Great outdoors

We have still got sunshine.

I don’t suppose I need to tell you much about it, because I expect that you have it as well, and jolly splendid it is. I am pleased to tell you that we have absolutely made the most of it, and we were both very glad that we came back here instead of hanging about Lucy’s house screwing things together and bashing other things about. It was an inspired decision. There is no place more lovely than the Lake District on a sunny spring day, and we have occupied the entire day wandering blissfully about the Great Outdoors.

I rushed round when we got up, shoving washing in the machine and feeding all of the little creatures. The cats have settled in nicely, and have occupied the entire day either eating or snoozing in the sunshine. If I behaved like that I would be the size of a barrage balloon in no time, but it does not seem to trouble them, and they are both elegant and slender, sometimes life is unjust, they don’t even need to try and fit into cocktail dresses.

We dashed off to walk up the fell before breakfast, which was exhausting because Lucy walks a bit faster than I do, and I was puffing and panting like the exhaust of a clapped-out taxi by the time we got to the second hilltop, but it was worth it. There was the usual magnificent view, considerably improved by the sunshine’s golden glow instead of the grey murk of endless icy rain, and also I thought probably I had shrunk down at least two dress sizes and would have to start thinking about getting my dungarees taken in.

Apart from blackbirds and blue tits and skylarks and all the rest of the morning treetop-chorus, it was an uneventful walk, although Rosie had a cow-related moment of terror which involved her taking a lengthy detour down the bank and through the stream, rather than  brave the terrifying peril that lurked menacingly on the path.

It did not matter about her going in the stream because she had already been in the tarn anyway

We got home and refuelled ourselves with bowls of raspberry yoghurt porridge, after which we loaded the dogs into the back of the car and went off to Coniston.

We lived in Coniston when Lucy was born, and for the first four years of her life, and she had almost no memories of it. She thought she would like to go and see and investigate her roots, like Americans do in Limerick, only without the massive financial outlay and hours of stiff legs on an aeroplane.

Coniston, for those who have never been, is a tiny village on the shore of Coniston Water, surrounded by huge fells and decidedly quaint in its customs and appearance. Lucy was intrigued to discover that people can live so far away from a supermarket without actually starving to death, but I assured her that we did, once.

We went first to the sunny, bluebell-filled graveyard, and to the church, but there was a funeral going on, so we could not go in. Today was not our day for sadness, so we left them to it and walked around to the house where we used to live, and then down to the lake, whilst I regaled her with stories of her sisters’ villainous deeds, of her own impossibly rascally childhood, and of all the adventures from our Coniston life.

It was both happy and terribly sad to talk about it all, because of the person we left behind in the quiet graveyard, but it was a lovely day. The dogs chased the ducks into the lake, and we breathed the glorious creamy hawthorn, and I remembered everything I had loved so much about Coniston, and Windermere felt like a breezily cosmopolitan metropolis when we got back.

We made salmon crepes for dinner, mine for a taxi picnic, and Lucy’s to be eaten whilst resting her aching feet, because she does not have to be back at work until tomorrow.

I cleaned out the taxi then, to be ready for the incoming Bank Holiday hordes, and filled it up with fuel. I will have to do that again tomorrow, before the garage runs out on Sunday, which it probably will.

There might not be very much diary over the next few days. I am expecting to be entirely occupied with taxis. If there is not a diary entry tomorrow, it will be because I am rolling in filthy lucre after a very busy night.

I am not holding my breath, however