Once again we are north of the Wall.
We are making a slow, and late, journey up.
Mark was not working, but all the same, we did not even get started until the afternoon. This was because I had lots that I needed to do to make up for yesterday’s guilty shirk, and Mark had to go to the farm because the back of his car was full of fenceposts.
Also he wanted to plant some things in a hurry before we left.
The planting needed doing urgently, because we think that at long last we are past the last frost, and the growing season has started in earnest.
In France they tell you you must not plant things when the moon is waning, but we have never bothered to take any notice of this, which scandalised our neighbours when we were there. They told us that we should take Oliver up to the sacred well on the mountainside and dip him in there to cure him of some childhood ailment, I forget what it was, and we didn’t do that either. I have long felt vaguely guilty about that, we might have missed out on some miracle.
Today Mark has planted beetroot and parsnips and carrots and something called parsley root. We do not know if this will be nice or not, but if not we will buy some rabbits and feed it to them, and then eat those so that it is not wasted. We did that in France as well, and it worked nicely.
I did not go to the farm. I stayed at home and cooked things to eat whilst we are away, This was very much easier than usual, because Lucy helped me. It is brilliant to cook things when somebody else is clearing away and washing up, being a chef might be more fun than I have always thought.
Between us we cooked coconut madras prawns and some coconut chicken for the way home, because Oliver will not eat prawns. I do not think he eats coconut either, but he might if he is hungry enough. We made a chicken curry and fried some sweet potatoes in smoked paprika and garlic, to heat up in the camper van oven later. This does not sound like very much, but it was a colossal amount of messing about and clearing up, and in the end it turned out to have been worth every minute, because they were absolutely ace.
When we had finished we made cheese on toast for everybody’s breakfast, but I had lost concentration by then, and burned the toast, which Lucy had to scrape into the compost bucket.
We drenched the conservatory in water, so that it will be hotly tropical in there whilst we are away, and flung everything excitedly into the camper van ready for the endless trail north.
We listened to Derren Brown on the story tape on the way up, which I like very much, there is nothing nicer than listening to somebody telling you things that you think already
Lucy has not been to Oliver’s school before, indeed, has never been this far north for any reason at all. She was supposed to be writing an essay about Policing A Pandemic on her computer in the back, but after a while she gave up and gazed out at the scenery.
There is a lot of scenery in Scotland. Some of it, you will perhaps be surprised to hear, still has snow on it.
It is almost June. I think Scotland has got this Global Warming thing cracked, really I do. Whatever problems Scotland has, and I agree there are many, I think we can safely say that overheating is not among them.
We stopped at the House of Bruar. It was far too late by then to mill about their food hall, looking with interest at everything but still only buying smoked trout, exactly the way we always do. Instead we unloaded the dogs and went together to puff up the waterfalls. I have attached a picture of the bridge.
This was splendid. The sun was not exactly setting, but very low in the sky, and we saw, for the first time ever in my life, a pair of cuckoos. The water hurtled down and crashed on the rocks, and the dogs sniffed things, and Lucy said that it was really not much like Northampton.
We drove on after that, and reached our remote mountainside parking space long after ten at night, but this did not matter, because it is Scotland at Midsummer, and it was still twilight.
It has not really gone dark.
We are in the loneliest place in the world. When you open the door there is nothing but skies and heather. Lucy and I are in bed, and Mark is in the shower. Our legs are pleasantly aching from our waterfall walk, and we are full of coconut Madras prawns and spicy sweet potatoes and grape and apple rum.
All around us is the endless Scottish summer twilight.
Life is jolly good.
