It is very pleasant indeed to be sitting here, quietly by the lake, in my taxi.
The sun is shining, and small boats are bobbing up and down the lake. I have got a flask of spicy chai and a good book, and apart from the tiresome detail that I have not actually earned any money at all, I can hardly think of a better sort of employment.
The book is about how to identify a serial killer. I am very interested in it and can assure you all that if ever I meet a serial killer I will jolly well spot them straight away.
They all seem to be in America, we do not seem to have turned out nearly so many in the UK, perhaps it is something in the water.
It is a gripping book.
Mark has gone off to work. He is building the house in Barrow today, so at least one of us is contributing something.
I have contributed a tin full of biscuits, some vegetable soup and garlic bread, and coconut prawns for dinner.
Obviously the biscuits are not for dinner, I just contributed those and put them on the list of my achievements. They are for the well being of the household.
Mostly they are for the Peppers, anyway. They like biscuits.
The day seemed to drip away somehow.
I went to Kendal this morning, to collect the lodger from the hospital. She had been visiting for some routine, but nevertheless vilely uncomfortable investigative procedure and had been planning to catch the train. I thought this was impressively brave, because if I had just spent two hours having cameras poked into me, I would need to be taken home in an ambulance and allowed a couple of days in bed to recover. The hospital is only about fifteen minutes away from our house, so I went to get her.
The sun was shining, and neither of us quite wanted to do anything else, and somehow before we noticed it we had been drinking coffee and exchanging gossip in the sun for two hours.
I had to get my act together in a hurry after that.
The thing about going out to work is that you have got to stop doing everything else and go and do that.
It is irritatingly inconvenient, because of course you can’t just stop doing important things. I had hung the first lot of washing on the line, and it had to be brought inside and replaced with the second. If I had gone to work instead of getting on with doing this, we would not have had any dry clothes tomorrow.
That would have been a nuisance.
LATER NOTE: I am now at home again, and have completely forgotten where the last few paragraphs were leading, probably nowhere, because it has not been a very exciting day, although I am happy to tell you that the prawns etc. were very good indeed.
The day has distinguished itself only because it has turned out that after sitting on the taxi rank, spellbound by horrid yarns of wicked serial killers, I had frightened myself so much that I did not want to be on my own.
Mark took the dogs out for a last empty before bed, and I was all alone in a house without even a companionable dog. I suddenly wondered, halfway up the stairs, whether I would know if a serial killer had crept in and was hiding in the loft.
I forgot that the very term ‘serial killer’ usually means that they have done it more than once, unless you are the misfortunate first attempt, and that nobody has been murdered in Windermere for ages. We had a very nasty scare once, years ago, when Mark was coming down the stairs and saw somebody peering in through the back door. I was around the corner and had not seen him, and so Mark belted down the stairs and flung the door open and demanded to know what he was doing.
It turned out that he was trying to find the drug dealer up the road, who owed him some money, in order that they could have a fight. He was very sorry to have been a nuisance, so Mark let him go again.
Tonight I frightened myself so badly I did not quite fancy getting in the shower until Mark and the dogs came back.
No wonder everybody in the world worries so much about dangerous things. I think I had better get another book.
If there is a serial killer in the loft they have not come out yet.
Have a picture of some outdoor catering.
