I spent the morning with John in his office, learning to use his Windows word processing programme. Linda and I borrowed Sally’s car and went into town for an hour, then we went back to the house and had lunch.
In the afternoon, we went with Sally over to Matthew’s school, Hawtreys, in the Savernake Forest. I drove and we crossed the pretty Marlborough Downs, south of Swindon, and passed through the town of Marlborough before entering the long, straight road that runs through the dappled glades of the forest.
Watching cricket on the grounds of the school, while ravens wheeled about the ramparts of the imposing school building, was like being part of some television commercial for farm-baked cookies. We sat with a group of mothers who chatted about their sons, where they were going for their summer holidays—France, Italy, etc.—and how useless the Board of Governors were. When we left Hawtreys, after a cup of tea and sandwiches on the balcony of the school, we drove over to Calne, past the mysterious Silbury Hill and Iron Age Fort, to the girl’s school where we squeezed Emma, Caroline and a friend of theirs into the car with the three of us for the trip back to Lydiard Millicent.
CurseOfTheTraveller 