We thought that we would go to work tonight, and so Mark mended my taxi this morning.
It had a broken spring, and he had bought a whole new front strut from the scrap yard, and so he just unbolted the old one and bashed the new one into place.
I am saying that he just did it, as if it were a gentle breeze on a summer day, but actually it was still a lot of wet hammering and swearing in the icy cold and little gusts of freezing rain.
I took the dogs to be emptied whilst he did it, and called the Peppers to see when they would be coming home. I had made some half-hearted promises to look after some visitors to their guest house whilst the Peppers were away invading Scotland, but when I called them it turned out that the visitors had been there for ages and the Peppers had come home to look after them themselves.
I was stricken with guilt, partly because of the visitors and partly because of their heater that I had appropriated in their absence, because I had the key and it would have been a waste not to. It has been a useful heater, because although we have got some heating in the conservatory, it is still not finished, and without the heater the wind slides through the many unstopped gaps, making it chilly in the December wind.
We have been eating in the conservatory, not only when we had the illegal visitors, but also when we have been eating by ourselves. It is a good space for doing this, or at any rate it is when it is warmed up.
Obviously the Peppers house is not very warm either, because like ours it is basically a pile of badly-fitting stones chucked together by some ancient jobbing Cumbrian builder, and they needed their heater. When they asked me if I had seen it anywhere I denied all knowledge, but said kindly that I had a very similar one that they could have instead, and promised to bring it round.
Once the dogs were empty I collected the heater and carted it round to the Peppers’ house to give it to them as a present. They had lots of Christmas travellers’ tales to tell, and I had stories of drinking too much and indigestion to tell them in return. They gave me a bag with our Christmas present and we thought we would catch up later.
Obviously it is still illegal to have friends indoors, even if it is draughty. What you are supposed to do is spend an afternoon out doors. You can walk round the park in the horrible sleet and knife-like wind for an hour or two whilst you talk. This is what the Government has recommended, especially for very elderly people who might be at risk if they spend time their friends and family indoors.
I think that possibly these inspired suggestions might work a bit better if you are in London. The Government are not trying to hold their hats on in the sort of wind that hurtles down the Cumbrian fells carrying stinging rain in its wake, and that hurts your forehead if you lose the battle with your hat.
I went home to look for heaters on Amazon.
They couldn’t deliver one until next week, so I gave up.
Mark came in, chilled even through his hurricane-proof padded overalls, and we thought that there would be no point in going to work after all. Not only were half of the roads flooded, but almost none of the pubs had opened, and very probably nobody was going to be here on holiday. The whole population of England seems to be either imprisoned in a plague-ridden inner-city nightmare or looking out of the window at the vile weather and just chucking another log on the fire.
We thought that none of them would be coming up to the Lake District to enjoy the breezy luffness of an afternoon hiking.
Also my taxi is rubbish in floods because the air intake valve cover is broken.
Instead we opened our Christmas present from the Peppers, which turned out to be a new heater just like theirs.
We were very pleased indeed, I have no idea how they thought of it, what an inspired idea.
We put the new heater on and had sherry and smoked trout for breakfast in the conservatory again.
Then we caught up with the Peppers later.
I took the picture on Christmas Eve. It is a heated conservatory.
