achoo

I think I caught my friend Juli­a’s cold. At least, I sneezed about three hun­dred times while mak­ing Avery’s break­fast and, as well, drove to school in what seemed like a fog, although it’s a beau­ti­ful sun­ny day. Could our hug­ging and kiss­ing and shar­ing lunch have con­tributed to this sit­u­a­tion? Per­haps. I got to the car this morn­ing to find it near­ly buried under a lor­ry full of scaf­fold­ing equip­ment and lots of cheer­ful Irish dudes unpack­ing their wares, swing­ing boards and rods and what­not with aban­don over our dear con­vert­ible. Then just as I pulled cau­tious­ly out of the park­ing spot, a vagabond taxi and a marathon run­ner came out of nowhere, but I did not hit them. Then there was anoth­er scaf­fold­ing lor­ry parked oppo­site our lit­tle road, which I neat­ly avoid­ed, only to be near­ly run down by an enor­mous vin­tage Bent­ley and a motor­cy­cle. Whew, I was glad to drop Avery off and get home safe­ly and now I think I will drink an enor­mous glass of Lem­sip and do some laundry.

Avery had a mar­velous time at West­on­birt yes­ter­day, for what was tout­ed as a “Sci­ence Chal­lenge” but actu­al­ly sound­ed much more like a cross between a mur­der mys­tery week­end and a pro­longed pic­nic. It’s a school to which I was all pre­pared to send her, aban­don Lon­don and move to the Cotswolds, she could ride every day, the house is gor­geous, and the food not to be despised… but it’s a board­ing school, it turns out. Shoot. Not even for a pony will she go to board­ing school and I don’t blame her. But it is a beau­ti­ful spot. The four of us par­ents stood around in Padding­ton Sta­tion last night, amid clouds of what we could only think was diesel fuel pol­lu­tion, watch­ing all the hap­less com­muters, wait­ing for our lit­tle dar­lings. What an inter­est­ing group of peo­ple: Ital­ian Vic­to­ria, wait­ing for her lit­tle Jamie, Ger­man Claus stern­ly inquir­ing why the train was four min­utes late, wait­ing for Sophia, and Eng­lish rose Ali­son, wear­ing sev­er­al pieces of jew­el­ry of her own design and tap­ping her fin­gers impa­tient­ly for Coco. And there I was, a nice girl from Indi­ana… sneez­ing. Wish me luck.