Nosy

I have just had a shower, and my towel smelled wonderfully of garden, and fresh earth, with just the tiniest hint of woodsmoke.

This is because we are at long last back in the season where it is possible to dry one’s washing in the back yard.

I have spent quite a lot of my life secretly yearning for a sophisticated apartment in London, probably a penthouse, because all of the flats that you see in films are always the penthouse, but now that it is spring again I think that I am probably glad that I am in the Lake District.

I am writing this whilst Mark is in the shower. We have just watched a horrid film about two people getting a divorce, and have resolved not to do that, because we were upset just watching them.

We were watching the horrid divorce film because we have been watching a very long story made out of episodes for weeks and weeks now, and it has just run out. We do not, as you know, have the sort of television where somebody else decides what you watch, and have to look at Netflix and choose.

We chose this some time ago, and have been watching an episode every night for ages, there were about forty of them. We have seen so many of them that it was starting to creep into my dreams, along with moss and arches. It was called The Last Kingdom, and was very endearing twaddle.

It was all about imaginary people who lived a long time ago. They were based on real people, like King Alfred, but they did not act very much like real people, and so you did not need to waste time wondering if it was true. You knew perfectly well that it was not, and so could just drift along caught up in the excitement of it all.

I liked it very much. It was about some chap called Uhtred Son Of Uhtred. He was also, for that matter, Dad Of Uhtred, although nobody actually called him that. He was such a magnificent warrior that he could fight a dozen battles in every episode and emerge victorious and unscathed. I liked this. It meant I did not need to worry if anything awful and bloody would happen to him, which was a difficulty with Game Of Thrones, when I kept thinking I knew who was the hero, and then somebody hacked them to death.

It is finished now, and we are going to have to find something else.

I think I liked the bloody and heroic sort of stories better than the divorce kind. We will have to see what we can find.

Talking of stories, I am pleased to be able to tell you that I remembered, like a virtuous and upstanding citizen, to complete our census form today.

I found it all a bit surprising.

It was really thoroughly nosy, wishing to know all sorts of things that are absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Government, such as whether or not we had paid off all of our mortgage, and whether or not I thought I was probably a boy or a girl.

Having ascertained that I am entirely sure that I am, in fact, a girl, it then wondered if I had been one all of my life.

I have, as it happens, but I saw no reason why I should be telling the Government about it, as far as I am concerned they can mind their own business.

I had always imagined that it is reasonable to assume that roughly half of the population are girls, give or take a percent or two. Even the handful who started off as girls and then changed their minds are unlikely to make very much difference to this arrangement: and why the Government might think that it is important to have exact numbers mystified me completely.

Perhaps they are considering making improvements to ladies bathroom facilities.

After that I went in the car to the farm, during which excursion I made the mistake of switching on the BBC.

The BBC was talking about people over the age of fifty who had not yet had the anti-bat-flu injection. It would appear that there are lots of us.

The BBC was wondering why this might be.

You will not be surprised to hear that they did not simply find a person aged over fifty and ask them. Instead they asked a twenty four year old from an ethnic minority in Southwark, who talked knowledgeably about the over-fifties all the way from Windermere to Crook, by which time I was so cross that I was shouting back at her.

It appears that ‘infuriated with Government propaganda and unable to access sensible debate’ does not appear on the list of reasons for not having had an anti-bat-flu injection yet.

The BBC explained kindly that it mostly is because people are not sufficiently clever or well educated to understand such complicated matters. It was all right to switch off then, because it was just a repeat of the things that they said about people who wanted to leave the European Union, and I have heard them all before.

Now that Nicholas Parsons and Tim Brooke-Taylor are no longer with us there can be no further reasons to switch it on. I will try and remember that in future.

I suppose that we will have to have the stupid bat-flu injection in the end, although since it doesn’t let you off any of the tiresome rules there really doesn’t seem to be any hurry.

Have a picture of Roger Poopy at the farm.