We are having the most fantastic holiday.
I do not think I had ever quite appreciated how much of being on holiday is just a story that goes on in one’s own head.
Of course I do know this. People come on holiday to the Lake District and tell me what a wonderfully calm and relaxing place it is, and how nobody here could possibly have any worries.
I always nod politely, but of course for us the Lake District is the place where tax returns and overdrafts live, where worries end up in sleepless nights, and where anxious drinking follows a telephone call from the bank.
The Lake District is an exhausting stressful place.
Today it has not been so.
When we got home from work we had blackberry and gin cocktails, and the most enormous chicken dinner.
I have never really made cocktails, because of not having a cocktail shaker. This was always seemed to me to be an insurmountable obstacle, until somebody suggested that a jam jar worked perfectly well. Obviously I tried it, and discovered that it absolutely does, and so I found a recipe for which I had all the ingredients, mixed the basics in the jam jar, and shoved it in the fridge.
I put the glasses in the freezer. You are supposed to do this for cocktails, and I can tell you now that it is brilliant. I felt entirely sophisticated, even with the jam jar.
The cocktails were divine. I could have drunk them all night, but obviously I didn’t.
Today we slept late. In fact, it turned out, we slept for ten hours, oblivious and exhausted.
We did not hurry up about coffee. We sat in bed pretending that we were in an hotel, and wondering what Lake District adventures we might do on our Midweek Break.
We had got no further than deciding that we would go to Booths for some ethically smoked trout, when the dogs reminded us that they still need to be emptied in the mornings, even when we are on holiday, so we got up.
It turns out that our house is a very nice holiday cottage, when you are not constantly rushing about trying to organise things and fix things.
In lots of ways we realised that it was considerably nicer than an hotel. The coffee in bed is very, very much better, and comes in enormous half-litre mugs.
Also we did not have the horrible experience of realising that we had forgotten to pack something terribly important, like underwear. With no effort whatsoever, absolutely everything we needed had been tidily laid out in our bedroom drawers.
Not only that, but absolutely all my favourite soaps and hand lotions were laid out in the bathroom already. I squirted myself with the perfume and felt very happy with my world, what a perfect holiday.
Also we will not be coming home with a depressing suitcase crammed to the seams with laundry. There is a handy washing machine in this holiday cottage, and we just stuffed everything in it and pulled it out again an hour later. Mark helped me hang it on some very convenient hangers just over a piping-hot radiator. It hardly took any time at all, and was terrifically easy.
Once the dogs were empty we went up to Booths. I like shopping on my holidays, and mostly I like shopping for fripperies that I do not really need.
Shopping in Booths was very much like that.
We bought some cream horns stuffed with pistachio and chocolate, and some salmon which had been roasted in honey. We bought some elderflower cheese and some unpasteurised Wensleydale and some Brie, which practically ran off the plate.
We bought some beetroot flavoured crackers to go with it.
When we got home we poured ourselves some more of our pre-mixed blackberry and gin cocktail. We had bought some actual blackberries in Booths, and so shoved those in as well. I do not think they made any difference to the cocktail, but they were quite nice to eat with a spoon afterwards.
We did not have an actual breakfast. We sat in the conservatory and had cream horns and salmon and interesting cheese. We washed it all down with cocktails, and told ourselves smugly how middle-class and sophisticated we were.
We took the dogs out to be tourists at Rydal Water. This was glorious because of the bluebells and the beginnings of the emerald green springtime new leaves, but we did not stay as long as we perhaps might have done, because of the snow on the fellsides and the icy rain. We held hands and looked at the lake, and decided that the Lake District was a beautiful place, but that we had been sufficiently refreshed for one day.
There was so much breakfast left that we had parcelled it all up afterwards and saved it for dinner. We have not eaten it yet, I am writing this early. There is some cocktail mixture left as well.
Mark is getting it ready now. I can hear him from here. He has told Google to play him some Gershwin, and he has rubbed some sweet potato chips with garlic and paprika and chucked them in the fat-free fryer.
We are going to eat it like a picnic, in front of a film. I think we are going to watch Rocketman, which, improbably, is about a singer.
It is better than going to the cinema, because roast salmon and cream cheese and sweet potato chips are loads better than popcorn.
I am going to go and see if it is ready.
Have a picture of our walk.
