Tranquillity

I am getting to the stage of the bank holiday when I am finding it hard to maintain an attitude of serene benevolence towards the rest of the human race.

I think even the Dalai Lama would find it hard not to swear and clench his teeth were I to have employed him as weekend cover this week.

Windermere is a large village which has suddenly gained thirty thousand extra cars, all of which are driving slowly round and round in anxious circles, looking desperately for familiar landmarks, because they are lost, or have forgotten where their hotel is, or have made a telephone booking at a restaurant and forgotten to ask for directions, or simply because it hasn’t occurred to them to look for the lake at the bottom of the hill.

This makes for frustrating travelling.

I inadvertently shouted at some Japanese tourists yesterday. It was completely accidental, and I was astonished when I realised that I had done it. It was three young women, who were standing in the middle of the road on the roundabout, smiling helplessly at the oncoming traffic, shifting from foot to foot uneasily, and completely unable to decide on the correct protocol for what to do next.

I leaned out of the window and yelled: “For goodness’ sake get out of the bloody road!”

I could hardly believe it when I heard myself, I had got customers in the back and there I was bellowing like the playground supervisor at a boys’ reform school. The Japanese scurried away, and I was entirely embarrassed at myself, although not as embarrassed as I suppose I would have been had I run them over, so it could have been worse.

It is a bit like that at the moment. Today started off with a visit from a delightfully friendly copper to take a statement about one of last night’s idiots, except there are so many idiots around that he had to stop halfway through and go off somewhere else, promising, wearily, that he would call again some other time, probably when the bank holiday is over.

He was a new copper, not new to the job but new to Windermere, because the local coppers all seem to have taken mass retirement this year, and are to be seen around the village supplementing their pensions in surprising new roles here and there, driving tour buses and crewing on the steamers. One of them saw me driving whilst talking on my mobile phone the other day, (which I am aware is very naughty, etc. etc. all comments on the topic will be ignored) and there was a wonderful moment of paralysis when our eyes met and we both realised that he couldn’t do anything about it, and I smiled cheerily and he scowled, and we both knew that the matter was concluded for ever.

The new coppers are settling into the job nicely, though, they have quite quickly grasped the skill of rushing up at the last minute and parking on the taxi rank just in time to dash into the pasty shop for the end of the day reduced-price sales. In fact I could say that they are already as good at this as any taxi driver, it must be the special police training.

This morning’s copper wrote down half a statement and dashed off for another exercise in idiot supervision, observing on his way out that at least he wasn’t doing nights. I had considerable sympathy with that statement since I am doing nights and have begun to wonder if they are putting crack cocaine into the pizzas at the kebab shop.

One of the things that I like very much about my job is that over the years it has taught me supreme indifference to idiots. As long as I have been sufficiently astute to get cash up front I am completely untroubled about anything else. When it comes to thick skin, mine would make rhinoceros hide resemble a net curtain. This is an enormously useful attribute, because people who are too drunk to walk are, regrettably, almost invariably idiots.

In fact I don’t mind this at all. I don’t mind any of it at all. There is some entertainment to be had in eavesdropping on other people’s interesting arguments in the back, although at times it can be hard not to join in. Everybody, almost without fail, asks me if I have been busy, the answer to which has always got to be ‘no’, despite all the evidence to the contrary, such as them having to wait for an hour for their taxi: because an affirmative would rather obviously indicate the presence of the large sack of cash jammed with difficulty under the driver’s seat. I have been the recipient of some interestingly obscene propositions, occasionally accompanied by visual aids, and other people’s surprising opinions are always worth listening to, like the chap yesterday who went on at some length about how the council should put a fence all the way around the lake every night (it is ten miles long) and take it down in the mornings, in order to prevent fatalities amongst drunk people. This was surprising, simply because it had not occurred to me that the council might wish to prevent fatalities amongst drunk people, who very probably come into the Swallows And Amazons category of being duffers.

My best tourism story of the day is not my own, it comes from an assistant in one of the more glamorous boutiques near the lakeshore whom I took home after work. She told me about a middle aged, well dressed lady who came into the boutique today, hesitated for a moment, and then broke wind noisily and malodorously, smiled beatifically at everybody, and left.

Last day tomorrow.