turned out to be a peaceful, mellow kind of day, not at all the insane, hurried, tired sort of time I usually associate with going back to school. K and I picked up J from school as normal, and half the school seemed to gravitate to the village green, where they raced around with a final burst of energy, while the Mums sat lazily in the perky April sunshine. We meandered home and packed up the bag with costumes and towels; Tuesday means swimming lessons, something that I actually enjoy, despite the hot and overcrowded changing rooms, the shrieking mothers (“Arabella! Do hurry – it’s violin and clarinet before dinner”) and swarming wet children. I love sitting in the slightly grotty caff afterwards, watching the children gulping hot chocolate, hair plastered to their faces, and becoming insanely overexcited at the thought of the toxic tea that they are allowed on Tuesdays. (It has to be said that I hover greedily over their plates, hoovering up the chips with alacrity).

We drove to the pool with the windows down, the air humming with activity around us. Blossom everywhere, the fields thrusting up their crops from the ground, apparently overnight. Swathes of vivid yellow rape, which I confess to hating from an aesthetic point of view, let alone the fact that it is such a potent allergen. Too bright, too in-your-face for England, I think, and turn with relief to the cowslips already crowding on the verges. How I love those flowers, so much promise in a simple pale plant. “Where the bee sucks, there suck I, in a cowslip’s bell I lie”. Perfect. It’s ten miles to the pool, on the other side of town from our village, a distance I would have thought completely mad before I moved out to the sticks, but which now seems positively local. As we park the car, J watches other children on their bikes, and suddenly announces he wished he lived in the town and could walk or cycle to the pool. K instantly agrees, although she would no doubt agree if he said he wanted to live in Outer Mongolia. They start up a list of things they could do if they lived in the town – walk to the park, visit the toyshops every day, have dinner at Pizza Express every night (? It is apparently free to all urban-dwellers), walk on pavements to school (how deprived they are, walking across the Green!) and so on. I let them carry on, smug in the knowledge that I can stop them in their tracks. “What about the Pub?” I ask casually, playing my trump card. Both fall silent. They adore the pub, scene of towering orange bonfires and golden summer days. “And our house? And all your friends? And the horses in the field at the bottom of the garden? And the wood and the stream?”

Seems I’ve won the argument, although J still wants to cycle to the pool one day. Ten miles, mostly uphill? Fine by me. He’ll be going alone though.