The thing about having had a day off is that I am now in no state whatsoever to write anything sensible.
It is midnight, far from the early night I had promised myself. I have not written to you and I am not in bed. Worse, I have drunk half a bottle of Indian Restaurant Red and a glass of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and am feeling decidedly woozy.
We did not even bother to ask for a glass of water in the restaurant, just glugged the wine. Dearie me, wouldn’t you think there would come a day when one would grow out of such teenage behaviour.
Maybe when I am about eighty perhaps.
In the meantime I will try hard to write sensible and lucid prose. I have got my tongue sticking out and am doing my best. I have also got a glass of water now, although I suspect it is too late and its only effect will be to compel visits to the bathroom in the stilly watches of the night.
We had a lovely time in the restaurant. By the time we had finished we were the only customers in there, and we leaned back in our chairs and had a long gossip with the waiters. This was splendid. Jay is going to go to Mecca for the Haj. He is not sure if he is looking forward to this in case he has got to be a reformed character when he gets back. I do not think he has committed any terrible sins so far but he is not optimistic, and has started to grow a beard for the occasion, which perhaps might help.
I shall look forward to hearing about it when he comes home.
It has been the laziest of lazy days. It was pouring with rain this morning, so we did not go over the fell. Instead Lucy came with me and we walked the dogs around the park. Well, we walked. We took the ball for the dogs and they belted around after it, hurling themselves into puddles and barking madly. If they had been having a Most Irritating Dog competition I think Roger Poopy would probably have won. He waits until you bend down to pick up the ball and then barks in your ear. Also once he gets fed up of running after the ball he just runs away with it and leaves it somewhere miles away, and you have got to plough though the mud to fetch it yourself, because he won’t let Rosie get it.
Rosie never gets fed up of running after the ball.
After that we tidied up and went into Kendal for Lucy to have a haircut. Kendal was nice, even in the rain. I have been so solitary and quiet for such a long time that it felt like the metropolis, although Lucy, whose life is filled with inner city villainy, was enchanted by its air of tranquil peaceableness. We looked at books and then went into Farrers because Lucy thought she might like to purchase some tea so that she does not need to drink coffee at work all day.
The thing about going into a teashop where everybody is knowledgeable about tea is that it takes ages, and I mooched about wondering if I ought to buy some hand-crafted upmarket Easter Eggs whilst Lucy inhaled wafts of tea and discussed their benefits for your chakras, or something.
I did not purchase any hand-crafted Easter Eggs but if I save up enough before I go back to Kendal to get my own hair cut next week then I will look again. They were in such splendidly middle-class boxes that you would have to put them on a coffee table and be nonchalant about them when you had visitors, like you might do with a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets and a book of Don McCullin’s war photographs.
Lucy came home with short tidy hair and some tea called Pitta Dosha, well-known Oriental cure for all inconvenient ailments. She tried the tea afterwards, and I thought it smelled nice but preferred to stick to my own Red Chai favourite. Also I don’t have any ailments at the moment, apart from the sort that would be perfectly cured by being twenty years younger.
I am going to have an ailment in the morning if I don’t go to bed.
Have a picture of Mark on an oil rig.
