We woke up this morning to a hurricane-free world.
When we emptied the dogs we thought how glad we were that we had avoided the trees in the Library Gardens, because the path was littered with branches, some of which were quite big enough to give you a very nasty headache.
Life has become tranquil again.
We were pleased about this. It was nice to be able to turn our attention to things other than the apocalypse.
As we walked around the debris-strewn landscape I explained to Mark that I was feeling weary in spirit and in need of something encouraging.
We considered this, and decided that although we couldn’t afford any immediate encouragingly nice things, we could perhaps manufacture some of our own.
We agreed that it would be splendid to go out for a meal, and to sit in Cafe Italia sipping wine and eating more than we should. This, however, is rather outside our current budget because of the car insurance.
I thought that I might compensate for this misfortune by doing some cooking, and then we would have nice things in the fridge at home, and could pretend we were eating our taxi picnic in Cafe Italia.
We both liked this idea very much.
We shut the dogs in the house and went to spend our limited budget.
We are fortunate in Windermere in having a large cash-and-carry in the middle of the village, less than two minutes’ walk from our house. It sells absolutely everything, and all of the hotels shop there. If you are in almost any Lake District hotel or restaurant, spearing olives with a cocktail stick whilst you wait for your meal, there is a fairly good chance that olives, cocktail sticks and most of the ingredients of your meal will have come from the cash and carry in Windermere.
This meant that there was absolutely nothing whatsoever, except possibly lack of natural talent, stopping us from eating just as well at home as we would in any hotel.
We spent ages wandering round, fascinated by buckets of mayonnaise and catering packs of soap powder which were almost as tall as me.
There was a large green grocery section, which smelled splendid, and shelves and shelves of the little sachets of coffee that you get in hotel rooms. There were herbs and seeds and nuts and spices and every kind of flour and huge tubs of chutney and dried fruits, and every ingredient for every chef’s speciality between here and Coniston.
We resolved to save up hundreds of pounds and go and stock up for the next zombie apocalypse, but in the end we bought sesame seeds and Worcester sauce, and I went off home to cook.
I boiled the grapes and some apples and put them to strain to make jelly. I mixed eggs and prawns and sesame oil and made prawn toast. Then I fried chicken and potatoes in butter and garlic to eat cold for picnics with home-made mayonnaise.
This took me a lot of the day, because of the clearing up that goes with cooking, and there was a lot of it, and one thing that a chef has that I don’t is a kitchen porter.
Despite this it was entirely worth it when I had finished.
We have got exotically cheering things to eat, and indeed, having now had an evening in my taxi, am feeling pleasantly replete. It is wonderful to eat well.
We are now on the taxi rank. We are trying to earn enough money to go and get the children from school at the end of the week.
We have had a stroke of good fortune with this, because I was quite convinced that we had got to go and get Oliver tomorrow, and then by a lucky chance of fate I looked in the diary this morning and realised that it was not until the day after.
This was fortunate indeed. Regular readers will know that it would not be the first time that I have turned up on the wrong day.
It is splendid news in several ways, not least because it gives us a couple of nights at work to earn the necessary fuel-and-dinner money, but also because it means that Lucy finishes the day after Oliver, and not a couple of days later as I had thought.
Under these circumstances we can go down and do the whole lot all in one hit. We can collect Oliver on Thursday, stay overnight in the camper van and turn up for Lucy on Friday.
We are going to have a Nice Thing then, because we are meeting Nan and Grandad for lunch.
No matter how lovely it is to have cooked a fridge full of our favourite things to eat, somehow there is something splendid about a chap with a napkin over his arm bringing you dinner, with extra mayonnaise and chips.
I am looking forward to it very much indeed.
