We are on the taxi rank and I am feeling very happy with the world.
Number One Daughter has telephoned this evening to tell me what a brilliant time she has had. She has been competing against the world’s very best, and far from being crushed by the experience, she has risen to the challenge and loved being a part of it.
She said that she is coming home absolutely loaded down with wonderful CrossFit kit, and that people have just been giving it to her. I imagine that this is because of course every manufacturer in the sporting world wants their clothes to be seen on the very coolest athletes, and she is now amongst their number. Any aspirational cross fitter who wants to emulate Number One Daughter and her amazing successes will be able to do it if only they buy a vest just like hers.
In fact all three daughters seem to be having adventurous times at the moment. Number Two Daughter and Mrs. Number Two Daughter are steering their way slowly through Canada even as I write, having got a new house and some new jobs on the opposite side. They decided that they would drive the thousands of miles that it takes to cross it, sleeping in their car, for reasons of economy.
They rang yesterday to tell me that it is all a bit exciting because of the wildfires. They have been driving through thick smoke and burning dry heat, sometimes for hundreds of miles at a time. I am jolly impressed, what an absolutely huge adventure.
Even Lucy is on course for an adventure. She is meeting two of her old school friends in London this week, one of whom lives there. They are going to stay with the resident one, who, thrillingly, is living on a barge moored on the Thames, and whilst they are there they think they will go to the theatre to see a musical called Heathers.
Oliver is very impressed. It is a musical that he likes as well, and he has been singing it all around the kitchen this evening.
We are going to go to the theatre in London in January, and perhaps even the pantomime at Christmas as well, and I have been astonished to discover how happy this prospect has made me. For the first time in absolutely ages I feel as though bright gleams of light are beginning to slip through the hopeless grey twilight, and that there might be a sunrise one day.
I am looking forward to it with my whole soul. Already I am wondering what I might wear, although I am uncomfortably conscious that this will largely depend upon whether my waistline has increased or diminished by then.
It is only six months away. There is time not only for me to become less rotund, but for the brave new world to crumble away to dust before then, although I am not really expecting that it will. I suspect Boris’s current passion for government surveillance is likely to carry on until he has got a baby alarm in everybody’s living room.
Indeed, when we went up to the top of Orrest Head with the dogs the other day we discovered a pair of new posts on either side of the path. They looked like wood, but they were not. They were plastic, and on the side of each one was a smooth black plate.
Mark looked carefully at them and said that he thought they were tracking devices. They were for counting people going along the path and up to the top.
They recognise your mobile telephone and know that you have been there, presumably so that the Government can embark on their newly inspired project of offering you a free pizza as a reward for such virtuous healthy living.
I will never, ever take my telephone on a walk again.
Judging by the well-trodden grass around the outside of the posts, we were not the only people who did not wish to announce our presence to the government, so clearly there is not much enthusiasm for free pizzas in Windermere.
We did not go very far with the dogs this morning, because somehow the day seemed to be escaping us. I would have liked to take them up the fellside and for a long amble in the sunshine, but of course it is the weekend and we were busy. I contented myself with the recollection that Ritalin Boy is coming to stay for a few days next week, and we can go and walk together then.
Mark tootled about in the yard whilst I made everybody’s picnic. He has promised to add the plumbing to the divorce solar panel over the next month or two, at least before winter, and I am feeling quietly hopeful that it might really happen.
It is a very encouraging day. Not only can I look out on a bright winter of adventures, we might even have hot water in our very own taps one day.
Truly the world is becoming a brighter place.
Have a picture of Mark trying to have a glass of wine after work.
