I didn’t feel very well when I woke up this morning, which I thought perhaps might be because I drank too much restorative coffee whilst I was worried yesterday.
Mark laughed and made me another one, which helped, and I didn’t have a school run today so we had a very nice leisurely start.
It was lovely to get up to a very tidy house, and a fridge full of left over shepherd’s pie, which will last us for ages, and salmon mousse, which we put on sandwiches with salad and home made mayonnaise and creamy Lancashire cheese to take to work, it made me into an insufferably smug person for a while.
Everything felt clean and warm and we had had a brilliant evening. It is a joy to be at the stage in life when one can genuinely look forward to, and then entirely enjoy, an evening with four over-seventies, who make wonderfully entertaining company, what a lot I missed in my cynical youth. We were sorry to end the night when they finally thought they might be starting to prefer Horlicks and duvets to red wine and carousing.
My parents had brought me a gorgeous scented shrub for a present, with tiny starry white flowers and a fresh, floaty scent. We put it on the newly-rebuilt new kitchen windowsill last night before we went to bed, and this morning we could smell it as we came downstairs, you are supposed to plant them outside but I don’t think I will for a bit because it smells so nice in the house.
They called in for a farewell coffee before they went off to Hawkshead this morning, and then we went off to work, and happily my first job was to take a friendly Indian family to Grasmere.
They had two teenage daughters, whom they nagged about their behaviour for the entire journey, and it was rather satisfying to observe that their daughters ignored them as thoroughly as mine have always ignored me when it is quite obvious that I know best. I had to wait for them in Grasmere and they wandered about looking at places where the daffodils had been a month or two ago, and contemplating Wordsworth whilst their daughters rolled their eyes and yawned and turned the volume up on their iPods.
This was a very nice job because it meant I could just sit around under the trees in Grasmere, which is very tranquil and beautiful, reading my book and listening to the birds and gazing philosophically at the mountains, without the remotest guilt and without being interrupted by anybody. I am quite certain that I had a much nicer time than the Indians did, apart from anything else I wasn’t trying to engage the interest of bored teenagers who had about as much interest in Wordsworth as I have in hip-hop, and who had never seen a daffodil in any case. By the time they were ready to go the mild headache caused by too much coffee drinking yesterday had completely gone and I felt splendidly calm and at peace with the world
We are having more visitors coming next week, which is what happens when you live in the Lake District in the summer. These friends are coming to stay for a few days. This is really exciting, because they are lovely and I don’t see them nearly as often as I would like to. I have explained to Mark that he will have to get the loft done up before Tuesday, which is when they arrive, because that is where our spare bedroom is, and it needs redecorating. Mark says that it needs re plastering first, because he does make things complicated, so I have told him that in that case he needs to get on with it.
With this in mind I have also been pleased to discover a new and brilliant soap shop just round the corner from the taxi rank. It is not very new, having been there almost a year, but I have only lately gone for a decent look at it because lots of these places pretend to sell nice soaps and are rubbish really, so unless they are jolly well established I usually ignore them. However, this one is very nice, and I went in there the other day for a bit of a poke round and was so impressed I brought Mark and his credit card for a look before our visitors came.
We went to the builders’ merchant first, to encourage him to think about having people to stay and making proper preparations, and it is very handily just over the road from the soap shop. Also this put him in a benevolent frame of mind, and then it helped that the lovely soap shop was gleaming dark oak with white and gold wrapped boxes everywhere, and smelled nice when you went in, and he approves of things that are well done.
I explained that you can’t possibly have visitors unless you have got a nice hand wash, because ours had nearly run out, and it would be positively discourteous to have to shove out some rubbish from Boots: and how happy our guests would be with their visit if they came away full of good dinners and smelling nice as well.
He rolled his eyes but got his wallet out anyway, because he loves me, and in the end we bought some patchouli and black pepper hand wash for the bathroom, and some more for the kitchen, because it would be nice to be coordinated: and then you can’t have hand wash without some squirty moisturiser to go with it, so we bought some for the bathroom and some for the kitchen, and then I thought we might need some more bath soap, because I have got the nice Chanel soap in my bag for swimming, and so we bought some white cedar and pear soap for him and some vanilla noir and amber for me, and felt very excited about them all, they are rich and heavy and smell ace.
I love having visitors. I am quite sure that we would never have smoked salmon mousse or patchouli and black pepper soap if I couldn’t explain to Mark that visitors need all these things.
What it is to be popular.
