I have just had a very nice customer.
This is the headline because frankly it is a bit unusual at this time of year.
He is the landlord of the Kirkstone Pass Inn, a remote pub high above Ambleside, and he is already sick of tourists.
He does not mind tourists in general, just the idiots.
I concurred with this, there are a lot of these.
We exchanged stories about tourist horrors. My favourite of his was about a woman who brought in a plastic bag of dog poo which she had been carrying over the fells with her, and tried to give it to him over the bar to put in his bin.
If you are in the country with your dog it is all right for them to poo on the fells. The farmer does not go round with a shovel and a bin liner clearing up after his cows. Indeed, he saves the indoor poo and spreads it back on the fields, and occasionally, as you might have heard lately, over tourists’ irritatingly parked cars. Poo is good for the soil. Leave it where it is.
Do not put it in a plastic bag and hang it in a tree, like a very revolting Christmas decoration.
You would be amazed how many people do this.
I liked him very much, and we laughed all the way to Kendal, I will go and drink in his pub one day. He has folk singing nights, usually midweek when there are no tourists.
Apart from that, which was a cheery moment, it has not been a terribly thrilling day.
I got all of my daily chores done, and then I went back to bed.
The chores were just about as exciting as chores always are, supplemented by the misfortunate necessity of washing my television shawl.
I keep a large woollen shawl on the back of my chair in the living room. This is for the moment when, at the end of the night, the fire has been unattended and is burning low, and I begin to feel the cool of the evening. It is not usually worth cranking the fire up just before bed, and so I have a shawl.
You can do this sort of thing when you are sixty. I have got some slippers as well. It is lovely to be old.
Anyway, the shawl had a Guffy-related misfortune, and needed to be washed.
I discovered, during the washing process, that Guffy had been the least of its misfortunes, and that its bright loveliness had not been improved by spending several years in a dusty living room.
I dust the living room regularly, and frankly, it looked as if I had been using the shawl to do it.
It was filthy.
I hand-washed it twice, sloshing the blackened water away down the sink with mild revulsion, and eventually gave up and shoved it in the washing machine.
I washed it with shampoo, and then rinsed it in the sink with hair conditioner. This is the best way to wash woollen things. I learned it years ago from my friend Kate who had studied textiles in her youth, which must have been a remarkably versatile qualification as she went on to work in a factory which made nuclear submarines.
You will no doubt be thrilled to learn that the shawl came out looking freshly brilliantly-hued and soft, without a trace of cat accident anywhere, these pages are bursting with excitement and adventure sometimes. I was very pleased with it, and spent some time rubbing it against my face admiringly, and resolving to be less slatternly in future.
I made our working dinners – Oliver is also working tonight, standing menacingly on the door of the Easy Breeze bar – and realised that I was yawning and rubbing my eyes. I switched on the electric blanket, because the sun has already left the Lake District, no doubt the winter is on its way, and went back to bed.
I felt much better when I woke up.
I came out to work.
Time for a night of idiots.
