Peter Rabbit Land

Tonight I am too busy to write very much.

This is going to have to be a short entry or I will have to stay up after work writing into the dawn, because there has been no time at all to sit about writing carefully considered prose.

I set out for work at four o’ clock in the afternoon, and it was half past nine before I even managed to look at my computer. After that I have had a couple of minutes here and there, but mostly I have been so completely occupied taking tourists to the places they vaguely think they might have left their guest house I have hardly written a word.

It has been so busy that there were fights on the taxi rank even before it had gone properly dark. The English get very worked up about who is the next person in the queue and there was some disagreement among some people from Liverpool which came to blows when one of them called somebody a rude name: and the police had to stop and sort it out, which made them cross.

It has been a beautiful day. This is a huge relief for everybody, because there are an awful lot of people here: it is dreadful when there the place is full of forlorn visitors, milling hopelessly around looking at endless torrents of freezing rain from underneath their umbrellas.

It is like living backstage at the theatre. Once we eventually dragged ourselves out of bed we spent the day in our quiet little house, hanging washing up in the garden and being busy. It is right in the centre of Windermere, but because it is just a street with houses on it, nobody comes along it except for Japanese tourists, who occasionally like to take pictures of themselves on the doorstep of a quaint English old stone house, sometimes holding a giant stuffed model of Peter Rabbit.

Walking around the corner on to the main road is like stepping into another world. There are crowds and crowds of people, thronging along the road looking at things. The cafes are crowded with contented people lolling in the sunshine. The shops are full of people wondering if they really need their house number carved into a piece of Lakeland slate to take home with them. You have arrived in the Lake District Theme Park, with Peter Rabbit as your host.

On sunny days there is nowhere lovelier, and everybody who gets in the taxi tells me what a perfect life I must have, because obviously their lives would be perfect as well if only they lived next to a lake. I like living next to a lake, but do not agree that this makes everybody into naturally cheery souls whose lives are tranquil and bucolic. I think people might be confusing us with Disneyland.

All the same, I think we have a jolly good life, and living in the staff quarters of the Lake District Theme Park probably helps.

I am going to stop writing here, because I keep getting distracted by customers, and this has taken me ages.

I took the picture in our garden this morning.