We have got our non-speaking postman back.
I was so very pleased to see him.
Obviously we did not say hello, but we smiled at one another, which is as close as he is likely to come to a rapturous greeting, and I felt as though something had clicked once again into its right place. Windermere is on its road back to normality.
At least, I hope that it is. There has been some local chuntering this week about the sudden appearance of lots of signs telling us that the speed limit in the centre of the village is now twenty miles an hour.
When I looked at the council’s website it explained cheerily and untruthfully that every resident had been consulted and given an opportunity to comment. Presumably by this they meant ‘everybody except people who are likely to argue’, because when I have asked around the neighbours, it has surprised us all. Windermere is not an accident black spot, and we were all of the opinion that the new speed limit had been introduced because some bureaucrat thought that it would be a lovely thing to have some more rules.
Keep the people under control, that’s the thing.
I expect they put a consultation document in the library, which has been closed since the happy advent of bat flu.
I do not want the traffic in Windermere to go any more slowly, because of the horrible black exhaust fumes that coat our walls with grime in the summer, and Mark and I have been looking crossly at the new signs in the evenings when we have been emptying the dogs.
They were temporary affairs, created out of cardboard and zip ties, and Mark thought that it would be very easy to turn them round.
The next night somebody had done just that.
Somebody law abiding, probably the Peppers, who do not have a naughty bone in their bodies, turned them back. The next night they had been turned around again, this time so that one sign said twenty and the other thirty. We assured the Peppers that it was not us, which it was not, although only because somebody else had got to them first.
On the third night the signs had been dragged down to the bottom of the poles, and then eventually they disappeared. This morning, to our absolute lawless delight, we were on our way to the park to empty the dogs, when Mark noticed something under the bridge.
It was the signs, snapped into vengeful bits and dumped into the beck.
I was so pleased to see that rebellion still thrives behind the respectable front doors of the Lake District that I took a photograph of them.
I don’t suppose that the council will be deterred, and some more permanent and horrible liberty-limiting instructions will be installed at some later date, but it is good to know that my neighbours are not easily browbeaten. Let us cry, like William Wallace on the scaffold at the end of the film: Freedom.
You will be pleased to hear that Lucy has arrived safely home, actually at three o’ clock this morning. She set off after she had finished her night shift, and turned up, weary but elated, in the middle of the night, whereupon she collapsed into bed and slept until lunchtime.
It is lovely to have her back.
She bathed the dogs, helpfully, this afternoon.
Roger Poopy was horrified by this. He is already sad today, because he is deprived of Pepper again, whose expensive leg is playing up, and the Peppers have very kindly lent him their favourite ball to console him in his solitude. Obviously I mean the dogs’ favourite ball, not the Peppers’. I do not think they have developed a fondness for any particular balls, although I admit that I have never bothered to ask. Maybe one day if conversation wears a bit thin.
Roger Poopy was thrilled to be the custodian of the ball. It is a rubber affair that lights up in the dark.
He has kept it with him ever since. He slept with it in his mouth, and woke up in the middle of the night, presumably because his wide-stretched jaw had become an aching pit of agony. He brought it with him when he was allowed to join us for coffee, and rushed about chasing it when we went to empty them in the park.
He is lying under my desk, sucking on it, determinedly, as I write.
He has loved it very much.
We might have to buy the Peppers a new one.
