Bootiful

I have got a new pair of boots.

Attached is a photograph, you can consider it to be Before and After. Before Me and After Me, that is.

Of course they are so beautiful I am not certain I want to wear them just yet, because, as the picture illustrates, I will only spoil them. I might just have tomorrow morning in my old lines and wear the new ones when I get back. In any case, moving into a pair of new boots is always traumatic.

I discovered last night, talking about boot-wearing, that according to the local supplier of immaculate truths, being the Westmorland Gazette, last week a walker was attacked by the Galloway cows on the fell where I go walking. She had to go to hospital. I do not know what she had done to them. On the whole they are bucolically tranquil and uninterested in passers-by, although I suppose anything is possible. Yesterday I watched a woman clicking her tongue and waving her hands about trying to encourage them to come to her, for what purpose I can’t begin to imagine. They were treating her with lofty disdain, but I can see that it could easily have gone badly.

Either way I am not going to tell Rosie about it. She is quite terrified enough of cows as it is.

The summer months are very full of half-witted tourists, trailing optimistically over the fells and leaving their dog poo dangling from the branches of trees in nasty black plastic bags, like Christmas decorations in a Tim Burton film. I do not know why they do this. I watched one last week who simply could not manage to cross the beck on the stepping stones. These are so straightforward  that even the cows could probably manage them, but she could not. She was round, and shrieked and teetered. Rosie got fed up of waiting in the end and barged past her, which almost brought her to a splashy conclusion, except fortunately her husband caught her. I had to try very hard not to be unkindly disappointed about that.

It did not rain today, not in the least, and in fact the sun shone so benevolently one could almost imagine we had never left the EU and were still in receipt of their Fine Weather Grant. The dogs bounded and gambolled and then collapsed, panting, in muddy puddles, and I sighed in the knowledge that my nose is becoming ever pinker. This has happened since the sun made an appearance, my face has taken on the hue of Barbie’s Dream Castle. I do not mind this, because I rarely look in a mirror often enough to notice, but it has been pointed out to me on more than one occasion, and I thought that perhaps I should pack some of the disgusting tinted moisturiser ready for going north to Oliver’s school play tomorrow, but forgot. I will have to try and remember before I go. Brown and smeary is not a great improvement on bright magenta, but it is a start.

I have mostly packed now, apart from the things I have forgotten. I spent most of the day gazing dreamily at my dissertation, switching sentences around and checking the bibliography and getting so lost in reading the reference books that I had to become very cross with myself and tell myself sternly to get on with the job in hand.

This was a very happy way of occupying an afternoon, and I did not in the least want to drag myself away to go to work, but of course in the end it had got to be done. I realised at the last minute I had forgotten to pack for tomorrow, and raced around trying to decide which were my favourite dungarees and hurling things into a slightly-too-small bag.

Oliver rang a little while ago, exuberant with the happiness of a successful opening night. I was very pleased. I am looking forward to it very much.

With any luck, by this time tomorrow we will be in Elgin.

Have a picture of some woebegone boots and their much smarter replacements.

The old ones were that colour once.