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To my surprise I woke up this morning without a hangover, but to the sound of my father banging a gong to encourage us to feel interested in getting up for breakfast and not at all interested in staying in bed listening to a gong being banged.

We stayed at my parents’ house last night after our exciting party, which was nice, because when we got back they wanted to hear all about it, so we got chance to tell the stories and laugh again at the entertaining bits and spread the scandalous bits a bit further. It is nice to have people to tell things to, it puts the finishing touch to an adventure. We had cups of tea and kicked our shoes off, and when we finally crawled into their crisp spare-room bed, I slept as if I might never get the opportunity again.

We were very tempted to spend the whole day there after breakfast, because it was a day called Whit Friday, and the place where they live has a plethora of brass band contests. I like brass bands very much indeed, I think they make the most pleasing rounded sensible sort of musical noise, and I would have very much liked to hang about and listen to them.

However the contest didn’t start until the late afternoon, and after a short time agonising about it, guilt drove us homewards instead. We had left Lucy staying with her friend in Ullswater, and we had inadvertently left the dog with her, which must have been a bit of a surprise for her friend’s father when he came to pick them up after we had set off. We thought probably he wouldn’t mind too much, as their dog likes ours very much, but since there wasn’t much we could do about it we did absolutely nothing at all and just hoped that his kindly nature would mean that he didn’t get too grumpy about it.

We had got a bit of spare time, as it happened, and we went for a look round Pooley Bridge at the top end of Ullswater, which is quite nice in a Lake District sort of way, there was an exhibition of Local Art on in the village hall, which was quite enchanting really. There were people who looked as if they might attend the Womens’ Institute safeguarding the door, and several village hall tables laden with pictures, almost all of which were of the lake, in acrylics and watercolours and pencils and every conceivable medium and every conceivable mood and season.

I am not much interested in pictures of lakes, on account of spending most of my life looking at the original which is at the side of the taxi rank. My taste in art includes cityscapes and rascally people in bars and almost anything in really bright colours, and I even have a weakness for the sort of pictures that you buy in Blackpool, which look as if they are moving about when you wag your head from side to side: although I wouldn’t ever admit it, but all of which were in short supply anyway. In the end we didn’t buy anything, but we did have a walk down to the bridge and gazed up the lake at the mountains, which was nice. We collected Lucy and the dog then, who had had a good time but were very pleased to see us: and we set off home.

I can’t describe how very nice it was to get home.

We suddenly realised that we were absolutely aching with tiredness, from visitors and adventures and journeys and a week of doing things.

We were supposed to be going to go to work once we got in, but we didn’t do that at all. We got some washing on, and unpacked our things, and tidied up from where we dashed off out in a rush, and put some clean sheets on the bed. Then we spent the last of our money buying a takeaway from the Indian restaurant across the road and ate it in whilst watching a DVD from LoveFilm about an ingenious con artist: which was brilliant, because we didn’t need to talk at all, or be polite, or make sure that anybody else was having a nice time: and then we took the dog for a last amble round the Library Gardens, and now we are going to go to bed.

It is lovely to be in our own quiet house. There really is absolutely no place like it.