I am at the farm, and we are halfway down the bottle of grape and apple rum.
We drank some of this as an aperitif before dinner, which turned out to have been a mistake. The French stay thin because they drink sugary aperitifs before they eat dinner, and then they are not so hungry, so they do not eat so much.
We were just hungry and drunk.
Fortunately I had cooked dinner yesterday, and so all I needed to do was shove it in the oven.
It was a risotto made with smoked salmon, cream and asparagus, and it was very good indeed. There was no question of us not eating very much, even though we had already had the rum.
After that we had bread and butter pudding, made with bananas and honey and almonds, also with cream.
There was no question of us not eating that either.
Hence we are sitting here, feeling slightly uncomfortable in the belt-wearing region, trying to rinse it all into tranquillity with large cups of chai.
Today is the day of the Great Release, whereby our lives become marginally less restricted than they have been to date, the solitary confinement prisoners allowed into the exercise yard for a little while.
Despite this, we are not on the taxi rank, because I do not think that it is that thrilling an event, and do not believe that it will make enormous differences. You are still not allowed to hang about at the bar of a pub with a crowd of friends. You are still not allowed parties or dancing or singing, or indeed to do anything other than sit obediently at a table with representatives of one other family. The only difference is that today you are allowed to come inside out of the biting cold.
Possibly the solitary confinement prisoner allowed into the dining hall, then.
Anyway, I am not greatly enthused by the current lifting of restrictions. Certainly they will make no difference to young people who once spent their summer evenings going out in groups, and dancing together and hoping to fall in love.
We did not much want to watch people celebrating a slightly lengthened chain, and thought we would slope off out of the way. Obviously we will have to go out to work later on in the week, but today we are having a day off.
It has been curiously unproductive.
It started with great ideals. We were going to achieve all sorts of things, and then we got here. There was a chill little wind, filled with bursts of freezing rain, and we did not think that we would conquer the world after all.
Mark fixed the brakes, and I painted some flowers on the wardrobe door, and then somehow we were cold and dispirited.
Instead of virtuously making our world a better place, we went for a long walk to warm ourselves up.
Obviously this made the world a better place as well.
Actually, it didn’t so much make the world a better place, as help us to notice what a nice place it already is.
We walked through the woods and along the fell side, and Mark showed me all the places of his childhood. He showed me where he had to cycle across fields to meet the other children and catch the bus, and where his grandfather had built a dam and turned the old lead mine into a lake.
There was hawthorn, and speedwells, and forget-me-nots, and bluebells, and dandelions. There was wild garlic and hazel trees and rowan trees and an ancient oak with ferns growing along every branch. There were muddy paths, and rocky slopes, and little wooden bridges, and quiet, except for the sighing of the wind and the call of the birds.
A lady stopped us and told us to put the dogs on leads, until she realised that Mark was Mark, and part of the ancestral clan of the fells, at which point she apologised profusely, and became a bit fluttery. She offered to show him some pictures of her house in the time when some ancient relative of his lived there. We declined, but maybe some other time.
Fortunately the dogs behaved impeccably, and walked to heel as if tethered with invisible string, which I suppose the ever-present threat of violence is, really, and we rambled back over the fields to our own patch, and to dinner.
I have attached a picture, which probably explains why the National Park Authority does not like us very much.
