I have learned a new word, although misfortunately I am not allowed to use it.
The word is Poggers, and it means jolly splendid, but you are only allowed to say it if you are under twenty five. Oliver has explained this. If you say it and you are over twenty five it means that you are mad and weird.
He did not say anything about writing it, however, and so I have used it here.
I have had the most poggers afternoon.
Elspeth drove up the lake to Windermere and we went for a walk together.
I spent the morning belting round the house, trying to get everything cleared up and finished in time so that I could go with an utterly clear conscience, confident and serene in the happy knowledge that I had left behind me no task undone, no shelf undusted, no corner unhoovered.
I do not know how it happens, but there seem to be some days when housework contracts so much that I have got everything important done before I take the dogs out for their first emptying of the day, and other days when I can flap frantically up and down the stairs two dozen times and still not manage to get the washing hung up.
Today was a bit like the last sort.
I went into Oliver’s room to tidy up a bit, and discovered that his bedroom has been infected by a veritable plague of dreadfulness.
He has a carpet nailed to the wall to help mitigate the worst effects on the neighbours of drum practice and noisy gun firing on his computer, and it has gone terribly wrong.
When I shook it lots of tiny black bits sprinkled out. I think they might have been eggs. Indeed, I looked up and there were moth cocoons dangling from the ceiling.
I was utterly horrified.
I hoovered everything, again and again, the walls and the floors and the ceiling. Then I changed the sheets and the towels and scrubbed the walls down. This was due to black mould rather than the egg-laying creature, because when I shook out the curtains I discovered lots of dreadful hairy black grease growing beside the window.
It was a terrible moment.
Of course in the end everywhere was beautifully clean and smelled fresh, which was satisfying, not that I think Oliver noticed.
After that I went belting round to catch up on lost time, and I had just whisked the mayonnaise into creamy perfection and set the dinner on its slow roast in the oven when Elspeth turned up.
It was hardly pelting with rain and hail at all, so we climbed up Orrest Head, which is the mountain just above Windermere, and looked down at the lake from above.
I like going for a walk with Elspeth because her legs are the same length as mine, and she does not feel the need to get anywhere in a hurry. This means that I can talk as well as walk without wondering if I am going to expire from lack of oxygen.
She had brought some walking sticks with her, the kind that I think are called alpenstocks, and we had one each, which made a satisfying clacking sound on the road as we walked along.
Elspeth has a dog as well, a mad black creature called Rebel, which hurtled in and out of puddles and bramble bushes. It leaped over walls with the energy of a deer on a pogo stick, and bounded across streams with so much spring that he could have managed a clear round in Olympic showjumping.
Elspeth has taught herself an enviable whistle to remind it to come back again, the sort where you stick your fingers in your mouth. She says that it works very well unless you have got muddy fingers. I was most impressed, I have never managed to do that despite lifelong attempts.
Roger Poopy and his father trotted along happily beside us. I am very glad I do not have paws. It is chilly enough on January days when you have got sheepskin-lined Army boots. It must not be nice to have to splash through freezing streams with cold paws.
We stumped along cheerfully, enjoying having one another’s sympathetic ears for conversations which were mostly about sore knees and backache. In our youth we used to talk about the Meaning Of Life, but we are not as interested in that now, probably because we don’t drink as much.
It hailed and rained and was a bit blustery, but we did not mind in the least, and it was getting dark by the time we came down again.
We thought that we would go again. I hope we do, soon.
Next time I will go to Elspeth’s. It might be a bit flatter at that end of the lake.
It was utterly poggers.
