Another day in our watery Paradise.
It is pretty watery as well. I hung the washing out in the garden but it got another rinse instead of a blow dry. Still, it was something for nothing, which is always a bonus.
The Lake District seems to be full of Welsh people who would have definitely preferred to be in Portugal. I am not Welsh but I would have preferred to be in Portugal as well. It is very damp here at the moment.
It has been a quietly uneventful day, so uneventful that we did not even have the usual morning event of strolling out with the Peppers to empty the dogs.
The Peppers had buzzed off into Kendal to get their eyes tested. I am impressed with this, I thought you practically had to have conjunctivitis leaking out of your ears before you could get an optician to see you in these dreary days of disinfecting the wall charts every time somebody looks at them.
Certainly I did not manage to get an appointment for Oliver, who has become so short sighted that he can hardly see where he is going any more, because when I tried in the summer, the phone just rang and rang and rang. I told him that he would just have to wait until Christmas, and to let me know if he needed a guide dog in the meantime. I do not know where you might get a guide dog but he could have had Roger Poopy, who might at least have been handy during cricket matches.
Anyway, we did not get up early enough to go with the Peppers on their first two walks of the day, and had to go on our own later. Roger Poopy’s was most disappointed about this. He did not want to thunder up and down the park chasing tennis balls and barking, which is what he usually does. Instead, he wandered about aimlessly, looking under every bush in case Pepper was hidden there, like a crab under a rock at the beach. Of course she wasn’t, and he sighed heavily several times before reluctantly turning his paws for home.
We were up late because of course we worked late, although not as late as we used to. As I am sure I have whinged about before, these days everything closes early. Our newly woke population can enjoy plenty of early nights to go with their fashionable vegan diet, immaculately clean hands and compulsory cycling everywhere.
Obviously we hung about on the taxi rank until even the most recalcitrant rascals had given up and buzzed off, so we were late to bed, and then this morning, late to rise. We may not have been any healthier or wiser, but we were marginally wealthier, so that was all right.
Mark has continued constructing my under-the-stairs cupboard today. It now has a clip on it to keep the doors closed, and a hook for the sweeping brush, and eventually it will have a useful box for keeping furniture polish and clean dusters.
It is a mark of my advancing old age that I am feeling quite jubilant about this. There is nothing that says you have grown up quite as much as having a special place for dusting equipment. The cupboard under the sink does the job, but is not as middle class as a purpose-built cupboard, and I am comfortably conscious of having risen a little in the world.
Never again will I need to hide the hoover behind the curtains because we have got guests coming.
That is even better than having a holiday in Portugal.
