Goodness, somehow the day has slipped along to ten o’clock at night and I have not yet started to write to you.
It is still daylight, of course, and so doesn’t feel late really, although it is almost bedtime.
It isn’t even chilly. According to the temperature gauge on the taxi it is still twenty six degrees.
I love this weather. It is hardly like being in the Lake District at all.
I think what I like is the way indoor things and outdoor things all blend into a sort of seamless whole. There is no horrid shock when I go out of the back door, no chilly draught from the open window. I can go outside without layering on jersey after jersey, and I can wander into the garden just as thoughtlessly as into the living room.
It is truly divine.
I have learned on the mighty Internet that people are not allowed to use hosepipes any more, so the south must be considerably drier than the Lake District. The air was heavy with the scent of hot, damp clover this morning, and the fells were still squelching with mud. I had to make huge efforts to walk delicately, because the wet grass was dotted with hundreds of newly metamorphosised ex-tadpoles, all dashing for cover on their brand new tiny legs.
It was a glorious walk, if rather earlier than usual. I was woken up at eight o’clock by Poppy barking at some imagined burglar, and decided, reluctantly, to get up. I thought this was very brave of me, given that I hadn’t actually made it into bed until two, but of course the day was beginning to warm up, and the dogs have got fur coats.
We were home again by ten, relieved to be in the cool of the underground kitchen. I chucked some ice into the dogs’ water bowls, and pegged the washing on the line, where, I am happy to say, it practically dried into crisps.
I could not muster the interest to do my Job Of The Day, which was to clean the last bottom shelf of the dresser, and so I didn’t.
I went up to the attic instead, and flung the window open as wide as it would go.
Then I started on the camper van curtains.
This is a ridiculously exciting project, if nerve-wracking. I want them to be perfect, and I am very far from being a perfect seamstress. In fact, I would describe my usual efforts as thoroughly cobbled together, and I did not want the new curtains to look like that.
I was be carefulling like mad.
By the time I had finished my head ached from frowning. I had to unpick one seam which hadn’t quite gone the way it should, and the tension on the sewing machine wasn’t quite right, but on the whole it worked splendidly, and I have got two narrow curtains for the two narrow windows at the back.
I added patterned ribbon to make them look as if they are expensively upmarket. This took a great deal of tongue-sticking-out, because of course nothing is upmarket about a ribbon that is crookedly askew. They have all got to be perfectly lined up.
They are going to look splendid beside the blue buttoned headboard.
Oliver is home, and it is getting late. I am still on the taxi rank, but am about to give it up, because there is nobody very much here any more. Also it has rained, just a few, fat, heavy splashes, but sufficient to remind everybody that this is the Lake District after all, and nothing has changed.
Ah well. It won’t last for ever.
