We had a day off.
There were lots of reasons for this, but one of the nice things about the Lake District in the rain is that nobody wants taxis, and so it is all right not to bother.
Mark needed to get on with doing things to the camper van. In a few weeks we will be setting sail on our huge journey to both the north and the south ends of the kingdom, and so he is giving it what he has described as a service, but of course really it is something of a hasty engine reconstruction project.
He is replacing the cam belt, and has discovered that some pipes have become rotten. These are for cooling the oil down, and are an important part of an engine. .
He telephoned the people who sell oil cooling pipes today, and as luck would have it, the phone was answered by an ancient old chap who had been selling engine bits since even before our camper van was born. Hence he understood exactly what Mark was talking about, and said that he would do his very best to find some.
Mark said that it would not matter too much if he could not, because he could probably make some in an emergency.
Fortunately he does not have to, because this afternoon the chap rang back and said that he had found some. They are coming from Italy and France, and he thinks that they are the very last set left in the whole world. Nobody makes pipes for ancient camper vans any more, and he was fortunate enough to find two warehouses which dug around amongst the cobwebs and the mouse nests in dark corners, and unearthed the very ones we need.
He said that we would not get any more ever again, because the world of motor spares is now run by gigantic computers who will not talk about old pipes, because they do not have the right sort of numbers and labels.
When it needs some more one day, Mark will have to make those, but we do not need to worry about it now.
Whilst Mark was rooting about underneath the camper van bonnet I was doing things in the house, where it was not raining.
I was re-waxing my old coat so that Mark could use it.
It was not in a very good state.
Quite apart from its tendency to leak, which hopefully will have been fixed by the waxing, it did look very much as though it had been worn by somebody who had been cleaning out an ancient cow byre, which it had. It was also very apparent that the same wearer had been interested in collecting garden manure, and that they had some dogs with muddy paws.
There were some mouldy bits where it had been hanging against a damp wall, and an ancient filthy handkerchief in the pocket, but apart from all of that it was fine.
It is a lot better now.
Things came to a very hasty end when we realised that the afternoon had come to an end rather earlier than expected, and that it was time to go for our birthday tea.
Obviously it is not our birthdays in October, although actually by a curious chance of fate it is my brother’s birthday today. It was the occasion of our using up the Afternoon Tea voucher which we had been given when it was our birthdays, and which we have been saving ever since.
It was very much later than we had thought, and we had to dash about in unseemly haste to get showered and changed, because of course you cannot go out for afternoon tea looking as if you have just crawled out from underneath a van or been scrubbing cow muck off things.
We had planned to walk down, but it was so late that in a panic we telephoned every taxi driver of our acquaintance to see if anybody might come and get us, but they were all busy, or, like us, shirking.
In the end we had to walk anyway, and were rushing down the hill with our umbrellas when we had the magnificently good fortune to spot a bus, which, much to our surprise, stopped when we waved at it.
The last time I was on a bus was 2014, and the last time Mark was on a bus was 2007, so it was an excitingly novel start to the evening, although it was very irritating, since we were in a hurry, because it kept stopping at places where we did not want to go. Nevertheless, it got us there in the end, and since it stopped round the corner nobody saw us getting off it, and so we arrived in time, with some dignity, and without being red in the face and panting.
The afternoon tea was splendid. It included a glass of champagne, but Mark told them just to leave the bottle, which they did, and we sat by an enormous window in comfortable armchairs and watched the steamer boats coming and going up and down the lake.
Of course we can watch this all the time from the taxi rank, but it is immeasurably nicer when you are in an armchair with a glass of champagne and strawberries in your hand.
We sat there for ages, eating cucumber sandwiches and thinking how lovely the world is. We wondered where we might live if we had a million pounds, and concluded, regretfully, that probably it would still be our house, but we would buy the one next door as well, so that we would have some more handy parking, and could build a garage.
In the end we had to go, which we did, reluctantly, staggering a bit because we had drunk the entire bottle by then and were beginning to feel a bit wobbly.
Note, this accounts for any technical inaccuracies, spelling mistakes and incomprehensible waffling. I am, in fact, somewhat intoxicated.
There was a handy taxi on the rank this time, so we jumped in it before the driver had time to notice that it was us.
I am going to go and have an early night. It was absolutely splendid.
I like going out very much indeed.
