We are still in Manchester and we have been having adventures.
One adventure started before we had even woken up.
The windows were open, of course, because it is just as clement in Manchester as it is everywhere else, just with more exhaust smoke. We can hardly grumble about this since our car has got an exhaust just like everybody else’s, and we have used it to come here for our holidays.
The people at whose house we are staying have also gone on holiday, and so we have got free rein to entertain ourselves, apart from stopping to feed their cat every now and again. We are enjoying this very much, it is exactly like a real holiday, I have no idea why people from Manchester housing estates bother coming to the Lake District for their holidays. They tell me that it is wonderfully stress-free in the Lakes. This is not my experience, of course, the Lake District is the place where you have got to worry about looming tax returns and letters from the council and electricity bills that look as though you have volunteered to cover the cost of this year’s Blackpool Illuminations.
A Manchester council estate, that’s really relaxing and peaceful. I have been wandering around in my shorts and flip-flops feeling contented and mellow.
I digress. I was telling you about the first adventure of the day, which was not in the least contented and mellow, not at all. In fact it was noisy and violent.
It was not the one where the cat thought she might get into bed with us and stick her paws in our eyes to encourage us to open them, but the one that started happening outside about two minutes later, when the neighbours started shouting at one another.
It was a terrible argument, and of course we listened with great interest, because our neighbour in Windermere never bellows rude words and thumps people in the street outside, not even when we have got very drunk together.
The chap was trying to take their baby and buzz off back to Liverpool. The lady did not want him to, and there were first some very unkind words, and then there were punches being thrown.
The chap put the baby in the car and tried to drive off. A young man who seemed to be another neighbour rushed after him and made him stop. He grabbed the keys out of the ignition, so the lady rescued her baby after all, and he drove off without it.
I got dressed then, and went to see if the lady was all right.
Her face was swollen and purple with bruises, and she was crying. The baby was sitting numbly in his playpen, and hardly even looked at me as I came in. His bottle was on the floor, spilled. I picked it up and gave it to him, but he would not take it, as if he hadn’t noticed me.
The lady told me all of her troubles. We offered to take her to her mother’s house, which she was relieved about, although ten minutes later she called round and told us that her mother was going to come and pick her up. She left us with the house key and told us that we must not let anybody in.
Fortunately nobody came and tried to get in, because the chap seemed to have been very handy with his fisticuffs. I have been in lots of fights, by the standards of old ladies, but I would not have liked to try my luck, the lady was in a sorry state.
The lady came back later and told us that she thought he had gone back to Liverpool anyway, so we need not worry too much, but we promised that we will be here for a few days to defend her if he comes back.
He has not come back yet.
I am not sorry.
I do not think he would be very frightened of us.
All the same, it is turning into a very exciting holiday.
