Don’t come to the Lake District.
It is beautiful, but I am afraid that you might have a horrid time.
The sun is shining, the weather is glorious, and we are bursting at the seams again.
It is not as bad as it was on the Bank Holiday weekend, when we heard that we had the highest number of visitors ever, but it is still pretty full.
It must be awful for the poor visitors.
From our point of view it is magnificent, like a printing press for tenners.
All the same, I feel so desperately sorry for the people who are here. They have made the long journey up here on the endless motorways, longing for a peaceful day in the tranquil sunshine, ambling contentedly through the leafy countryside and gazing at the calm waters.
Instead they have found themselves endlessly waiting in hot, increasingly bad-tempered queues. You can’t use the boats or go in a pub or eat in a restaurant unless you have booked online in advance, which most people haven’t. The tiny few who have managed to be admitted have got to cover their faces with the loathsome masks, despite the punishing heat. There have been several accidents, so the traffic is crawling in long, noisy queues. This is just as well, because the pavements are so busy that people are falling off them into the roads.
Don’t come to the Lake District. It is not a gentle, life-affirming experience today.
I am afraid that it is not going to be a very nice summer. The government are still stopping people from going abroad, and so pretty much the entire British population is holidaying in the UK. This sounds encouraging, except we are simply not equipped for this any more. You can’t have a lovely time in somewhere which is crammed to the seams with twice as many people as usual, especially when the local pubs and restaurants are only allowed to admit half of the number that they usually do, and is charging twice as much because of it.
I suggest that you stay at home and drink cocktails in your garden. You will have a happier time and you can drink a lot more of them before you run out of money.
Also you will save a fortune on not needing a taxi home.
I would like to be drinking cocktails in the garden, but of course I am not. I am on the taxi rank, looking at the hot pink people of the world trailing past and wearily quarrelling with one another.
When we got up, Mark dashed off to the farm, where he explained that he had some emergency gardening to do, and I faffed about with the washing. We have decided to wash absolutely everything we own today, because of the good drying weather, and also because it is Sheet Changing Day.
It not the usual weekly Sheet Changing Day, but a special annual event. It is the day, we have resolved, to part company with the heavy winter duvet, and exchange it for the summer blankets.
I like the summer blankets. They are pretty and soft.
I like the winter duvet as well, but it is a different sort of like. It is a cinnamon-and-orange-and-log-fires sort of like. The blankets are a hawthorn-blossom-and-cut-grass sort of like.
We have reached this conclusion after a couple of nights of feeling like the sort of sausages that you wrap in bacon and cook in the oven at Christmas.
Tonight we will be cool and peaceful, and I am looking forward to it.
I got the picnic ready, after which we both rushed out to the camper van for some hasty DIY before we had to start working.
Mark took the ladder and climbed up to the roof to inspect the leak. He took it all apart and filled it with some special glue and fitted it all back together. He thinks that is is fixed now, it was because the sealant had become too old to work, and the screws underneath had rusted away. Tomorrow he can start taking the spoiled wood out.
I stripped the last of the vinyl.
It was a good job I knew that Mark was doing things to the roof, because when I came to work later, every single taxi driver told me that they had seen him on the ladder. It would have been rubbish if he had meant it as a surprise.
It is coming on nicely, and I have added a photograph, so that you can see it all looking forlorn and sad. This will make it feel magnificent when it is gleaming and shiny and new in a few weeks.
Number One Daughter’s team is in second place. There is one more day to go.
They are doing brilliantly well. Even if they don’t win I will still be jolly proud, they are amazing athletes.
I will light a candle to the Gods for them in the morning.
