I am beginning on today’s entry a mere halfway through the day.
This is because I have a small window of peaceful undisturbedness.
I am taking a car for an MOT, and I am sitting quietly, apart from a very irritating radio, in the waiting room at a garage belonging to some bearded Land-Rover driving acquaintance of Mark’s.
It is not my car. It is Elspeth’s, which she has kindly offered as a potentially useful mode of transport for my father, because it has lots of space in the back and a hoist for his new high-speed electric chair. I am not exactly sure that my father, who usually drives a Lexus, is going to like it very much. It has been sitting in her garden for the last two years, after having belonged to her not-very-mobile mother, and is as beautiful as one might expect under those circumstances. There are cobwebs and a scraped panel, neither of which will enchant my father. He usually likes cream leather and the sort of seats which know who is driving and helpfully slide into their favourite driving position.
I would not like that. I change my driving position along with my mood, and my boots.
Also it is an automatic, which he will like, and which I absolutely loathe. I have had to drive everywhere with the toes of my left foot tightly curled as I have clamped it to the floor. The gear changes all happen in the wrong places, and you cannot slam it down a couple of gears in order to accelerate hard at times when a little positive driving is called for. It decides for itself when to do these things, and so far we have disagreed every time.
Still, we will see how it goes on. If it passes then I will take it down for his inspection and see what he thinks.
In the meantime it has been a busy morning, as I rushed to get everything done before MOT time. It will not have escaped your notice that it is Clean Sheets Day, and I was dashing around dusting even before I had taken the dogs out.
By a great stroke of good fortune the day’s rain did not begin to fall until we had come back from our walk. It was an exciting walk, enlivened by the Galloway herd being in frolicsome spirits. The more youthful members of the herd were feeling playful, and were chasing one another round and round in circles, bashing one another with their broad foreheads, and locking the places where their horns might grow one day, trying to shove one another down the hillside.
Our path went right through the middle of them, and we stood back and eyed them with some trepidation.
Cows are not especially dangerous animals, in that they generally don’t eat people, but one would not wish to be walking across a steep, muddy slope with twenty of them, all weighing about half a ton, charging excitedly down towards you.
Cows have not been gifted with brakes, but they do not necessarily know this, and this lot were whisking around and kicking their hooves in the air and generally prancing in a manner that suggested carefree recklessness.
When they saw us coming, they all lifted their heads in the air and mooed excitedly. One enthusiast scampered excitedly in our direction, probably hoping that we had come from the farm with an armful of cow cake, but discovered his lack of brakes when he inadvertently careered into one of his friends, who did not take it well and turned round to address the matter.
Whilst they were all thus distracted we seized the moment and dashed past them. I was trying to persuade the dogs to run on ahead, so that if anybody got chased it would be them and not me, but they were having none of it, and stuck to my heels like an Indian salesman in a Delhi marketplace who has recognised an inexperienced European.
Of course in the end we made it past them, and they all charged off in the opposite direction where presumably something more exciting had caught their eyes, and we sloped off up the next fell as fast as we could.
Rosie was in trouble then. She has taken to eating cow dung, having a particular preference for the runniest kind. This is making our walks very tiresome, because I have to keep a close eye on her to stop her tiptoeing off and burying her nose in it and slurping.
When we got through the cows she had clearly been doing just that, and cow dung was dripping off her face in great dribbly strings.
They must have heard me shouting as far away as Bowness.
I am very glad to be here, in the garage waiting room, even despite the radio.
There is not an animal in sight.
LATER NOTE: The car failed, and I have left it at the garage to acquire a new spring. This was more complicated than it sounds, and involved a two-stage journey getting lifts back to our house and then to Elspeth’s house, where I had blithely dumped my taxi in the middle of her garden. This turned out to be a happy outcome, because I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking coffee and gassing, which was thoroughly enjoyable, if somewhat idle. I am going to collect it on Wednesday, although I have not quite worked the getting-there details out yet. I have even considered the possibility of using public transport, the very thought of which sends a chill shiver down my spine. I have been on buses before, but really it is not the sort of experience one would care to repeat.
I am certainly not getting a taxi. They cost a fortune.
It is going to be a New Challenge.
I shall look forward to it.
