It is our wedding anniversary.
We have been married for a very long time.
It is a nice time of year to have been married. We chose the date because it was between Mark’s sister’s lambing time and his mother’s lambing time. This means that every year when we see the first daffodils and tiny lambs dotted over the green Lake District, we know that we have achieved another year.
Both my parents and Nan and Grandad got married in December.
They never mark their anniversaries by basking outside in glorious sunshine drinking something fizzy from a tall glass.
Not that I am smug, or anything.
Actually we did not do that either this year. That is to say, we missed the fizzy-and-tall-glass bit. The sunshine was glorious.
We started the celebrations far too late in the morning with a family breakfast in the conservatory, which we intended to be accompanied by the usual single malt. We thought better of this when we remembered that Mark had to go and have a filling at twelve, and might be better not to breathe whisky fumes all over the dentist.
The rest of us were still lolling about the table, telling long stories and eating smoked fish and slices of melon when he came back, after which Lucy had got to go home.
She is very much better, having sufficiently recovered last night to drink far too much and watch a Marvel film on the television.
I am glad about that. It would have been dreadful if her blood had turned to porridge or if she had had Bill Gates and a 5G super-transmitter implanted in her arm for ever.
Mark spent the last of her time buried underneath the bonnet of her car, hunting for the source of the puddle of oil that had materialised underneath it during her stay, which turned out to be something technical, I forget what. He has ordered a new bit but it did not turn up before she left, so she is coming back again in a few days.
We are all pleased about this.
Once she was gone we did some hasty tidying up, which was badly needed, I can tell you, and Mark and I thought we would celebrate the wonderfulness of our wedded achievement by taking the last of the loaf down to Bowness to feed the ducks with Ritalin Boy.
I know that you are not supposed to feed bread to ducks, but presumably if it did them any serious harm they would be extinct around UK waterways by now, which they are not. In fact they seem to like bread very much, and a noisy, squabbling crowd gathered round Ritalin Boy and Mark, whilst I restrained the dogs, who were longing to charge at them and bring a few home for dinner.
We are not that desperate yet.
Bowness was absolutely heaving with people. I mean bursting.
It was quite astonishing. I imagine the Government must have unlocked the cities or something, because they most certainly were not from here.
It was odd, and unexpected, and I had to stop myself from staring.
It is a long time since I have seen a brown face, or an Orthodox Jewish skull cap, or a headscarf worn by anybody other than a middle-aged white lady, it was very difficult indeed not to gawp like a secluded nun on a visit to the pantomime. People were here in their colourful and different dozens, swinging children between them, and lighting barbecues, and one chap, on the side of the lake, had a large and beautiful rug with a hookah pipe curling at the edge of it.
I was enchanted. We had a raspberry ice cream with a chocolate stick in it, and strolled along the edge of the lake. We saw some chaps in a barge, shunting another boat in front of them, and a sunken yacht, and dozens and dozens of people power-washing away the damp green lichen of a winter’s neglect away from their businesses.
The restaurants have practically surrounded themselves with tents ready for the new out-of-doors-only reopening in a few weeks, and you could practically see the prayers for good weather ascending to Heaven along with the rainbow of spray from their hoses.
It made me feel that there may be some hope after all, although I am not holding my breath.
It was a lovely way to celebrate being married.
