We are together in the camper van, somewhere near York.
We are not quite together. Lucy is still a little way away at school, but we will find her tomorrow, and then we will be four again.
It is not quite as blissful in our lovely snug camper van as you might expect. We are warm and comfortable and full of dinner and safe, but there is a very nasty smell, whiffs of which are occasionally drifting up from underneath the table, and reminding us that we are a household of dog lovers. At least, we have been a household of dog lovers in the recent past. At the moment the very best that I could say is that I am indifferent to dogs, and it could even be that I have gone off them entirely.
The problem is that Roger Poopy has been rolling in something stickily unpleasant.
It might have been duck poo.
We had a joyous walk this afternoon across some muddy farm land which seemed to specialise in grouse and ducks. Roger Poopy liked this very much indeed. He bounded about barking, leaping over tree trunks and ditches and milling excitedly around our legs. Occasionally he made little forays ahead of us along the path, and then stopped in wide-eyed astonishment when there was a kerfuffle in the hedgerow, and things flew away.
There were a lot of ducks. They flapped about making their harsh-throated duck noises, calling to one another and circling cautiously over the treetops before splashing down into the nearby pond.
This was the most astonishing walk. The sun beamed its autumn generosity over us, and we breathed in the glorious sharp scents of ploughed soil and fallen leaves.
The thing that was astonishing was that we walked past field upon field of recently-planted wheat, and suddenly realised that every single one was entirely covered in a glistening layer of spider web, billowing gently with every tiny breeze.
I have never noticed this before. Either I have been walking about with my eyes completely shut, or we have suddenly been invaded by an alien spidery horde, or simply it has been a good year for Yorkshire spiders.
Mark says that he has not seen it before either, and he has been a farmer for most of his life, so maybe Cumbria is less welcoming to arachnids.
He took a picture so that I could show you. It is misfortunate that it has also got a bit of his finger on it, he was trying to shield the camera lens from the sun, but you get the idea.
It was the second splendid walk of the day. The first one was when we got up. We were not far from Oliver’s school, having camped by the roadside where we finally chugged to a halt at three in the morning.
We did not need to rush. We had a leisurely coffee and then an amble through Bedale’s pheasanty woodland with the dogs. We examined everything with great interest, it is always intriguing to see what other people are doing with their farmland. There was interesting rabbit-proofing and little bridges for pheasants, and some unidentifiable toadstools and a beautiful bridge with a little brick arch. I asked Mark to build me one of these in the garden, which made him roll his eyes, but he did agree that he knew how he might do it, so I am in with a chance.
After that we went to the butcher’s, because honestly, the butcher in Bedale is just about the best in the whole world. They are called Cockburn, and they sell online, so if you ever want butcherying stuff, they are the chaps. They like eating very much, which is probably the best qualification you can have to invent interesting ways of cooking food.
We bought some slabs of marinated lamb, and some spiced lamb in puff pastry, and some pork and stilton pies and sausage rolls.
We are going to be living happily ever afterwards for quite some time. It was a good idea to go there before school finished, because afterwards it is always packed to the seams with parents, emptying the shelves to take home for their freezers.
Oliver and Actual Head Boy were waiting, and were very pleased to see us, especially when they discovered the doughnuts, and the chicken which I had roasting in the camper van oven.
We stopped for lunch at the services, which has a good dog-charging-about space, and Actual Head Boy’s father joined us. I like him very much. He had a good look at the camper van and was very polite about it, which was jolly kind of him. He is a real artist, and used to be the official illustrator for Kew Gardens, so he knows really properly about how to draw plants. He does not just daydream about curling tendrils and huge soporific blossoms, and try to convey the idea of them on the side of an elderly truck. He can actually draw stamens and cotyledons and other floral attributes, in a way that people can tell what they actually are.
We ate an enormous lunch, with chicken and pork pies and doughnuts, and were still laughing and talking when eventually we realised that the day had worn away, and it was time to be heading in our separate directions.
We are about to get ready for bed.
I might try and find a dustbin liner for Roger Poopy to wear for the night.
He is not lovely.
2 Comments
Hmm -still out of sync with your comment spaces, seem to have permanently lost one and shall never get back into the right order. I used to cycle to school through a fairly wild park, and in autumn the grass often looked all spidery like this. I was led to believe, and still don’t know if it’s true, that the silk threads were spider-baby parachutes, wafting them on the wind to new places to live away from home. Sometimes covered bushes too. Realise I am completely ignorant about the life cycle of the spider,though I know about butterflies, ladybirds and frogs, which may be the result of years spent as an infants teacher and needing to impart such knowledge to the young. Don’t know why spiders weren’t on the curriculum, that would have been fun. x
Hadn’t thought about them being the settled parachutes, don’t they eat them or something? Knowledge of spiders is limited to “best not in my bed”, but whatever it is, there were a lot of them. Oddly enough despite looking really hard we didn’t see a single one.