First of all, an apology.
I spent ages composing and producing last night’s post only to be distracted at the very last minute, at which point I forgot all about it and never got round to putting it online. Mark came home from work at the crucial moment and I became involved in washing pots and listening to stories about tiresome customers and thinking how much I wished we had gone to bed at about half past nine.
It was something of a surprise when I got up this morning only to find it still sitting there on the computer, patiently waiting for me to be an organised sort of person.
Hence I am sorry. If you were wanting Windermere Diaries as an accompaniment to porridge, I forgot. It is there now, in the usual place, wherever that is, and you can go back and read it, although I imagine your porridge will be cold by now.
I will try and be more organised in future.
We have had a busy day. There has been more firewood-cutting and Advent calendar painting, and Mark has hung the curtain over the skylight in the attic. This has taken some careful designing and thought, because there is no point in a curtain which just dangles downwards like a pillowcase on a wet washing day, nor one which I can’t reach to open and close. It has two rails, and a tie, and some discreetly placed Velcro, and we are both pleased with the result. Also we are both working tonight. I have not finished the Advent calendars, not by a long way, but it is Friday night and therefore we have got a reasonable chance that there will be some customers in the village, so I am going to work.
I can’t imagine anybody will have come here on their holidays. The weather is truly horrible. It froze hard yesterday, and then last night it snowed, an icy, sleety sort of snow that covered everything in a nasty slippery blanket, and then froze again.
It made going up the fells a very unpleasant excursion this morning, I can tell you. Some of the path is very steep indeed, and it was most discouraging to have stumped halfway up it only for my feet to slide out from underneath me and to find myself at the bottom once again.
If I was going to have a holiday it would not be in Windermere this week.
Actually we are going to have a holiday, December is always a good time for holidays, especially if you are not planning on lounging about on a sun lounger beside an outdoor swimming pool, which I am not.
On the second of December, which is hardly any time away at all now, we are going to go to Yorkshire and stay at the glorious Swinton Park Estate, which was where Robin got married in the Cormoran Strike books. We have stayed there before, and it is magnificent.
We did not purchase this lavish self-indulgence for ourselves. It was a very generous birthday present, ages and ages ago, back in the summer, from Numbers One and Two Daughters and their respective spouses.
We are going to go and lounge about by enormous roaring fires for which someone else has had to saw up and split the firewood, and drink cocktails. Also we are going to go to the carol service in Ripon Cathedral, which I always like, and we are going to go to the Christmas markets in York.
After that we have still not finished, but are going to head down to Bath, because Mark has not seen Oliver’s new accommodation or anything of the city. Also we have got a free night’s stay at an hotel there, and so we are going to take advantage of it.
It is going to be wonderful, because by then the firewood will have been hauled and the Advent calendars posted, at least, we are jolly well hoping so. It will be the last huge effort before we can collapse into a Christmas season of becoming alcoholic wastrels.
After that there will only be ordinary things to do. There are still things on my list, I have got some curtains to sew and mince pies to bake, but that will be all right.
It is going to feel properly like Christmas.
