I am starting to write this early tonight, in order not to finish up yawning over it at half past two in the morning again.
That was not my finest hour. Frankly, it never is, not even when I am working. By half past two my customers are usually tightly stuffed with all manner of noxious substances, from Jaeger bombs to cocaine, and my main concern is to get them home before any of it leaks out in the taxi.
At the moment I am finishing work early. I am trying to get home at around midnight. The rest of the taxi drivers think that this is a shocking shirk, but I do not care. The sun is shining and I like to have the day to get on with things.
I have been getting on with things today. I had an ace walk with the dogs. The fells are absolutely covered with wildflowers, cow parsley and clover, harebells and buttercups, hawkweed and traveller’s joy, and everywhere has the glorious honey-scent of blossom. The birds are in full squabble, and I ambled along this morning feeling very pleased both to be alive and to be living in the Lake District. The dogs tore about barking and rolling in cow poo, which dampened my enthusiasm a little, but most of it came off in the beck on the way home. I was mildly disappointed about this, I could have scraped them off on to the rose bed, but at least there was none left to adhere to the sofa.
I met an enthusiastic fell-walker on the top, who told me all about the Wainwrights that he has been doing. He wants to walk them all. Then he told me about every other hill he has ever walked up ever, which might have been interesting if only he had been able to tell me a single thing about any of them other than how high they were. There were a lot of them. I listened with mingled admiration and pity, he seemed to be working so very hard simply for the purpose of crossing something off a list. He was not planning to amble about and enjoy the sunshine today. He wanted to know the shortest distance back to his car so that he could get away quickly and walk up another hill, this one in Ulverston. I pointed out the easiest route and he wanted to know if there was any likelihood of cows on it, because he had already had to come a long way round to avoid the Galloways that have currently mooched off to the far side of the fell.
I said that there might be, but that he should not worry about them, they were mostly harmless, especially if you just wander past them quietly and pretend you have not noticed them.
He declined to do this because of their terrifying and unpredictable nature, and I left him agonising about a cowless route down. I could have offered to let him walk with me, but on reflection I felt inadequate for the task of listening to lists of mountains all the way down, especially since the skylarks were singing and I wanted to watch for the buzzards that hunt out towards Matson Ground.
He is probably still there.
I came home and rushed through my chores in order to get on with the garden, and actually I managed to get out there exactly twelve hours after I had gone to bed, which I thought was satisfyingly neat.
I have decided not to dig up the wisteria, which on inspection seems to be showing the very first nubs of flowering buds. I shall leave it where it is and buy another one. I do not have any money but I have got a credit card, and when I told Mark about it later he seemed to think that it would not matter if we had to eat bread and cheese for a month or two until it was paid off.
Instead of digging I painted the window frame again. It is now two different shades of pink with a green stripe, and looks very splendid. I had to balance on the windowsill whilst I did it, which was excitingly precarious, but apart from getting absolutely covered in paint, some of which accidentally came off on the sheets when I tried to get down, I managed to avoid misfortune, and all was well.
I wish I could show you a photograph.
