Wet Saturday in the Lake District.
It is more than wet. It is, well, it is very wet. Very wet with knobs and sugar on the top. It is as wet as a wet place on a very wet day, which is what it is.
This is a seasonal event in the Lake District. We were expecting it.
It is a good job that Mark has finished rebuilding the drains.
We are sitting on the taxi rank, listening to the rain beating down and watching the occasional passer-by scurrying past with their collars turned up and trying unsuccessfully to dance around the puddles.
They are big puddles, occupying most of the ground. I have just been out towards Ambleside, and there is an adolescent puddle that is beginning to mature into what might turn out to be a rather spectacular flood. This is something that happens regularly at this time of year, because of the fallen leaves blocking the drains. The council try very hard to keep them clear, but it is an impossible labour. There are a lot of trees. in the Lake District.
I think I am already fed up of customers telling me how handy this weather must be for taxi drivers. If ever you get in a taxi in the rain, please do not say this. We do not at all like driving a taxi in the rain. All of our customers are soaked, and the windows steam up. It is difficult to see where I am going, and people crossing the roads in the rain behave as if passing taxis do not exist, partly because they can’t see us from underneath their umbrellas. They are looking at the puddles.
In between wet customers the evening is actually being quite pleasant. I have got a good, if improbable book, about a secret Chinese zoo which has managed to breed dragons. It is a jolly splendid book for the simple reason that it is absolutely non-stop action. So far absolutely nobody has stopped to examine their inner motivation or consider the impact of their psychological turbulence. It is a Ripping Yarn.
I think the author must be hoping that one day it will become a film. I can tell, because the main protagonist has just dashed back to rescue a defenceless little girl who was about to be eaten by a dragon. This is an essential ingredient of just about every American film that have ever seen, except that sometimes the dragon is an earthquake or a tidal wave, and occasionally the little girl is a grown up lady.
American men never need rescuing.
We are not terribly busy on the taxi rank, because everybody with any sense has stayed at home, and so I have been reading quite a lot, and eating my picnic. Tonight it is a Turkish mixture of lamb and rice and vegetables, simmered in lemon juice and coconut milk, eaten with new-made bread and butter, because I have been cooking today.
I like lamb. Mark says that he will ask the farmer who is grazing our field if we can buy one and eat it for Christmas. You are not allowed to kill your own in this country, so we will have to get the butcher to come and kill it for us, and probably it will be mutton instead of lamb. I do not like slaughterhouses. It is always better to do this for yourself without frightening your animal too much. It is bad enough to have to be somebody’s dinner without knowing about it first.
I had a misfortunate ending to last night when my car started growling and became difficult to steer. I ignored this until the last of my customers got out, because when you are busy it is better not to wonder if you ought to stop driving and go home, but a brief investigation when I had finished for the night revealed a flat tyre.
Mark went to the farm this morning to collect a spare tyre. He did not really want to put this on, because it is the wrong size for the wheel, which will make the meter go more slowly, but he thought it would be handy to have it in case of emergency. Then he took my wheel and blew it up and filled it with tyre weld, which he thought would probably last for tonight.
It might have to last for quite a bit longer than tonight. New tyres are expensive. I can keep blowing it up for ages, because air is only fifty pence, and a new tyre will cost a fortune.
I don’t think we will make a fortune this evening.
I shall get on with my book.
I haven’t taken a photograph. Have another one of the field.
