After all of the excitement we are sitting on a very quiet taxi rank.
We have been here for two hours now, and so far nobody at all has wanted to get a taxi. I do not think that we are likely to make a fortune tonight.
I don’t mind this in the least.
It has been a rollercoaster of adventure, and I am feeling very quiet and still inside.
I checked this with Mark, who agreed that he felt the same. It is a nice feeling, as though all of my worries have gone away for a little while. In the place where usually there is a creeping dread of overdrafts and credit cards and other disasters, there is just a small warm feeling, as though everything is all right.
I am enjoying the feeling very much. I wonder if this is what happens when you take drugs.
It is a rather gloriously splendid bonus, because of course nothing is any more all right than it usually is. Despite being as parsimonious as we could possibly manage to be, we have come back from Manchester with no cash whatsoever, which is why we are on the taxi rank right now.
It was lovely to wake up right in the middle of the city this morning. All around us we could hear the roar of engines, and the clanking and banging of the great cranes at the back of the van.
This might not sound exciting to you, but we are very definitely country mice, and we liked it very much. We sat in the middle of it all, invisible, drinking coffee in bed in our camper van, and listening, happily.
Eventually we had got to get up and go. We packed up reluctantly, and set off back to the north, playing our story CD to keep us going along the way.
It is a very thrilling story. When we have finished each book we pass the CDs along to the lady in the library, who listens to them whilst she is travelling to visit her family in Scotland. It is the nicest way to spend a long journey.
We did not go home. We went to the farm. There were some things that Number One Son-In-Law had thought of that he had left in the camper, and we had to tow it off the field to a place where the scrap man could easily pick it up.
When we got there it was raining hard, whipped into little stinging bursts by the wind.
We did not want to get out and go and do things outside. We made some egg and bacon sandwiches and a cup of tea first.
I like egg and bacon very much, but now I am old I don’t eat it very much, because eating fat meat gives me indigestion. This is especially sad with things like pork pies from the butcher, and sausages.
I ate it anyway, and had a glass of milk afterwards.
In the end we could not put it off any more, and had to get on with things.
When Mark had taken some bits of wire that he wanted, and I had remembered to collect Number One Son-In-Law’s things, we harnessed the van to the towing hitch on the back of our own camper van, and I drove ours whilst Mark steered the other.
I was glad that he was doing it instead of me. It was an especially difficult job because when we were all there the other day we had taken the driver’s seat out.
We managed it anyway. We dragged it to the end of Mark’s sister’s drive where a scrap wagon can turn round, and left it there.
It was still raining hard when we got home.
We unpacked everything and cleaned the camper van out. We have been in it for three nights now, and it was beginning to get a bit grubby. We emptied the loo, and hoovered and washed everything down until it looked pristine again, and then we went in.
When we got in I made the tiresome discovery that I had not done any washing before we left.
We had got smart city clothes washing, and labouring at the farm washing, and in between adventures we had been cooking and travelling and messing about with the dogs.
We had got a basket full of home washing as well.
We filled the washing machine and considered our options.
There were all sorts of things that we ought to have done, but we went to bed.
We slept so hard that when the alarm went off I could not work out what I might be able to do about it, and blinked, stupidly, into the dark, listening to the noise.
When we worked out what it was we got up and went to work.
We are sitting here now in the quiet darkness, feeling still and quiet and contented with our lives.
Have a picture of Cumbria.
