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In the end we camped in a quiet layby at the side of a river.

We were warm and tired and happy, and would have gone to bed for a contented post-wedding cuddle, except for a small excitement when Mark relit the gas fire just before we went to bed and it had a minor explosion, which was loud and surprising. This terrified the dog, who dived under the quilt in between the two of us, and stayed there, trembling, for ages. Eventually he got so suffocatingly hot he had to crawl out at the bottom end, where he lay at our feet gasping, presumably shielded by our toes from alarming bangs and other perils. We had been sympathetic towards his concern; it had been a particularly alarming sort of gas pop, but nevertheless we were relieved about this outcome because he takes up a great deal of room and it would have been nice to have had a cuddle.

It seemed we had chosen a layby underneath the treetop home of a fairly conversational screech owl, which I liked and which made Mark grumble. It punctuated the quiet night on and off until eventually the first blackbirds began calling to each other. It was such a nice thing, to lie there warm and wrapped up in sleep, and listening to the early stirrings of life outside. When we woke up we had a cup of coffee in bed with the curtains open, and saw a moorhen paddling down the river bank, and felt happy to be there.

Of course we couldn’t hang about, the reason for leaving the party and the holiday and not just going off to Blackpool to have a small riot was that the Lake District is very busy at Easter. It was rather urgently necessary for pecuniary reasons that we headed back and got down to the serious business of exploiting the tourist trade.

We got home and unloaded the camper reluctantly. This almost turned into a bit of a disaster, actually, because once it was all unpacked Mark took it off to the farm to leave it there, and during his last minute check round to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything he discovered that actually we had, as the dog was out cold on the back seat, no doubt sleeping off his night of wakeful bang-anxiety. He rescued him and brought him home in the car, but he wished he hadn’t bothered, because halfway back the the dog was ungratefully sick all over the front seat which had to be cleaned up before we could go out to work.

We promised ourselves that if we make a fortune in the next few days we will immediately reload it and buzz off again, but we don’t know how possible this will turn out to be, because of course I have enthusiastically invited all sorts of people to have dinner with us next week at various times, which will be ace but we can hardly decide that we aren’t in the mood any more and just buzz off on holiday instead, and quite apart from that there is the ever-present need to earn some money.

So that is what we did. We left the children in charge of walking the dog and hanging out the washing, and fulfilled our parental responsibilities by leaving them a family pack of crisps and some cash to go to Greggs for lunch, warned them we were off for ages, and headed off in search of income.

Windermere was packed. Really packed, which was wonderful, people all over the place. My heart went out to anybody trying to park their car, it was a complete impossibility, because absolutely everywhere was bursting with people. This is an absolute joy after the tumbleweed streets of the winter, also tourists are usually feeling cheerful and tip well.

We had a very pleasant sunny afternoon on the taxi rank, actually, watching tourists milling past, and speculating about their lives, catching up with the progress of Richard’s beard-growing project and hearing the latest update about his daughter who is – thrillingly – appearing in a West End musical called Memphis. This gives all of us a little link into the big wide world, and we hang on to the news of her with huge satisfaction, one of our own doing well.

So it was a nice day. Not a holiday, but there are worse ways to earn a living than driving round the Lake District, even if it is a bit slowly at the moment.

And maybe next week we will go away again.