I am beginning to get a feel of what people mean when they use the word ‘sweltering’, which is a perfect word for the weather at the moment.
Even the breeze is hot, like the Serengeti. On reflection I have no idea where the Serengeti is, or even actually what it is, but I have got some sort of vague half remembered association with the Serengeti and hot winds, maybe from the children’s DVD of the Lion King or something. Anyway, we have got hot winds that may or may not be like the Serengeti.
In fact we have got hot everything and my poor garden is beginning to fade and droop a little in the wonderful scorching heat. It is marvellously, joyfully, uncomfortably hot, and I am so grateful that I am not going to make even the smallest complaint in case the Weather Gods are listening and take it all away again because of my hopeless ingratitude. Therefore I am going to enjoy it with my whole soul.
It is absolutely brilliant for drying washing, I hung some out this morning and the first bits were well in the way to being dry before I had even finished pegging it all on the line. The dogs are puffing and panting and cheating on their walks. We have discovered that they have taken to hanging about in the shade by the entrance to the Library Gardens whilst Mark and I walk round by ourselves.
They catch up with us just in time for a bit of Good Dog Sausage that they haven’t earned as we get back to the start, and are not bothering at all with charging about and snuffling at things the way that they normally do. This is really rascally and idle, and I think I might have a go at it myself.
I had a hot walk up to the bank this morning, which is only a few hundred yards away from our house, but I was gone so long that in the end Mark came out to check that I hadn’t expired on the pavement or something. Of course I hadn’t, just got delayed in the bank, firstly by idiots who take forever at the counter, and then by hanging about for ages at the counter myself, exchanging gossip and happy observations about the weather which the poor bank staff couldn’t go outside to enjoy.
I once had a real job in the post office, very briefly, during a quiet taxi winter, which lasted until the first sunny day of the year. At this point suddenly it became obvious that the disadvantage to gainful employment is that you can’t just go out in the sunshine whenever you feel like it, at which point I resigned, rather to the relief of the very elderly and grumpy postmaster, who it turned out had been rather hoping that I might push off anyway, especially after the difficulty when I accidentally stood on the emergency panic button whilst over balancing on two legs of my stool. This put the whole of Windermere on high alert, and I was in trouble not so much for doing it, but for laughing at the postmaster’s extreme outrage.
Anyway, sunny days are not for working, unless you count sitting in the sunshine on the taxi rank next to the lake as working, so I faffed about in the house for a bit and made some salad-based picnic, and went to work. I burned my nose when I put on my glasses which I had left on the dashboard of the taxi in the sunshine. It turned out that the salad was a bad idea as Mark ate absolutely all of his in the first half an hour and started complaining that he was starving.
This was because he had been building the camper van at the farm all day, although things had slowed down a bit because of his welder being broken and he had to mend it before he could get on and use it. I don’t see that he needs a welder for exciting things like putting my kitchen in, but he said that he had got to attach the new home made gas tank first. It is very exciting having a new camper van, especially with a home made gas tank and also the hydrogen exploder under the bonnet, fancy living on the edge so thrillingly at my age.
The picture is the clear sky in the Lake District at sunset, just in case you don’t believe me.
