I am still at work.
Obviously I have not been at work for the entire time since last I wrote to you, although I am beginning to feel like it a bit. I am at work again, because of all the usual mortgage-and-school-fees reasons.
It is different this evening, because the day has been quite astonishingly warm. Bowness is filled to bursting with people. They are not getting in taxis because they are day-trippers, and have brought their cars. They are filling every parking space and crawling painfully along the roads hoping to find empty ones. They are pink and sticky with ice cream, and shouting at their children, and quite frankly this evening, readers, I loathe them all.
Usually it takes until September before I feel like this. Up until then I am usually quite sanguine about visitors. Today I have had several rude Arabs in my taxi, innumerable disgustingly besmeared children, and some ancient Scottish people who were too fat to get off the back seat and who moaned about the price. I considered giving them the fare back and telling them to spend it on membership to Weightwatchers, but then thought I would rather keep it.
Apart from the insufferably irritatingness of being at work, I have had a very happy day indeed, because I went off to walk up the fells for the first time in absolutely ages.
I have not been able to do this at all since my toe was crushed by the falling firewood, and it was a truly magnificent moment.
My toe has indeed recovered somewhat. That is to say, it still looks disgusting, but as long as nothing brushes against it it doesn’t hurt at all. It has a stubby and reassuring beginning of a nail, some blackened bits and some yellow bits, and it is starting to grow some new skin. It is no longer causing me any walking difficulties, and I can reassure you all that I am almost certainly not likely to die of it.
I expect you are most mightily relieved.
The difficulty with walking has been the wobbly ankle, whose misfortune was so long ago that I had practically forgotten I had done it. It needs to be exercised in order to regrow some muscles to take the place of the rubbish ones, and I have not been able to do it because of the flat toe.
Today it was sufficiently warm and dry for me to be able to climb the fells in my flip-flops, so I did.
It was a bit wobbly in places when I thought my foot might not quite hold me up, but I am resigned to no longer being a mountain goat, and I can tell you that it was truly wonderful.
The smell hit me as soon as I walked through the gate at the bottom of the fell, of late-blossom and wet grass and sheep, and the slowly darkening leaves, and I stood still and breathed with delight until Rosie trod on my foot in her impatience to be off, so we set off.
The dogs were also beside themselves with joy. They love the walk, and have missed it terribly. Rosie hurled herself into every beck and tarn, spluttering and snuffling with muddy happiness. Roger Poopy was more restrained, but even he belted up and down, rolling in all the badger poo he could find and barking at long-vanished squirrels. I wandered along thinking contentedly about stories and listening to the birds and feeling restored to peace.
We had an exciting moment when all of the cows were clustered around the gate on the way back. Rosie is terrified of cows and kept trying to run away. I am not terrified of cows, but had some uneasy imaginings on the topic of bare feet and sharp hooves with half a ton of cow on top of them. Fortunately, when I flapped my hat at them they shifted an inch or two, grudgingly, in the heat, and Rosie shot under the gate as if she had been a greased weasel, and I picked my way past them, cautiously, trying to avoid the wetter dollops of poo.
When we got home I realised that the dogs had become so revoltingly unkempt that I no longer wished to breathe next to them, and so stripped the tablecloth off and got the clippers out.
Both dogs are now bald, and poor Roger Poopy has a few sore bits where he wagged at the wrong moments. I have bathed them and scrubbed their collars as well.
I had to pause halfway through to collect Oliver and the not-yet-Mrs. Oliver from the train station. They have had a wonderful time in Manchester, and were looking very contented with their world.
Not-yet-Mrs. Oliver had to get on a train back to Scotland not long afterwards. I was sorry to see her go, and told Oliver how nice we thought she was.
Of course she is, he said, smugly. I’m hardly going to choose somebody who isn’t lovely, am I? What did you expect?
Readers, I had no reply.
