It must really be summertime, because the gypsies are back.
Like the swifts, they are a sure marker of the season, a small signal that the world is still turning on its axis just as it should, and everything is progressing in its proper order.
I am not sure that Cumbria Police would concur with that opinion.
I took the children back to school today, and they were there, filling the roadsides on the way to Appleby. Woodsmoke hung in the air from dozens of little cooking fires, and piebald horses with heavy, feathered hooves and long manes grazed peacefully along the verges.
The market square in Kirkby Steven was full to bursting. Shirtless men stood beside brilliantly-painted carts, and youths and boys raced sulkies up and down the high street. Old men in waistcoats and flat caps nursed pints of beer, and there were police everywhere.
The police, interestingly, were the only women present. The gypsy women were not at the pub. They were not in the town at all. They congregated in little groups around the roadside campfires, surrounded by beribboned girl-children and the smallest boys, and the very oldest men.
Their lives are very different to mine.
I almost envied them their freedom a little tonight, sitting dreamily under the hawthorn blossoms beside their campfires, whilst I dashed back for an evening of work, and then an early start to work again in the morning. Of course that was because I do not really have to worry about the dreadful harshnesses of a gypsy woman’s life. I have got water in my taps in the house, and a bathroom, and a washing machine. I have got an electric mixer for baking cakes, and wi-fi for sending emails. I can send emails because a determined education system made certain that I could read and write efficiently. I do not have to lug heavy buckets of water out to the horse before I crawl into bed, and if I want to dry my hair I can just plug in the hairdryer.
Also I am very glad I am married to Mark and not to a gypsy. I think there might be some unpleasantly bloody brawls in the market place before the night is done.
The weather for the horse fair is clear and dry, which is ace. It has been cloudy today, but still warm enough for me not to wish for a jersey.
Number One Daughter came across today to say her farewells before she makes the long journey back to the south, and we had a last cup of tea all together. It might be years and years before we are all together again.
Oliver had a shower ready to go back to school, which must be something of a record, that is the second this week. He does not enjoy his ablutions very much. Lucy explained that he would need to become more enthusiastic about them if he were ever to find a nice girlfriend, but he thought that if that were the case, it might actually be preferable to become gay.
He dived into school, and was instantly absorbed by a chorus of boys yelling: “Ibby! Ibby!”
They were pinning a newspaper article on to the notice board, and were talking about it animatedly. Oliver turned and waved, and that was the last I saw of him. It will be Speech Day when next we see one another.
His life could not be further away from the lives of the two little gypsy boys in the picture, flying up and down the road in the cool of the evening, whilst my son knotted his tie and sighed as he faced the examination week ahead, preparing him for the dreadful rigours of Common Entrance.
All the same, it made me think that their freedom might be something of an illusion.
Those two boys have a future laid out in front of them from which they will find it very hard indeed to escape. In ten years’ time, very likely they will be in the same square, drinking beer beside the same beautiful carts, ageing alongside their parents. Not many little gypsy boys grow up to be lawyers or dentists or mountaineers or ballet dancers. It is a difficult path to abandon.
We have a freedom that they will never know.
