I have been on the taxi rank for ages and ages, and nobody wants a taxi, and even worse, this afternoon it snowed on my washing.
Fortunately I had, that very minute, stepped out into the garden to bring it all in, but it is a clear indication that the Weather Gods have returned from their holidays and discovered their mistake with the sunshine.
I am gloomy today.
I am gloomy because I know that I am going to have to do some basic reconstruction work to my conservatory arches before the plants get any bigger.
This is because the watering system is not working properly. Quite apart from several difficult and messy hose-related misfortunes, it is not doing what it should.
I am not exactly sure what is not right. Some bits are working very well, whilst others, no matter how much I squirt them or poke them about, do not seem to be getting properly wet.
Some bits are creating a small flood underneath them.
I have decided to consider that it was a trial run, and to have another go at getting it right before the tomato plants at their feet get any bigger.
I am going to unwrap the moss and chicken wire, and wrap the bark underneath in bath towels. These should collect the moisture and release it slowly, into the roots of the moss, like growing cress on a flannel.
With this in mind I have begged a sack full of bath towels from some friends who have a guest house.
They did not mind giving them to me, because when they first opened their guest house, they had piles of fluffy, snowy white towels in all the bedrooms. This was very upmarketly lovely, until they realised that the sort of people who come to bargain-budget guest houses in the Lake District are also the sort of people who wear lots of make up and fake tan.
No matter how much you boil white towels, you cannot easily get rid of the sort of smears caused by such greasy self-adornment. Eventually, having acquired a cupboard full of almost new, but nevertheless unusable orange-smeared towels, they changed their towel colour scheme to dark grey.
I am now the proud owner of a sack full of white-and-orange bath towels.
I wanted to make a start this afternoon, but once I had finished baking and bringing in the snowy washing, it was time to go out to work, so I didn’t. I wished that I had then, because I have done nothing but sit here drinking tea ever since.
It has not been an entirely unproductive day, because I have baked some more vegetable cakes, this time with parsnips and courgettes, made mayonnaise and garlic bread, and written another page or so of dystopia. As well as all this, I re-packed the camper so that it is all ready to run away if it turns out that I have had enough of the Lake District again next week.
Some people came past and made thumbs-up gestures at me, so I smiled and waved back. It is one of the very nice things about the camper van that people seem to assume that we are are decent types, as if horrid rude people would not paint pretty pictures on things. I do not see why this might be. Rude grumpy people could be just as artistic as friendly ones. Mark gets most irritated by the suggestion that we might have been inspired to paint it by having been drug-users. I do not know how people might imagine that we would have the time to have full-time jobs, paint and repair a forty year old van, and also spend all of our leisure time taking drugs.
I have attached a couple of pictures of a tree, thoroughly engirdled with ivy, that we found at the edge of the woods by Elspeth’s Outdoor Pursuits Centre. I was somehow both impressed and horrified by it, it seemed almost both obscene and obese. The tree didn’t seem to have survived its passion, although I didn’t look very closely and might have been wrong.
Hurrah for Mother Nature.
