At long last we have our heatwave.
It is twenty two degrees here in Windermere and the fish are practically dying in the lake.
I am not dying of heatwave-stroke, although I am pleased to announce that I have cast both my thermal vest and also my jersey. This is a very fine moment.
It is so hot and exciting that after work this evening we are going to head off in the camper van to one if the tarns, where we are going to spend the night and swim tomorrow. Tomorrow’s forecast is that the day will be even warmer.
The august Daily Telegraph is full of Government-issued warnings about how one ought to behave in a heatwave, all of which we are ignoring. It appears that everybody is ignoring them, there are a very lot of very, very pink people wandering sweatily around Bowness.
Even the dogs are ignoring them. All of the warnings say that you must not leave dogs in a conservatory, but ours are refusing to be ejected. They are lying blissfully on the sofa, saturated in sunshine, growling at anybody who is threatening to chuck them outside. The yard and the house are both very much cooler but they do not want to know.
They are just reckless.
We had a small taxi rank excitement last night. A naughty Indian, or perhaps Turkish, chap in a minibus was parked on the taxi rank. He has been there for a night or two but we haven’t been taking much notice, until last night I realised that he was actually hacking, as in, pretending to be a taxi and picking up customers.
He was not a licensed taxi driver, and it was not a licensed taxi.
My fury knew no bounds, and I can promise you that my unbounded fury is a jolly awesome thing to behold.
I waited until he reappeared, and tore him off such a strip as he had never been torn. I bellowed with even more fury than I did when Rosie did a wee on the duvet the other day. Goodness, I was cross.
He was looking small and intimidated as it was, and then Mark loomed up behind me, a foot or so taller and very solid.
He did not shout and bawl. He merely said to the chap, kindly: I think you’d better buzz off, mate, which the chap did, hastily, leaving Mark laughing, and me seething.
Unlicensed taxi drivers are a terrible thing. They are uninsured, might have any sort of rascally criminal record, and can do any sort of mischief they like and then vanish without a trace.
This one has vanished without a trace. He had jolly well better stay that way, because we are all watching for him now.
In other news, I have washed our dressing gowns and hung them in the yard, hopefully they will dry before the heatwave is over. One of the taxi companies has employed an Indian call centre to answer its telephone, and they are making something of a pig’s ear of it, and one of our elderly neighbours saw some black people in a van yesterday.
The neighbour was worried about the last one, because change comes slowly to Windermere. Mark explained that they were unloading things out of the van, which pointed to them not being burglars, and the neighbour was reassured. I do wish the BBC would not tell people troubling stories about gangs and knife crime. There is absolutely no reason for Windermere’s old age pensioners not to sleep easily in their beds.
I am off to my own bed, which will be in the camper van somewhere at the other end of the lake.
Adieu.
