There is going to be a storm.
I am not speaking in metaphor, or at any rate I do hope I am not. I am always irritated by the sort of book where the characters’ fate is either reflected in, or predicted by, the weather. It is perfectly possible for doom and calamity to crash about your ears on a sunny day stuffed with birdsong and hawthorn blossom.
It has been hot and still all day, and there is going to be a thunderstorm. It is slowly rolling towards us in from the sea.
We keep seeing lightening in the distance, and whilst we were emptying the dogs just now, the chill wind that flies before the storm came scudding across the park, whipping the trees and making the leaves rustle.
It is not here yet, but it won’t be long.
It has been an absolutely splendid day, which further belies the weather having anything to do with our lives, apart from the obvious things like being at home to get the washing in. Do not believe everything you read in books.
We have got Lucy at home.
She appeared this morning whilst we were having coffee, having finished work at three in the morning, and driven up whilst the day was cool and the motorways empty. She was red-eyed and exhausted, but very pleased to be home.
I made egg and bacon for everybody whilst she told us about being a policeman, and then Mark and Oliver had to go to work, so we took the dogs out for a quick stroll around the park, and she buzzed off to bed.
I could not go back to bed, much as I was longing to.
I had got to take the camper van for its MOT.
It failed. I shall tell you that in advance so that you do not get anxiety. I do not like suspense in stories.
It was all very exciting. I had to take my taxi around to the place where the van is parked, and then move the van out of its space and drive the taxi into it before anybody else could do a dastardly nip in between us. Parking is at a bit of a premium in Windermere at the moment, and everybody’s scruples, including mine, have disappeared.
This manoeuvre is a stressful one, especially because moving the camper van is a stomach-lurching anxiety of crashing gears and ponderous steering, but I managed to preserve the parking space with no bashed corners, and if the oncoming motorists were infuriated, either they were too polite to show it or I was too flappy to notice.
Once moving it is not bad, except a bit like an ocean liner, it is heavy and slow and does not change direction in a hurry. We chugged laboriously away through the village and over into Kendal, which is where the MOT station is. It failed on some brake things, which it usually does, because regular readers might remember that the camper van brakes have the occasional unpredictable convulsion, and are forever needing to be dismantled, soothed back to life, and reconstructed.
I rang Mark, who was sanguine about it, and said that he would fix it in the next day or two, and then I chugged home, where we had the parking adventure again, in reverse. It is much easier the other way round. The taxi, clapped-out as it is, is bliss to drive after the camper van, whose absence of power steering makes every journey an exercise in upper body strength.
I staggered back home and spent the rest of the day cooking. My parents are going to come and visit us tomorrow, it is ages since we have all been together, and I am not jolly well going near the sort of place where you have got to give them a phone number and sit at socially distanced tables, so we are cooking at home.
This carried on very nicely indeed until the Peppers rang and suggested that they pop round for an afternoon coffee.
I am not quite sure what exactly went wrong. They had a friend with them, and Lucy had got up, and somehow before we knew exactly what was happening, the wine was out and we were all helpless with noisy laughter, much to Mark’s surprise when he rang to tell us that they were on their way home.
Naughty, naughty Peppers.
In fact it was the nicest possible end to a day, and I was very sleepy afterwards. Mark caught up with the wine when he got home, and we had the nicest evening with the children, listening to stories about being in the police and installing rural broadband, and being very glad that we have not been arrested for being an idiot. This is not a crime, but somehow it seems to be related to a very lot of things that you can be arrested for.
It has been ace.
The storm is upon us, crashing and flashing and rain is battering down.
I am going to bed.
Have a picture of a hot dog.
