Our new neighbours have been entirely subdued today, and you will be relieved to hear that the steamer boat has not sunk despite my best efforts.
I did not need to wish it sunk today anyway, because Mark took the dogs up to the farm and I organised our picnic in undisturbed tranquillity.
I like the dogs’ company, but unexpected bursts of impassioned barking, accompanied by their occasionally hurling themselves savagely at the back gate, can be a wearisome way of occupying an afternoon.
We were rushing anyway. Our plan for the day was perfect in its simplicity. Mark would take the dogs out and check on his garden. I would organise our picnic. We would take the taxis to Bowness to get the meters changed to the new rate. Then we would go back to bed.
We have been trying to get as much sleep as we can today, as if you could bank it, like tenners, because it is my all-day class tomorrow. This is a really horrible experience when I have been up all night. I love the classes, but not nearly as much as I loved them in the winter when the nightclub was closed and we could be in bed by half past three.
We will be lucky to be in bed before six tonight, or perhaps tomorrow morning would be a better description. Partly this is because it takes us a little while to calm down after the night’s adventures. When we have finished, we contemplate the evening for a little while, whilst we walk around the Library Gardens with the dogs, count our takings and shower before we finally crawl into bed.
My current bedtime reading is Nick Clegg’s account of his years in the coalition government, which is a magnificent soporific, and could have been written for that very purpose. It is pleasingly well written, and mildly interesting, but hardly a page-turner, and in any case, we all know what happens in the end.
It is St. George’s day today, which I am hoping will improve our fortunes, although I am not entirely sure why it is deserving of celebration. St. George’s claim to fame seems to rest on his dragon-slaying abilities, which given the subsequent extinction of dragons, hardly seems to be an endearing quality in today’s political climate. We have recently decided that the presence of a species of spider in the southern counties is a compelling reason not to build a theme park there. I do not think I would wish to visit a theme park that included numerous spiders amongst its inhabitants, but presumably someone would hoover them all up first.
Anyway, we are hoping for a busy evening.
We did manage to get a sleep this afternoon. I made salads and collected the sheets from Oliver’s bedroom, which was so painfully tidy that I hardly dared to go in it. He is very organised, there are some ways in which he is very definitely not his father’s son.
Last night was fairly quiet, although I had one customer who made me somewhat alarmed.
Unshaven, mildly scruffy, and alone, he wanted to go to a fairly quiet, middle-classly residential road not far from our house. He told me, rather improbably, that he was the governor from Walton prison and was staying at a guest house up there.
I was entirely unconvinced, not least because he did not seem to have the first idea which guest house, and I left him wandering furtively up and down in the dark, peering at people’s front windows.
I rang Mark and we decided we would keep an eye open for him, in case he was some sort of burglar, or a tramp looking for somewhere to settle for the night who might like the look of the camper van.
The mystery was solved half an hour later when some more gentlemen wished to be taken up to the same quiet little street, and I discovered that some local with an overdeveloped sense of humour had been telling people that there was a local brothel to be found up there, stuffed to the nines with enthusiastic and welcoming young ladies.
Please remember this if ever you decide to visit Windermere. First, take it from me, we do not have a brothel, I promise you that I would know. I agree it would be a useful facility, an opening there for an enterprising young lady, perhaps.
Second, ignore the locals.
We cannot be trusted.
