I have just had a most revealing insight into the psyche of our local area.
I woke up this morning to the depressing discovery that several thousand of my neighbours had voted for our incumbent twerp to be an MP yet again: and to the even more revealing discovery that several hundred more had voted to elect a candidate dressed up as a fish finger.
Of the two I think I would have probably preferred Mr. Fishfinger. As far as I could see his policies were just as lucid and well thought through. Also he might at least have had the civility not to refer to his constituents as ‘the good folk of Windermere’ as if we were all characters in an Enid Blyton story about Josie, Click and Bun.
I discovered last year that the feeling is completely mutual. One of our neighbours went to the MP’s surgery to complain about something, and the MP looked at him sympathetically, and said something along the lines of: ‘so you must live next door to that awful taxi driver, then?’
Mark said reassuringly that we should not worry in the least about the result of the election. He said that whether good or bad times were to follow then we would just get on and live as best we could through them. I thought that this was sensible advice, and so I have passed it on here.
We almost went to Appleby Fair today, but did not, because we are broke, and we knew that if we went to the gypsy market we would spend a fortune on glittery tat covered in plastic diamonds. Also we were both longing terribly to rush back to the camper van and carry on making it beautiful.
Of course this is what we did. Mark spent the day building mounts for the seats in the cab, and I painted pictures.
This is much easier when I am on the scaffolding than it is from the ground, because I do not have to keep fending off a pack of interested dogs. It is difficult to paint with fine precision when several dogs are having a fight next to your elbow. I sat on an old tyre and tried to ignore them as much as possible whilst I rubbed out and repainted bits of wheelbarrow for ages and ages.
Just so you know, it is really difficult to paint a wheelbarrow, especially when you are trying to make it look as if it is holding two water heaters which are fixed into the side of a camper van. In the end Mark joined in and told me how I could do it better, because he can do technical drawing things. This made me grimly determined to get it right by myself, and of course I did eventually.
After that we had a cup of tea. We have taken to bringing tea in a flask to sustain us during the day, but we do not spend much time drinking it. This is because the dogs are always hopeful that there might be biscuits, and so the teabreaks are just about the least restful times of the whole day. It is not easy to relax and think tranquil thoughts when surrounded by a pack of hopeful brawling creatures, all perfectly situated at exactly the right height to nudge a cup of hot tea over somebody’s trousers.
After I had got fed up of the wheelbarrow I painted the spider over the top of the cab. This should scare anybody off who thinks they might like to get in and steal it, just as well to incorporate some safety features. Afterwards I moved the scaffolding and painted the cat until we had to drag ourselves reluctantly to work.
We are here now. It is weekend, and we are busily resigning ourselves to the urban life for a couple of days, until we can escape back to our creative activities.
Mark’s sister came down to talk about the wall the other day. We have still not built it. We are feeling guilty about this, but not guilty enough to have done it.
Dont mention the wall.
