Dear everybody who lives in London.
I have every sympathy for you. I have long envied Londoners because of theatres and concerts and art galleries and getting to go to all the parties that the Queen holds to celebrate another twenty five years on the five pound notes, but today I have nothing but pity.
I am very glad that I am not in London, baking on the liquid pavements.
It is jolly nice to live in the Lake District today.
It is not nearly so hot here, although it is very warm and sunny and we have spent the day splashing about in the lake. Not in Windermere, which is where the horrible noisy steamer boats and the sewage works are. We have been at High Dam.
We went up last night after work in the camper van, and parked at about three in the morning. The summer is slowly winding down, so it was still dark, and we spent a little while admiring the stars before collapsing into bed.
We parked in the shady spot under the trees in order to avoid too much climate change as the sun made its journey into the blue. Just for the benefit of anybody who is misfortunate enough to be in London, there are no street lights, so it was not shady when we arrived. It was very dark, and we were briefly disturbed in the middle of the night by a stag, barking warnings, presumably to other importunate stags, somewhere in the woods. It was loud and close, and the dogs barked back, and were shouted at to shut up.
The day was still pleasantly cool when we got up. We filled our bags with picnic and hiked up the hill to the dam, where we collapsed on blankets in the shade, and passed a tranquil half an hour drinking our morning coffee and shouting at the dogs.
The dogs are being a complete nuisance. Rosie is, as I might have mentioned, in that girlie state of desirability that comes to all dogs at six monthly intervals. Roger Poopy’s father, who is a disgusting old lech, is in hot and determined pursuit, which is upsetting Roger Poopy, who is in love with her. This is entirely and passionately reciprocated by Rosie, who thinks that nobody in the whole world is as wise and sophisticated and clever as Roger Poopy. She tags adoringly along at his heels and will even lick out his ears, a task for which there has never been a single other volunteer ever in the history of the planet.
Roger Poopy is determined that his father should leave her alone. Having been subjected to the degradations of sexual abuse from his father throughout his own youth, and even occasionally today when he is caught unawares, he is protecting Rosie’s innocence with savage violence.
This is not making for a peaceful coexistence. I could quite cheerfully have tipped all of them in the lake by the end of today.
In fact we did tip them all in the lake, several times, and swam across it a couple of times ourselves.
This was lovely. The water was warm on the surface, cool where it had been stirred up, and we wallowed across it with long, lazy strokes. There was a mother duck with a host of fluffy babies, and a blue dragonfly whizzing around, and the occasional little fish hoping to taste a toe or two.
In the end of course we had to leave, because we all had to go to work tonight, and we felt the heat rushing up to meet us as we ambled down the hill.
It has been the nicest heatwave ever. Lucy rang in the middle of it to tell us that she is coming home tomorrow and so we are going to go again tomorrow evening.
We are going to do that instead of going to work. It is going to be a frantically busy day anyway because her bedroom is full of Oliver’s luggage.
There might not be a diary entry.
I think I am going to be otherwise engaged.
