Returning from holiday is always a deeply humbling experience.
One minute you are reclining somewhere pleasant, feeling effortlessly European and wondering whether a second breakfast is strictly necessary. The next, you are standing in your own kitchen surrounded by laundry, deliveries and a suitcase that appears to have produced an entire extra family.
Monday was dedicated to parcels.
My wonderful cousin stays at our London home while we are away. In exchange for free digs, she collects the deliveries that arrive for McIntosh, which means that when I return, I can get your orders packed and sent out at once.
It is an elegant system. She gets a lovely place to stay. I get a fully operational parcel department. The customers get their orders. Everybody wins, darling.
So I spent the whole of Monday packing. Boxes, packages, labels, tape, more boxes, and that one mysterious parcel which always appears from nowhere just as you think you have finished.
By the end of the day, every single order was out.
All of them. In one day.
I have never been prouder. I considered awarding myself a trophy, but then remembered that I would have to find somewhere to put it, and the house was already occupied by Laundry Mountain.
Dr Thomas had taken the day off to face it.
There were towels. There were sheets. There were clothes that had clearly enjoyed holiday more than any of us. I used to work at the UK Good Housekeeping Institute and, many years ago, Sandi Toksvig apparently met “James, the man in charge of stain removal.”
Say no more.
No more at all.
Except that, while I was surrounded by boxes and labels, Dr Thomas was engaged in a highly personal battle with sand having travelled home. We all have our gifts.
In the afternoon, he took my cousin to the Horniman Museum in leafy Sydenham. There was botany, animals, evolution and all sorts of fascinating things that make you lean in and say, “Well, that is certainly something.”
This was excellent timing because it gave me the space to finish the parcel operation without anyone having to step over a roll of packing tape or ask where the scissors had gone.
The following day, it was time to thank my cousin properly for her sterling service to the McIntosh logistics empire.
She chose lunch at Harvey Nichols, fifth floor.
Of course she did.
I had not been for years. We wandered through the womenswear, where I enjoyed an entirely reasonable amount of admiration for things I could not possibly justify buying. The menswear was rather limited, which was probably for the best. A man can only make so many emotional decisions in front of a jacket.
Then we took the lift to the fifth floor for lunch.
The décor was fabulous. Gloriously fabulous. It felt as though the 1990s had looked around, decided that they were absolutely perfect, and simply refused to move out. We had a lovely lunch, a good look around, and then returned home feeling as though we had accidentally become society.
And that, my dears, was our return from holiday: one extraordinary day of parcels, one valiant assault on a mountain of washing, a museum full of curious wonders, and a little fifth-floor glamour to restore the soul.
Normal service has now resumed. More or less.
With love,
James
