This might turn into a short post this evening because I am having a very late start.
I have been over to York to take Lucy back to school.
It was an ace drive, because the gypsies are here again.
This is one of my favourite things in the year. I love to see them straggling peacefully along the side of the road, it is a small glance into another world.
They are beginning to arrive in earnest for Appleby Fair this week. This is magnificent, because as well as the usual caravan and pick up trucks and the other gypsy travelling arrangements, there are dozens of the old-fashioned vardos, gorgeously painted and in all sorts of styles. There were bowtops and showman vans, open and painted and canvassed. I slowed down so much to look that I annoyed everybody behind me, but it was so interesting I could have looked all day.
The gypsies were in the full flood of reunions, waving and laughing and shouting to one another, and clustering around little campfires with blackened kettles swinging from the fire irons.There were older men in waistcoats and fedoras, contentedly planted in deckchairs, and little girls, skipping in brilliantly coloured dresses with enormous hair ribbons.
Up and down the road sunburned young men and boys were racing one another in sulkie carts. Half a dozen carts and horses waited patiently outside the pub, and there were police everywhere. I didn’t see any women, although I thought that there must be some of them somewhere, because several of the wagons had lines of washing flapping in the sunshine outside them.
Lucy shook her head and took her earphones out to roll her eyes, so I made her take a photograph, which is at the top. She was cynical about my romantic daydreams, and pointed out that I am far too high maintenance to be a gypsy, and that no matter how hard I looked I wouldn’t see a single one drinking cabernet sauvignon out of a crystal glass.
She was right about that.
She put her earphones back in and ignored me for the rest of the journey. I told Mark about it when I got back, and we thought perhaps we might go up on Friday. He has bought horses at Appleby Fair before now, which I think is very brave, I am not sure that I would like to try and haggle with the gypsies.
We are not buying a horse now, because we haven’t got time to weed the allotment, never mind look after a horse, but we thought that perhaps when we get old we could live in a field and build our own wagon, and keep horses. This might have to be somewhere with less rain. I like this idea for my retirement, it sounds like more fun than some dreadful Home for the Elderly.
I am on the taxi rank now, we are going to go home soon. Number One Daughter has done brilliantly well in her competition and her team came tenth. This is jolly good because every single team is made up of people who are bulging enormous muscles out of every inch of them.
Regrettably it turned out that they had absent-mindedly parked their car on the taxi rank and it had been towed away whilst Number One Daughter was competing, but apart from that it was a good day. This would not have mattered if it had been their car, which is an exhausted old wreck and could just have been abandoned, but it was a hired car so they have got to go and pay to get it back. I felt very sorry for them and only laughed a little bit.
Mark has spent all of the day in bed asleep and just came out to work this evening. He is not exactly better, but he is less white and unhappy than he was, so that is good news, and with any luck the doctor will let us go and see him tomorrow.
I will let you know what happens.
