We have got the forecast rain.
This is a very sad thing for visitors, who are splashing around hopefully trying to catch an impossible glimpse of the mountains through a thick quilt of impenetrable grey fog.
We lurked in bed until lunchtime. We could do this because Number Two Daughter is still in a muddle about time zones, and she got up at six to take the dogs for a walk. This kindly act meant that we could stay asleep instead of being startled into untimely wakefulness by having wet noses poked into our ears when the dogs got desperate to pay an early visit to the garden.
In the end we finally emerged late but refreshed, to dash about organising picnics for us and junk food for the children before dashing back off out to work.
The children have been left in charge. Number Two Daughter has buzzed off to Manchester for a couple of days, and Lucy and Oliver have been left at home with a list of instructions about washing up and emptying dogs and tidying things up which I imagine they will probably largely ignore, if they were paying any attention in the first place.
They have both got lots of prep, and they are supposed to be getting on with it. Oliver has got to practise his flute, on which he can now play four notes, in any combination he likes. As well as this he has got to learn his six times table, and Lucy has got to understand enzymes.
I am sympathetic but nevertheless they are on their own to get it done, as we have still got a long haul before Easter is over and we will be able to sit around the kitchen drinking coffee and being interested in children again. At the moment we have got to just sleep, eat and leave, like vagrants in a Salvation Army hostel.
Of course I do not at all mind this, this is the way we manage to make the nice things in life happen, and it isn’t as if we were breaking rocks or lifting packing cases. So far today the worst thing I have had to do is not be rude to a very young Chinese couple with a new baby and a ridiculously complicated pushchair which they had clearly purchased without thinking to read and save the instructions, we were all soaked by the time they finally managed to dismantle it and put it in the boot.
I am not terribly patient and so when we got to the other end I just dumped the whole lot out on to the pavement, where I left them in the rain helplessly trying to work out how it might be pieced back together instead of abandoning it as dreadful junk and just carrying the baby, which is what I would have done.
It is still terribly busy here, and I have been fully occupied trying not to run people over, because of course being on holiday in the Lake District is a bit like visiting Disneyland. People are wandering about happily all over the place looking at interesting things and feeling contented. They have got no idea that the roads are packed with thoughtlessly hasty taxi drivers all of whom have spent the entire winter doing three-point-turns anywhere they felt like and driving across the middle of the roundabouts, and not bothering with indicators at all because everybody knows where they are going anyway.
I like the visitor season. It is lovely to have customers who want to make happy conversation in taxis, instead of the winter impoverished local grumblings about road repairs and pubs being closed and taxis being ridiculously overpriced anyway.
I have been chatting to nice customers tonight, all of whom have told me how lucky I am to live in such a marvellous place, and all of whom have benefited from my rich supply of local knowledge, some of which I have made up anyway, Number Two Daughter used to tell credulous Americans the little-known local gem that the area achieved its renown because of Beatrix Potter being Harry Potter’s grandmother.
It is splendid to have got through the winter. Another one survived and we are still here.
Hurrah.
