I am In A State.
This is because the Lake District is empty.
We have dashed up to Scotland and back and we are home. I am on the taxi rank not earning anything, and Mark is at home, fixing something and not earning anything either. Boris Johnson has been announcing on the radio that the country is being divided up like a three-level wedding cake and that the things that we are not allowed to do are decided according to whereabouts in the cake we live.
I had made a serious effort to understand what they are all going on about, but I don’t.
If we are balanced on the little top bit of the cake with the horseshoe and the plastic bride and groom then we are in trouble and we have got to stay at home. If we are sandwiched in the middle of the wedding cake on the bit that is probably going to be hacked up and posted to people in sticky envelopes, then we are in trouble and we have got to stay at home. If we are on the biggest bottom bit, the bit that is probably made of iced cardboard anyway, then we are in trouble and we have got to stay at home.
There is not a bit for not being in trouble. There is only Bad, Worser and Worsest.
I do not know which bit we are in and do not really care, since it seems that most people are either being well behaved and virtuous and cancelling their trip to the Lake District, which is why it is suddenly empty, or they being rascally hedonistic rebels and heading off to Crete, which is also why the Lake District is empty.
Either way they are most certainly not within spending distance of my taxi.
Nobody has told me that I am not allowed to do anything so far, and so I am doing everything, and trying not to find out.
I am cross with Boris Johnson about it all because we have got to earn some money for the diesel to go back to school next week, and for that we jolly well need customers. Over the last few months we have had thousands of people from all over England visiting us in the Lake District. I do not know a single person who has caught a horrid disease, and there are no secrets here, I can tell you, I know if somebody has been observed flirting with the postman. If somebody had actually caught bat flu I am quite sure that nobody would be talking about anything else.
Actually we have got one of the lowest plague rates in the country, which I suspect is due to our entire population being self employed and hence avoiding Test Track And Trace like, well, like the plague.
Anyway, we need to earn some cash, and I think our Beloved Leader ought to be more sympathetic. Even though he had a scholarship I expect at half term his father still had to take days off work to trail up to Eton and back, and he wasn’t even at Gordonstoun. Prince Philip had to borrow an aeroplane to go and get Charles, which I should think set him back even more cash than the diesel for the camper.
Mark is going to go and build Number One Son-In-Law’s house at the weekend, so all is not lost. If all else fails we can always sponge off the children.
It has been a bit of a hectic day really.
We woke up somewhere at the side of a Scottish road when the traffic started to go past us. I do not know where we were. We steamed our eyes open with cups of coffee and Mark emptied the dogs, and we set off again.
Oliver and Caitlin did not emerge from their bunks until we were south of Carlisle.
It is very peculiar to be Oliver’s parent at the moment. He is suddenly looking down on me. This is not by very much at the moment, maybe a centimetre, but he is now undoubtedly the tallest of my offspring, and it is taking some getting used to.
We measured him on the wall at home. He has grown three inches since June, so it is no wonder he is eating so much.
Elspeth came across to collect Caitlin and stayed for a cup of tea, after which I got in a horrible flappy panic and made myself late for work.
I am calm now. It is the middle of the night and I am getting ready to go to bed.
I am quite sure that it will all turn out all right in the end.
Have a picture taken on our trip. There are fields of wheat and barley all around the school, and Mark was having a look to see whether or not it was of a good quality, which he decided it was. He thinks that we might grow our own again when we have got a bit more time.
Once a farmer, always a farmer.
