You might recall that we have just removed our non-functioning washing machine from the kitchen.
Mark moved it, actually, except he did not move it to anywhere exciting. He dumped it in the trailer. This was still parked in the alley at the back of the house after the arrival of the raspberry-pink sofa. It has been there for ages, because the only vehicle which has a tow bar is the camper van.
Frankly it has just been too complicated to move the camper van, park a taxi in its parking space, hitch up the trailer, drag it to the farm, bring the camper van back, move the taxi again, and then park the camper van.
As my friend Elspeth says, that one just got put in the Too Difficult file.
Obviously it couldn’t stay there for ever. I don’t expect you have ever thought much about parking in Windermere, but let me explain now, more people need to park their cars than there are available spaces, especially in the summer when an extra nineteen thousand cars arrive every single week.
We do not have a driveway, and we do have two taxis and a stonking great big camper van. Adding a trailer to that list eventually leaves you friendless amongst your neighbours.
Yesterday Mark had use of a van from work, so when he got home he hitched the trailer to it and took it back to the farm, having first hauled out the washing machine, which he abandoned in the alley.
Having a dead washing machine parked outside your house is almost as scruffy and undesirable as having an ancient trailer. Rather than incur the wrath of the council for fly tipping, a great deal of which has been going on in our alley since the tips have been refusing to take almost everything, and there are old beds and fridges all over the place, I thought we had better shift it.
This morning Mark loaded the washing machine, as well as the old dishwasher and sink, into the back of my car for me to take to the tip.
I was not looking forward to this in the least. I did not at all appreciate his suggestion that I should open the boot and reverse quickly up to the metals skip, at which point I should slam the brakes on.
Fortunately when I mentioned it to the Peppers on our morning dog walk, they very kindly volunteered one of them, that is, one of them more useful than Pepper herself, to accompany me.
The trip was not greatly facilitated by the small discovery that Mark had buzzed off to work with my car keys in his pocket. We had a small telephone domestic about this, until I remembered that fortunately my car is virtually the only car we have ever had which has a spare, and so everything worked out all right.
There were five blokes at the tip, one of whom might have been a girl, all of whom importantly supervised us unloading the car and hauling the washing machine.
Stupidly I trapped my finger in the top of the washing machine whilst we were chucking it out. This bled rather dramatically at the time, but turned out only to have been skinned. It did not hurt very much until later I accidentally smeared it with sooty tar when I was cleaning the fire out. I had to scrub the tar off so that it did not misfortunately turn into a tattoo when the skin re-grew. That jolly well hurt all right.
Much of the rest of the day was spent hoovering the rusty washing-machine debris out of the taxi, and playing the Washing Game with the Weather Gods. I thought this probably turned into a draw, because although I had to do a very lot of rushing in and out of the house with wet washing, I did get it mostly dry in the end, which I counted as a point for my side, so probably we were at least evens.
The Peppers are still engaged in the deconstruction and rebuilding of their camper van, and so I volunteered to show them what we had done with ours. Of course they have seen our camper van, but they are not in the least dull enough to have taken much note of details like whereabouts under the floor our waste pipes run to. That is the sort of thing that Mark looks at when you show him something, instead of noticing the colour of the curtains and the beautiful china teapot.
We all went to look at our camper van, and had a cup of coffee in it. Obviously this sparked the usual terrible yearning to fill the fridge up with chocolate and raspberries and French cheese and champagne, and then just to buzz off.
We are not going to do that, because we are trying to earn a living and rebuild our house.
Also I do not quite trust other places. You can be sent to prison for a fortnight just for having been to Spain at the moment, goodness knows what might happen if you were to go to Scotland, even if you had a bucket on your head.
All the same, on the taxi rank this evening, I sat with one of the other taxi drivers and we exchanged stories about holidays, which for both of us, more or less consisted of Blackpool.
There could be no greater happiness, we told one another with longing sighs, than fish and chips eaten on the Promenade in the sunset.
I do not think you are incarcerated just for going to Blackpool. There might still be a chance this summer.
Not that it matters very much really.
The picture is the place where we are now. I took it whilst I was at work tonight.
