I am pleased to announce that nothing goes together as well as sunshine and washing, and today I have had both in abundance.
I had so much washing that we had to peg some out in the yard overnight before we went to bed, because of course we had not only got two days of camper van garments, but also all of Oliver’s sheets, towels and left-behind laundry.
Some days it is so exciting to be me that I expect you are all collapsing over your cornflakes with envy. How to have a Perfect Life in the Lake District.
I pegged some more washing out when we got up, and some more when the first lot dried. Then I made the extremely irritating discovery that whilst nobody has been looking, Roger Poopy has been up to Lucy’s bedroom, again, and curled up in her bed, leaving a disgusting nest of dog hair and paw prints behind him. I know it was Roger because Rosie’s legs are too short for her to climb that high, and she has to leap about and scrabble, making hopeful squeaky noises, when she wants to ascend anything above the height of about two stairs up.
The door must have been left open in a vague moment, and he has taken full advantage.
I tore the quilt cover off the bed and bellowed curses at him, making him cower in his basket, but I do not believe for a minute that he was so repentant he would not do it again, and so I have now jammed the door closed.
I shoved the quilt cover in with Oliver’s towels and glowered at the dogs, who pretended not to know.
In between laundry I went to the post office, and entrusted Oliver’s handkerchiefs and socks to the Royal Mail, and after all of that I took the dogs for a long walk.
This was an important part of the day, because I want you to know that the Chocolate Button Abstinence is still ongoing, and I am fully expecting to be a size eight by Christmas. I have not eaten a single chocolate button for days and days now, and more importantly, have decided not to eat anything just because it is nice, but to wait until I am hungry.
You would be surprised how difficult this is turning out to be.
There are so many nice things in our fridge, not all of them are even chocolate buttons, and it seems such a tragedy to think that they might go off.
I thought I would encourage myself along the way by purchasing some expensively ethical yoghurt that had been reduced to half price in Booths, and eating that with a completely clear conscience. I discovered quite quickly why it had been reduced to half price. It was not comfort food. Indeed, it would have made an unripe lemon taste warmly reassuring. Even with a hopeful banana squished into it, it was still ghastly.
I ate it anyway, because I was starving by then, and because of having a vague feeling that awful was probably a good thing, possibly even using up calories in the digestive process.
I strode off on a walk once I was replete, which I wasn’t really, but it was about as close as it is going to get, and actually that was utterly brilliant. It was springtime in the Lake District in the sunshine. Larks were in full chirp, the apple blossom is out, and the world was perfect. The only difficult moment came when we had to push our way through a little knot of very hairy young bullocks clustered around the gate. I had to carry Rosie, who is so scared of cows that she completely froze, and I had to check afterwards to make sure that she had not done a wee all down my shirt.
Mark came home and said that he was fed up of working all of the time and never doing anything nice, which was not completely accurate, because we went for a walk together the day before yesterday, but that he had booked us into the Mela Indian restaurant for dinner in Bowness.
I ate some curry made with cream and yoghurt and cheese and almonds. I ate it all and scraped the plate. The we drank a bottle of red wine between us.
We were too intoxicated to walk home, and so we went and pestered one of the drivers on the taxi rank. He is called Chubby, which is actually really his genuine name, not a nickname because he is round, which he isn’t. He laughed and laughed, and we tried to overpay him and he tried not to charge us anything, and we rolled back in at home feeling very joyous with the world.
The only problem is that I am going to have to eat a jolly lot of ethical yoghurt tomorrow to make up for it.
