It is bank holiday weekend in the Lake District, and lots of the guest houses have still got signs up advertising vacancies.
This does not bode well for the weekend ahead.
We might be in for a quiet time.
I wonder if Theresa May might decide to make her way up. It is a jolly good place to come for some reviving fresh air after a horrid time, and she certainly qualifies at the moment. She would have to drive herself, though, because this afternoon all of the trains coming to Windermere have been cancelled again, maybe Chris Grayling could give her a lift.
We meant to spend the day building the conservatory, but kept getting distracted.
We had to go to the dentist.
After years and years of having to trail all the way to Barrow to visit a dentist, we have finally managed to get on to the list of a dentist in the village. We can stroll merrily across the road to his surgery, and it takes less than two minutes instead of having to drive across Cumbria for two hours.
This is brilliant. The new dentist is almost old enough to be a policeman, he has left school and everything, and he has got a little tiny surgery in the attic of a tall house opposite the pub. The house accommodates a couple of dentists, so I expect he could always nip downstairs and borrow some anaesthetic if he runs out, how handy when you are just starting up.
He looked at our teeth, with some surprise when he realised that just having cold fingers was enough to set my teeth leaping about in shock. My gums have receded so far that I can’t smile when I am outdoors on winter days any more, which is embarrassing when I pass the neighbours in the street. He said that you could have surgery to rectify this problem, but added that it cost twenty thousand pounds, so probably I won’t. I shall just have to put up with offending people or pretending I haven’t seen them. Most people are not surprised by a grumpy nod anyway.
We had forgotten our cash and so promised that we would telephone and pay when we got home, but I am sorry to say that I forgot all about it, so I will have to try and remember next week, I would not like to leave a poor young man short of pocket money.
When we got home we still didn’t build the conservatory, because we had got to take the dogs to the vet for their booster injections. They like the vet’s waiting room very much, because of all of the exciting smells, although they are not nearly so keen on the surgery.
There was a lady next to us with a depressed looking elderly dog, of the short and portly variety, the dog, not the lady. She told us that the vet had made her throw away all the lovely dog treats that her dog likes so much, and has instructed her to feed it carrot if it wants something nice to eat.
We were not surprised that the dog looked miserable. Even Roger Poopy would not eat carrot. Come to that, even the children won’t eat carrot.
She said that the vet said that it was bad for its health and it had got to come for regular check ups to be weighed because it was too fat. I thought secretly that since it looked to be about a hundred years old anyway I would have just carried on feeding it the things it liked until it keeled over, and resolved yet again not to take too much notice of the vet and her expensive little ideas. Whilst we were waiting we had to look at a screen telling us all of the things that are poisonous for dogs to eat. Apparently if your dogs eat chocolate or raisins you have got to take them straight to the vet for an immediate health check.
Roger Poopy stole a whole dish of chocolates a few weeks ago. We knew for certain it was him even though it took a day or two for the wrappers to come out in his poo. Not only did we not take him to the vet, we shouted at him a lot and made him sit in the back garden in lonely shame until he was sorry. At least, until he looked sorry. We knew perfectly well that he wasn’t sorry at all, and would do it again if ever we were careless enough to leave chocolate where he could reach it if he stood on the stairs.
When we got back it was too late to build a new conservatory before we went to work, so we had a cup of tea and a snooze.
Rome was not built in a day, nor is a conservatory likely to be.
Maybe in a year or so.
