The Escher car park

Last Friday, we went with Pascoe and Sophie to see Chekov’s The Seagull at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

Running low on time, we decided to use a disastrously expensive carpark nearby.  For the price we paid we expected the full service – we should be able to:-

1.      Park the car

2.      Find it still there when we returned

3.      Drive away

The play was excellent – strong performances, atmospheric setting.  We didn’t worry about the car - not with the amount that carpark was costing!

We came out and found the carpark had indeed fulfilled the first two of its three functions. We paid at the machine, emitting a communal gasp as we read the tariff.

But the way we had come in was now shut off with a temporary barrier.  ‘Use other exit.’

‘Where is other exit?’

Pascoe set off on a drive round the carpark, only to arrive back again at the temporary barrier.  He set off once more and after following exit signs more attentively, we still arrived there again. 

We began to wonder if the carpark had been designed by Escher.

Or whether Kafka had written the signage.

We must be missing something in the rain and darkness.

Pascoe set off again, with us all chipping in whenever we spotted a sign, and eventually, by a very circuitous route, we reached the barrier.

But it wouldn’t let us out.  It gave the error message ‘No payment possible.’

‘But we already paid.  Oh boy, did we already pay!’

Pascoe backed out and drove towards the other barrier. This one charged us a further £8 before it would let us out, no doubt a charge racked up for the pleasure of driving round and round a dark wet carpark when all we wanted was to get home.

‘I shall never use that carpark again,’ said Pascoe.

And let us hope he never does!

Hit over the head with a rubber hammer

Following his emergency operation, Pascoe is making a steady recovery – I speak to him on the phone and am reassured.

He said ‘I can’t wait for the training montage to start.’  I imagine a clip from the ‘Rocky’ movies.

I, on the other hand, have felt like I’d been hit over the head with a rubber hammer. 

There was one week where Carenza had given up a week’s holiday in France to nurse Pascoe in Edinburgh and I was off-duty in St Albans.  I was so grateful for her selflessness, but it also felt very wrong not being there.

I distracted myself with some undemanding household tasks.  I took up some winter trousers, but when I looked at them afterwards was puzzled by my approach – are asymmetric trousers in fashion this Autumn?  What had I been thinking?

The only thing which went well was making forty jars of various chutneys.  I have been doing this for nearly four decades, so auto-pilot kicked in.  Okay, so my mild apple chutney is much hotter than my hot apple chutney this year, but apart from that, all is well.

So when I think of that week when I was good for nothing, at least I was good for chutney.

A Proud Day

Just like with every PhD, there were moments when Pascoe, and even Nigel and I, thought the end would never come.  Around the end, progress slowed to a very slow sloth crawling up a steep tree bough in a leisurely fashion.

But finally on Saturday, graduation day had arrived and to cap it all, the letter appointing Pascoe senior scientist at a biotech start-up arrived through his door at about the same moment we did.  So we were all in ebullient mood.

The firm which was hiring out the academic gowns for the ceremony clearly had a plan – a very tight route from the hire-stand into McKewan Hall for the ceremony and then straight back out to the stand again.  

But Pascoe reasoned that he had paid good money for the hire and was going to take his robes out for a spin.

We processed through Edinburgh Christmas market where I had been drawn to the twinkly lights like a consumerist moth, and then as the cold rain grew heavier, into the National Gallery of Scotland where Pascoe posed with the great art. 

It was a lovely experience as a number of strangers congratulated him and stopped for a chat. 

And Pascoe certainly got the value out of his robes.

New nests

In the last couple of months, all of my children have moved house into proper civilised flats. Still rentals rather than the distant glittering dream of a mortgage. But definitely smarter than in the past. 

It seems like just yesterday we were dragging new bedding into university halls of residence (or not, in the case of Carenza who forgot hers).  I had a really bad back at that point, so while Nigel hauled a massive suitcase of clothes I would carry a pack of paperclips.

Perhaps because of such past uselessness, none of the children involved me in their move this time.

It felt weird.

 

I wanted to see where they were living.  Help them settle in.  It is a basic Mum function. 

At a very primitive level, I have a need to interfere with their interior design.

I have now managed to blag my way into Perran and Carenza’s flat, and mighty fine it is.  I think they wanted to hold off until it was perfect – being new householders, they don’t realise yet that it will never be perfect. But I was still impressed.

And I have a ticket to go to Edinburgh in November. Pascoe thinks I am coming to see him, but in fact, it is his flat that I am interested in.

On Skype, Pascoe tells me he has been enjoying watching the antlike continuous parade of new Edinburgh students entering Wilkinsons and leaving with an armful of essentials which ALWAYS includes a clothes airer.

“That was us once,” I say.