I might get fed up of writing this quite quickly.
That is to say, I might get fed up of writing this whilst being continually interrupted.
I am, of course, on the taxi rank. It is a busy Saturday evening, and the entire population of the North of England has come to the Lake District in order to be irritating in the heat.
I am quite happy for people to have lovely holidays in the Lake District, but I would like them to research the Green Cross Code before they set off. I am sure that this says somewhere that you should not wander about in the middle of the road taking selfies behind reversing taxis. Also I would like them not to keep asking taxi drivers where the cash machines are. They are next to the shops, and if you read the big signs with the arrows that say ATM you will find them with hardly any trouble at all and the taxi driver can get on with eating her dinner or writing her diary, or conducting her interesting conversation in peace.
It is cooler today, but still hot.
We are going to have a picnic in the garden tomorrow, because my parents are going to come and visit. This has been the topic for much consideration and discussion today, starting off over coffee in bed this morning.
Originally we thought that we might go out for lunch. We visited the websites of the various hotels that we liked the look of, and considered whether or not we would like to dine on confit of salmon and creme fraiche oak smoked linguine, with tenderloin mustard butter, or on Cumbrian fell-bred pate with oyster sauce and freshly picked asparagus tips, or cuisses of wild duck terrine with almond jus and duchesse baby carrots on a bed of grenouille, all at thirty quid a hit.
After some contemplation I thought that since nobody ever knows what any of this stuff actually is, probably we could do similar dishes ourselves, and not pay out a couple of hundred quid for the privilege.
We thought at first that we might take the camper van back to the seaside and have a picnic, but the more we thought about it, the more complicated this seemed to be. We would have to explain the paddling through the stream to my parents, and hope that they didn’t mind getting all of their clothes soaked. Also we would need a picnic table, because the usual arrangement of a blanket on the floor and trying not to stand on the strawberries, is beginning to prove a bit tiresome.
We went to the ironmongers and looked at picnic tables, and then some bright spark, probably me, thought that we could have a perfectly good picnic in the garden, and use Mark’s trestles and a bit of board for a table.
After that I did creative things with food, like covering chicken in a marinade of Worcester sauce and garlic. I can call it a terrine now, because of not being sure what a terrine actually is, but it sounds expensive, in an earthy kind of way. Also I went to Sainsbury’s and bought some pizzas. They can be Confit of Pizza.
Mark was dispatched to the garden to make it lovely, like a terrace of a smart hotel.
Mostly he achieved this by tidying up his collection of rusty axle stands and old oil cans, which are among my least favourite of his additions to the garden, but after that we thought that we would like a tent.
Actually, I thought that I would like a tent. They are always nice on the children’s speech days.
Mark obliged with a collection of tablecloths pegged between the washing line and the top of the shed. This made the garden wonderfully shady, not in a dark sort of way, but by letting in all of the sunshine without the glare.
I was very pleased indeed.
There wasn’t much room for hanging up the washing, so I had to peg my underwear in the bush at the end. I must remember to move it before tomorrow. That is another thing that you never see in the gardens of smart hotels.
Mark fixed his board to the trestles, and we covered it with a pashmina left over from visiting India long ago, and it looked perfect. It is not exactly like the terrace of a smart hotel, but I like it anyway.
We made a pot of tea and sat next to the improvised table and admired our creativity until I had been inspired to want Mark to build a yurt in the garden and it was time to go to work.
I have just finished work now. The birds are singing and the dawn has crept up on us.
The picture is the moon over the lake in the dawn.
