I have not had a magnificently successful day.
To begin with, it rained. The Weather Gods were having one of their Amusing Days, and it rained a lot. I understand from the august Daily Telegraph that we are expecting some bad weather, well it has happened rather sooner than expected here in Windermere. We have not yet had the predicted High Wind adventure, although I won’t mind that anyway because it will get the windmill whizzing round which will heat up the water.
We have, however, had plenty of rain.
I wore all of my waterproofs to go on my fell walk this morning, which kept me more or less dry, apart from my head, which sticks out at one end, and my boots, which sticks out at the other. I could put my hood up but I don’t like the rustling noise or the way I can’t see anything at the side of me, so I don’t, so my head got very wet.
After that my Job Of The Day was to get Mark’s car started. He likes it to be started every now and again, because otherwise it forgets that it is a car and just won’t do anything. Modern cars are like this. It is because of the computers.
It turned out to be a complete nuisance, because the battery was flat.
I had to take my soaked waterproofs off so as not to make the inside of the car soaked as well. From that point on the only things between me and the torrential rain were my clothes.
I could practically hear the Weather Gods laughing.
Things started to go wrong when I tried to open the bonnet. The bonnet catch is situated behind the passenger door, and to pull the bonnet catch you have to open the passenger door.
The car was parked so close to the wall that I couldn’t get the door open.
I tried to squeeze down the side of it to shove the mirror out of the way, but it wouldn’t budge. The sides of the car were very wet, and quite a lot of it came off on me.
I tried to turn the steering wheel and shunt the car forward a bit, but it wouldn’t do that either.
The rain had soaked through my jersey and was dribbling down the back of my neck in a little torrent.
The Weather Gods were howling by now, practically rolling around on the ground.
Afterwards I found out that the reason it wouldn’t move was that it had a flat tyre.
Eventually, with a lot of shoving and swearing, I managed to get the door open far enough to release the bonnet so that I could apply the jump leads. Jump leads are troubling things. They crackle and spark if you accidentally touch them together, I would not want to be tortured in some horrid South American jail the way you see happening on the films, funnily enough in films it only ever happens to innocent but politically minded people, not to horrid abusive child-rapists and murderers for whom nobody would feel in the least sorry.
It started in the end, after lots of engine-revving and hanging about getting wet.
My plan was to take it for a little run to Kendal to get the battery properly charged and to get a spare key cut for it.
I had not gone very far before I found out about the flat tyre.
I blew all the tyres up, by which time the pouring rain had soaked through to my underwear, and carried on.
When I got to the key-cutting chap he looked at the key and shook his head, although I had telephoned first and asked. It turned out that Mark’s car key is a special tiresome sort of car key that needs a special sort of key cutter, the nearest of which is in Preston.
I sighed and splashed through some minor floods back to the car, which was almost as wet inside as out by now, and all of the windows had steamed up.
I dripped up to TK Maxx next, to take back some slippers that I had bought as Christmas presents for Oliver and Jack, and which didn’t fit.
They told me that the last day for bringing them back was yesterday.
I would have liked to have been passively-aggressively middle-class, but on reflection decided that I was not in a good position for trying to look airily superior.
After that I squelched over to the Healthy Shop to get some seeds to add into my morning porridge, but I was so cold, wet and distracted that I forgot half of them, and now I am going to have to go back again next week. Also there was a new lady in the shop and she was not nice. Probably she thought I was not sufficiently middle class to be purchasing chia seeds and dried apricots.
I didn’t really buy chia seeds. Those were one of the things I forgot. I just thought that I would have liked to try them, having read about them in the august Daily Telegraph. They are supposed to be added to porridge and they stop you getting dementia, or something.
I went home, making special gestures in the direction of the Weather Gods.
I was so sodden and despondent that I thought I should do something nice for myself, and actually this cheered my afternoon.
I made a cup of tea and sat down by the fire to clean the shoes. These have been waiting to be cleaned ever since we got back from the Midland at Christmas, and it was quite therapeutic to warm up slowly next to a roaring fire, drinking tea and listening to the story on my telephone, whilst methodically brushing and polishing and shining all of our shoes.
I rubbed my boots with dubbin and found that my equilibrium was restored.
Warm and dry. Those are the best things to be.
Especially dry.
