Three days

I’m catching up the blog nearly a week late and I’m on a bus to the airport--I’m struggling to remember what I did over the past week.
Of Mon-Weds, the highlight was Wednesday, when I went to visit Marshall in his new apartment. He is quite settled in and it is a lovely fit for him. Then we visited our new neighbours--Marshall’s replacements. Tom is a pilot with FlyBe, Joanne is planning to go to school to do a radiology degree, and baby Niamh is as cute as a button--big blue eyes and very smiley. They have a lot of work to do to update Marshall’s house, similar to us when we bought our house. People on our street tend to stay in their houses about 30 years so, by the time they leave, they haven’t necessarily kept up with the times.

In the evening, I went for a walk with Ann O’Dwyer, who is always full of chat. We spoke mostly about her son Jack, who just did his A levels. Jack is brilliant and is very interested in political science. He had an offer of three As to go to Oxford. It is very difficult to get an offer from Oxford (tests, interviews) and he got one and had his heart set on going. His mother warned him all summer that he wasn’t working hard enough on his A levels. He insisted he was. However. Mum is always right. He got an A and two Bs and will not be going to Oxford. A very dejected Jack will be going to Lancaster.

Ann is handling it all very well, unlike her son and her husband, both of whom are in shock. Ann failed all of her A levels, so she’s had to deal with Plan B adjustments. She is one of the most down-to-earth people I know--she travels to Pakistan, Romania, Nicaragua to work as an accountant for charities that need audits. She won’t accept payment, just expenses. One of the things she likes about Lancaster vs. Oxford is Oxford students aren’t allowed to have a job. She wants Jack to work through school.

She saw that he wasn’t getting the work done for his A levels, which means he wouldn’t have survived at Oxford. So it’s all for the best in her book. Maybe some day Jack will see that too.
9-4,5,6