Rinsed

We were not up early enough for our morning dog-emptying with the Peppers this morning. Pepper had long been emptied, and the rest of the household were busy clearing up after a weekend of paying guests.

We took Pepper with us anyway, much to Roger Poopy’s great happiness, and they tore up and down the playing fields with ground-thumping enthusiasm. You can see them in the picture. Roger is just behind the rock.

In the end Pepper got a bit overheated, and plunged into the beck. Note to my American readers, a beck is a Cumbrian word for a stream, Think of a small creek. In fact think of anything icy cold and fast-flowing, because when she dumped the ball in the middle of it and failed to find it again, despite several snuffly attempts, it sank like a stone at the deepest bit.

Mark found a long stick and tried to poke it out again. He was hampered in this effort by Pepper thinking that this was a lovely game, and tugging excitedly on the stick, from her chin-deep position in the water.

Whilst he was occupied trying to disengage Pepper and the stick I took my boots and trousers off and waded in.

I think we can say that it was refreshing.

I am happy to tell you that I did not slip, and also that very few people seemed to notice the middle-aged lady wallowing about in the freezing stream in her T-shirt and knickers. I rescued the ball, and Pepper leaped after me in splashy excitement.

I put my trousers back on before we went back home.

After that the day proceeded relatively calmly. We have been considering the recent change in our taxi-driving fortunes, and on reflection, we think that we might enjoy night-club free taxi driving very much indeed.

If we do not have to stay at work until four o’ clock in the morning and not get to bed until half past five, we will be able to get up much earlier. If we can be in bed by three every night, we will be practically up with the lark. We will be able to do all sorts of useful things with the days.

A new daytime life lies ahead of us. It looks rather promising from here, and when we thought about it this morning, actually we felt rather excited about it.

We won’t earn nightclub money, but I am entirely sure that something else will turn up. Things will come out all right in the end. They usually do.

As it happened things turned out very well indeed last night, despite the absence of nightclub. This was because at half past one in the morning, somebody threw up in my taxi.

He turned out to be an otherwise decent chap, as far as I could tell, despite being hideously intoxicated , virtually unconscious, and covered in Jaeger Bomb vomit. Happily, he and his friends clubbed together to pay the hundred pounds soiling charge without the smallest complaint.

Emotional blackmail and veiled threats about Bat Flu helped with this process. Also he was a young person. This age group has been fully trained in social responsibility. Somebody my own age would probably have told me to get lost.

This cheered the night up somewhat, although I might add that the cleaning up process, at two o’ clock in the morning in the alley, was not a joyful event. My father has just sent us some heavy-duty rubber gloves which practically come up to my elbows, so I wore a pair of those.

I threw them away afterwards, although I felt mildly guilty at such planet-wrecking wasteful profligacy.

I came out early to work this afternoon by way of nightclub compensation, and was gratified to discover that Windermere looked like one of those pictures of a southern beach, the sort that made people with big gardens so virtuously irate during the lockdown. There were people everywhere, although only the Chinese were wearing masks, and even they weren’t doing it very well. I watched one couple try and kiss one another with their masks on. It was not the most romantic Lake District image.

I have decided to enforce non-mask wearing in my taxi. Had last night’s semi-comatose vomiting customer been wearing one the consequences might easily have been too dreadful to imagine.

I will leave you with that unhappy thought.