We are home, by which I mean home in an on the taxi rank sort of way, obviously.
A comment on last night’s diary entry has made me realise that I might not have explained myself especially clearly on the topic of prisons and future careers, so I thought that perhaps I might remedy that here.
As you know, over the past few months I have managed to stumble over all of the various hurdles required in order to become a prison officer, and have been offered a job, conditional on my passing all of the security vetting.
I have been being securely vetted for absolutely ages now. I wish they would hurry up. It would be terrible if I suddenly got into trouble at the very last minute and had to be turned down.
The job that I am being offered is in a prison at a place called Haverigg. This is quite a peaceful prison apart from the recent riots.
Haverigg is a tiny village on the coast of Cumbria, to the north and west of Windermere, and about a million miles from anywhere else, except a small coastal town called Millom.
We woke up here this morning.
Haverigg is not far from Windermere, but it is a slow drive along winding country roads. It is my general master plan that once I start work, I will stay in the camper van during the working week. Prison officers work shifts, and although at the moment I haven’t got the first idea what the shift patterns will be, in a perfect world I will be able to work a full week, with as much overtime as I can squeeze in, and then come home. Preferably I will come home at weekends, so that I can drive a taxi, but since prisoners don’t go home at weekends, I don’t suppose that I will manage this all the time.
I am looking forward to this new adventure very much. The camper van is one of my nicest places to be, and with only one person instead of four in it, it is a perfectly adequate space for living very comfortably.
Hence our trip up to Haverigg this week. I wanted to go and look around and work out where I might be able to park, and where I might find water, and generally to look at the world with the eyes of an impending immigrant.
We woke up by the shore again this morning. The wind had dropped, and the day was cool and clear. We dragged our bikes off the back of the camper and went to cycle along the coastal path.
There is a huge seabird-nesting site not far from the path, and the noise was splendid, probably similar to the sort of thing you get used to when you are a teacher. We watched some gulls diving for fish, soaring high above the water, then folding their wings for what must have been a stomach-churning plummet into the cold sea. I wasn’t sure if I was envious or horrified. It might have been nice to try it once, but I am very glad that we have got muesli and Chinese restaurants and Wensleydale cheese, and do not have to dive into swirling waters in search of fish.
We found a deserted lighthouse. The door hinges had broken, and the door was hanging off, so of course we went inside, where we climbed up a couple of alarmingly rusty ladders to gaze contentedly out over the bay.
After that we explored a stone turret and a little headland covered in gorgeously scented hawthorn blossom, and a field occupied by two horses. These lost interest in us when they spotted a white van chugging along the path, presumably bearing horse food of some sort which was more interesting than grass, so we left them to it and set off to cycle back.
Mark had found a broken solar panel in the bottom of the lighthouse, and insisted on going back to retrieve it. He carried it carefully under his arm, which I thought made cycling a bit hazardous, and then fastened it on to the back of the camper van to be transported home and repaired at some time when he is not doing anything else.
We decided that the perfect end to our holiday would be to drive around to the other side of the bay, to Barrow, which is the nearest metropolis, or at least, the nearest place big enough to need traffic lights. We went to a Chinese buffet restaurant and ate enough to undo any health-giving benefits we might have incurred whilst cycling. It is nice to be married and to concur about the happiness of eating. We filled our plates with noodles and sushi and beef in black bean sauce, and ate and ate.
It was wonderful.
We waddled back to the camper van, and regular readers will not need to guess what we did next.
When we woke up it was late afternoon, and we knew that the holiday was over. It was time to head back towards taxis, and to gainful employment once again.
It has been brilliant.
