Goodness me, I am glad that I am not here on my holidays.
We spent today being tourists, and it was not at all a nice experience.
It was not exactly awful. It was lovely to be out with Oliver and Ritalin Boy. That bit was nice.
The being tourists in the Lake District bit was not.
I had thought that I would take them to Brockhole for the day. Brockhole is the Lake District visitor centre, at the side of Windermere, and features a rather splendid adventure playground and various other bits and pieces.
In the past it has been a splendid day out, with nothing to pay for other than parking, but as time has gone on it has quietly added more and more child-attracting shenanigans. All of these look thrilling, have got so much health and safety that you can’t go on them unless you are sheathed in india-rubber and tied off to at least three anchor points, and all of them will cost you everything you have ever saved towards your pension all at once.
Worse, since the Lake District has become overwhelmed by people who would really prefer to be in Tenerife, you can’t get into any of them unless you book online, usually about a fortnight in advance.
We thought that we would not bother with any of these.
I thought initially that I would take a picnic, but on my walk with the Peppers this morning I discovered that amongst the new cash-generating additions was an outdoor barbecue, providing child-friendly catering in the form of beef burgers and hot dogs.
I thought that this would save all manner of faffing about, not to mention transporting of picnic equipment. This last inevitably finishes up being heavy to carry, probably sticky, and if one is driving and therefore unable to include champagne, boring.
Hence I roused Oliver and Ritalin Boy from sleep and told them the plan over breakfast.
We decided, on balance, not to take the dogs. This is because all of them together are an unmitigated nuisance, and because Brockhole is the sort of place that insists on leads.
I am not putting them all on leads. They are quite enough of a nuisance when they are organising their own walking and emptying arrangements. I do not wish to become too involved in their private lives.
It was lunchtime before we had organised ourselves, and the day had become surprisingly warm.
There was a very lot of traffic.
I mean a very lot. It was queueing back practically from Ambleside to Windermere.
When eventually we got to Brockhole, the car park was packed. There was a sign on the gate which said that unless you had got an expensively pre-booked activity, you could jolly well buzz off, because there was no parking for you and your cheapskate ways.
A harassed-looking bloke was busily turning away traffic.
I dumped the boys at the gate with the bag of towels and spare clothes, and told them that I would be back. Then I drove about half a mile up the road to a house where some taxi drivers live and dumped my taxi in their driveway.
When I came back to it later, several other cars had thought that this was a brilliant idea and copied me, so perhaps I won’t be popular when I see them later on.
I rushed back to Brockhole, where the boys had disappeared into the madding crowds on the adventure playground, which I was irritated to notice had been seriously diminished, and half of the space incorporated into some colossally expensive pre-booked activity area. This seemed to be some kind of a treetop trampoline, and Ritalin Boy was gazing up at it in awe.
We had not pre-booked, and so the joy of trampolining in the sky had to be surrendered for today, and instead the boys belted around the adventure playground. After that we ate some greasy ice creams, and some over-priced and under-flavoured burgers, and went down to the lake for a swim.
Obviously I had brought swimming costumes and towels, although by the look of the other families on the shore, and there were lots of them, either we were the only ones who had, or modesty has become more fashionable than it used to be, because there were several children splashing about in all of their clothes.
Ritalin Boy changed and plunged straight into the water, and I mean plunged in. He barely seemed to notice the cold, and before Oliver had even started taking his jersey off, was bellowing cheerily: I’m right out of my depth here. I can’t touch the bottom at all, which sent me sprinting down the shore to check that he was not in imminent danger of sudden death.
He was not, although the other parents within earshot glared at me disapprovingly, and a few minutes later we were all swimming.
I did not swim very far or for very long, but it was still considerably more than any other adult on the shore, because none of them even removed their designer trainers or rolled their jeans up. This seemed terrible, because it was a very hot afternoon.
Ritalin Boy bounced and splashed and pretended to do a poo behind a rock. Oliver supervised for a while, but in the end we had all had enough, and got changed to stroll slowly back.
There were people absolutely everywhere. I left the boys on the adventure playground with the bag, and went off for the taxi, and we retreated home to the cool underground cave with quiet sighs of relief.
I went to work for a while, since there were plenty of people from whom cash could be extracted, and I am pleased to tell you that before Number One So-In-Law turned up this evening, had earned enough to repay the money that we had spent on the burgers and ice creams, so that was all right.
I am very glad I am not a tourist. Mostly it just seems to be expensive with queues.
Have a picture of a boy and a dog.
