It has been something of a difficult day.
It started rather excitingly. The children did not feel especially inclined to go and empty the dogs in the rain, so I went by myself, and they missed an adventure, because we were halfway around the park when a huge yellow helicopter buzzed in from the west. After circling once or twice, it landed practically right next to me, just beside the cricket pitch.
I do not much like helicopters, or drones for that matter. They put me in mind of huge airborne predators, and I feel uncomfortably visible, as if I was being hunted by some beady-eyed winged terror.
You may laugh, but we have all seen what happens to worms.
Anyway, you will not be in the least surprised to discover that I was not being hunted, or probably even noticed, other than as a mildly inconvenient potential obstruction. I reminded my reptilian brain of this, firmly, and after that I thought it was very exciting.
Fortunately they missed the cricket pitch, because it is not long since it has been rolled, and the chap who does these things gets upset. He does not even like dog paw prints in his beautiful grass, never mind a great big helicopter footprint.
Obviously everybody else in Windermere thought it was exciting as well, because within a few minutes about a hundred people had chanced to amble casually along, walking their dogs, just hanging about for a few moments to gawp.
I gawped unashamedly.
I do not think I have seen a helicopter land so close before, and it was quite thrilling. They are bigger then you might think, and terrifically noisy.
After a little while some ambulance men trundled in through the gate, pushing an old chap on a stretcher, who they loaded into the bowels of the helicopter. It would not have been a nice adventure if he had been the sort of old chap with an oxygen mask and everybody rushing around looking stern and businesslike, but actually he was sitting up and looking just as excited as everybody else, so I could carry on enjoying the spectacle without feeling guilty.
This was a magnificent start to the day, and I floated home feeling like all life can be seen here in Windermere on our very doorsteps, who needs television
Alas, homecoming was a grim and dreary reality.
Somebody had shoved a pram into the boot of the taxi at about midnight last night, yes, I thought that as well, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t. They pushed it too hard, probably because of alcohol, and it set the fire extinguisher off.
I can hardly bear to describe the horrible mess that resulted.
White powder was everywhere, thickly layered on every surface.
It looked like an explosion in the toilets of a certain sort of nightclub.
I parked the taxi in the driveway of the holiday house next door, because there is nobody there at the moment, and we don’t have a driveway because we have a shed instead.
I dragged round the whole apparatus of extension leads and hoover, brushes and cloths, and plugged in the hoover, only to discover that it was blocked.
It was raining, a lot.
I dismantled the hoover in the rain, because I kept thinking that it would only take a minute to find and resolve the problem, and an hour later I was soaked to the skin with a non-functioning hoover and a taxi full of white powder.
I remembered that we still had the old hoover, and retrieved that, which was blocked as well.
This did at least yield after ten minutes of furious unscrewing, and functioned just about well enough to slurp up some increasingly damp powder.
It sets when it gets wet.
You can’t sweep it, because it flies up in huge powdery clouds and re-settles on the very bit you have just swept.
I think I must draw a veil over the rest of the experience, because it is too horrible even to remember. Suffice to say that it took hours and hours, and by the end of it the taxi was more or less de-powdered, apart from the bits that nobody can see. I don’t care about those.
Other than that I was soaked, and every surface was soaked, and next door’s driveway was covered in dodgy looking white lumps, which I had to hose off.
I had so many other things that I needed to do that I did not have time to hose myself off, and had to have a cursory wipe before tonight’s university course. This did not extend as far as my hair, which is still thickly coated in recently-set white.
I expect everybody will have just thought that I have had a very shocking week.
I must just tell you that Mark had a terrible experience as well, as I discovered when I telephoned to grumble about the powdery taxi. He leaves his keys in his car at work so that it can be moved if necessary, and when he got back to it it had locked itself with the keys inside.
He is Mark, and so it was not as dreadful as it would have been for the rest of us.
He removed the wing mirror and drilled a hole underneath it where it would not show on the outside or leak rainwater. This is important when you live in Windermere. Then he poked a stick through the hole and used it to lever the door handle open, and put the wing mirror back.
He said it took about five minutes, but the wing mirror does not work on the automatic magic control now. Mine does not have this anyway and I have to wind the window down every time, so I was not very sympathetic.
All the same, I am very glad it was not me.
I would be still there now.
