Retail therapy

The sun is shining and has dried all my washing.

This is always a very happy thing to happen in a day. Tomorrow morning we will put on clean clothes and breathe in the fresh garden smell, soil and mint and new leaves.

I  could not spend the day ambling about the garden, alas. Instead, I went in shopping in Kendal.

I was quite looking forward to a tootle around the newly-reopened shops, and I had the perfect excuse, because I needed to purchase some hydraulic hoses for Mark’s digger.

This is not just like going to Marks and Spencer for some thermal lined woollen socks. Hydraulic hoses cannot just be found lying about in a plastic bag on a shelf in the agricultural supply shop. You have got to go and show the split ones to the man behind the counter, and he holds them up and squints at them, and makes some grunting noises. Then he takes them away from you into an underground room and makes up some new ones.

Rather tiresomely, it does mean that you have got to carry horrible oily rusting rubber hoses in a bucket in the back of your lovely clean taxi, and hope that they don’t make a mess.

It was a good job that I love Mark, because he wanted some hydraulic oil as well. This came in a revolting filthy five gallon drum, and left oily marks everywhere, especially on my trousers and on my fingers.

When you see ladies on shopping advertisements they are very rarely covered in hydraulic oil and grimy agricultural smears. They have got smart Breton shirts on, and too-short white trousers, and pink cashmere jerseys draped over their shoulders, and I felt I was letting the side down a bit.

There are good reasons that I do not ever wear white trousers.

I had to leave the agricultural man with the hoses and go away to do something else, so I wiped my hands on a handy bit of camper van sheet and tried to look gay and carefree, like a shopping advertisement, but I have to say the effect was rubbish.

I went over to the coffee house and bought some more chai and some coffee.

I love the coffee house. You have got to wait whilst they shovel tea out of the barrel into a little bag, and grind up the coffee beans. It is a splendid shop, with creaking ancient beams and floorboards, all infused over centuries with the thick coffee smell.

We buy High Roast coffee, which is the strongest, and which leaves its lovely smell behind it even after I have taken it out of the taxi at home. The tea is called red chai, and is made with peppercorns and cinnamon, and the spicy scent wafts out of the cupboard at home whenever you open the door. I make my own teabags, which have to be emptied into the compost bin and washed. This is a jolly nuisance, but means that my tea in the taxi is fragrant and lovely, and I feel happy when I drink it.

I still had plenty of time, so I went to look at Waterstone’s. Obviously I have got a long list of books that I want to buy., but I am still feeling a bit cautious about our beloved leaders and their plans for our financial futures, and so I didn’t buy any of them. All the same, it was wonderful to look, and to rejoice in the glad recollection that bookshops are allowed again.

There did not seem to be any clothes shops left in the shopping centre. None of them have reopened and there are big To Let signs in the spaces where they were. I felt a bit sad about this, but I do not need any clothes anyway, and it would have been terrible to go into one and accidentally leave some hydraulic oil behind.

I went to the nut shop and bought dried coconut and walnuts, and then to the Body Shop for some moisturiser. I was very pleased to have some moisturiser, which I have been rationing out very carefully for months, but less impressed to discover that it now comes in a newly-modernised tub with a new picture and the proclamation that it is made of vegans.

This innovation has meant that they have felt themselves justified in charging three quid more than they used to, which in my opinion they jolly well aren’t.

I bought headache tablets and Germolene. I do not like buying this in Kendal, it is much better to get it from Mr. Carter at the chemist in Windermere, but it was there and I had had enough of shops by then. Incidentally, according to Mr. Carter, Germolene is the absolute best cream for cut fingers, he says that it is the Gold Standard, because of its hospital-grade anaesthetic, and I agree with him. We have doctored all sorts of injuries with it, and not lost as much as a finger so far.

Incidentally, Mark’s toe has been giving him some trouble again. When we looked at it last night we discovered a sharp bit of toenail still digging into the skin and making a small but significant hole.

We sanded it off with some eighty grit and put some Germolene on it, it will be fine.

I chucked everything in the back of the taxi with some relief, collected the new hoses and set off for home, feeling suitably cheery and retail-therapied.

I went out with the dogs afterwards, which was pretty good as well.

Have a picture.