I am in the taxi, and I am pleased to tell you that it is very quiet.
I am especially pleased because last night was not at all quiet. Indeed, it was really interestingly riotous and full of adventures.
Fortunately they were not my adventures. I was merely an idle but fascinated spectator. They were the adventures of a lot of intoxicated young people, one of whom might not have survived to tell the tale. I hope he was not dead, for his sake obviously, but also because it is a terrible thing to kill somebody when you are young and stupid. There are no happy endings in that particular case.
The excitement was a noisy fight, with what seemed to be a cast of thousands, who had been ejected from one of the local pubs. We were sitting opposite on the taxi rank and hence had a ringside view, and it was mostly the usual bellowing and encouragement to the other team of young men to Come On Then If You Think You’re Hard.
After a little while the bouncers joined in, presumably welcoming the diversion from an evening of telling tourists what time they closed and removing glasses from under people’s jackets, and the fight drifted off around a corner.
I did not see what happened next. The next I knew was the police turning up, followed by an ambulance, but Mark had a fare around the corner, and saw the next bit.
One young man punched another, who fell over with a sore face. The problem was that he bashed his head as he landed, and quite a lot of blood squirted out.
The awful thing was that once he was down, and soaked in blood, the other chap did not back away, but began to kick him.
I do not think it ended very well.
I do not know if the chap was inadvertently put out of his misery, but I hope not. I think it unlikely, actually, young men are reasonably robust when it comes to bashing one another about. A very happy ever after would be for both of them to think: crikey, that was close. Better not be such an idiot in future.
It seems that the youthful occupants of Bowness were not remotely chastened by such a terrible early example, because shortly afterwards there was another fight, by the Tourist Information Centre, which resulted in some weary-looking police loading some young men into the cages in the backs of their vans. I missed all of that one, and so cannot fill you in in any exciting details.
I had no adventures on my own account, except for picking up a chap from Kendal who had buzzed off from Mark’s taxi without paying some time ago.
We had extricated the cash from him with various threats in the end, but I did not fancy a repeat of the experience, and this time I requested cash up front, which he paid, albeit with some reluctance, and in the end even left a tip. I was quite pleased about this, and entirely forgave him for being a muppet on the previous occasion. Really, drink is a marvellous thing. I have never come across any substance with such a magical power to turn ordinary people into complete and utter idiots, what an amazing liquid it is.
In other news, we woke up this morning to a great deal of rain, which made my walk a chilly and grim affair, and a house filled with sleeping children. We were late getting up, but they were later, and eventually they crawled downstairs for breakfast at around five in the afternoon.
It has been a long and exhausting half term, they explained.
It is going to take them a few days to sleep it all off.
