The bank holiday weekend is upon us.
It is rather quieter than usual, probably due to the ghastly weather forecasts. These seem to be an attempt on behalf of the BBC to persuade the population of the U.K. that it would be a good idea to stay in Europe in order that we have got somewhere else to go on holiday in weather emergencies, without the need to spend three weeks applying for a visa first.
I would very much like to be going somewhere else for my holidays today, and am feeling the injustice of not having won the lottery again and being obliged to shiver in Windermere’s icy April blast. It has snowed here on and off for the last few days and I am not enjoying it. I am actually wearing a woolly vest as I write, and Number Two Daughter has given in to temptation and blown half of her savings to buzz off skiing in Scotland.
It has been so quiet that we did not work last night. We had spent the night before sitting on a dark taxi rank, looking out bleakly at the falling snow, so last night we did what everybody else was doing, and stayed in and ate pasta and watched a film in front of a stoked-up fire.
Both of these things were rather splendid activities. The pasta had novelty value due to being cooked in a pesto sauce that we bought on a curious impulse in Hotel Chocolat in York.
I have never had chicken pasta cooked in chocolate pesto before, and it was an interesting and not at all unpleasant experience. We both thought that it was very nice but probably not eight pounds a jar nice, and so we would probably not repeat the experience. I think that it is always worth having a go at these things, we could easily have discovered that pasta could never again be truly enjoyed unless thickly coated in costly chocolate and pine nut splodges.
The film was also interesting, it was about some identical twin gangsters called the Kray Twins, both of them were played by the same actor who did it jolly well. We know some identical twins, and were captivated to see a similar sort of dynamic between the ones in the film, although of course the twins that we know are not at all ruthless blood curdling gangsters but rather jolly and sociable.
We walked around the Library Gardens afterwards and imagined how it would be to have a twin at your side your whole life, probably they started standing shoulder to shoulder confronting the world before they even got to primary school. The film did not go into much detail about them being gangsters, they didn’t seem to have a gang anywhere, although maybe the director was just economising on the extras and we should have just imagined that bit.
We are back at work tonight. Mark has made a light for me out of a little strip of LEDs, so that I can see to read properly in the taxi when it has gone dark. My eyesight is beginning to belong to an elderly lady and does not work as well as it did in the days of my youth.
I have got glasses, but even so have had some miserably frustrating nights trying to squint at small print in a dim light, and have had to give up. I am very pleased indeed to have a splendidly bright light, and the knowledge that I can choose any book I like in the library from now on, even the difficult ones in very small print.
I have started making some new bedroom curtains, and this afternoon to our great joy Lucy arrived home, dropped off by her friend’s parents so that I would not have to drive all the way to York.
It was lovely to see her, she has grown half an inch taller since Easter, and looked happy, if very tired. She told us all about her Mandarin test and her business studies test and about the girls who giggle in the dorm and about the school trip to Flamingo Land last weekend, and then yawned, and said she was goingto go to bed until Monday.
I think that is an excellent idea.
I might try it myself.
