Lakers

It has been our Day Off.

I wanted to do all sorts of unrealistic things with it. Top of the list was a trip to Blackpool in the camper van, so that we could cycle along the promenade, eat doughnuts and paddle.

Mark was not at all keen on this idea. He has had a busy couple of weeks at work and wanted to get on with his garden and fix the car.

Both taxis are going to need to pass MOT tests in the next couple of weeks. The problem is that nobody cares if there is anything wrong with them in between tests, and all red flashing lights, grinding noises and troubling clunks are completely disregarded in that intervening guilt-free time. This always leads to a dreadful panic when the awful day finally arrives.

The best way of dealing with a red light on the dashboard is simply to put a taxi card in front of it. This works brilliantly every time, and I can recommend it as a practically permanent solution. I have had to stick electrical tape over the red lights in mine, but it has been there for the past four years now and the car still goes and stops without the smallest hazard, and so I would consider it an effective repair.

Poor Lucy is having car problems. Her car squirted all of the water out of it the other day, and she has reached the stage of car ownership where it is necessary to drive around with the radiator cap in the glove box in order to stop the water from leaking out. You can carry on like this for months, but probably she is going to need a new car soon.

Hers was born in 2004, and so it does not owe her anything, as the saying goes, and since we paid four hundred quid for it whilst she was still at school it has done very well.

Oliver is going to be needing a car very soon as well. I do wish that somebody would hurry up and win the lottery.

In the end Mark did not get very much done at all. He came with me and the dogs on our walk this morning, and then came with us again this afternoon. This afternoon was an extra-long bonus walk, because the spring arrived with the swifts, and the day was warm and balmy, so we ambled off down the hill through the woods to the lake.

This is a nice sort of walk if you do not mind having muddy dogs. They rinsed most of the mud off in the lake when we got there, but put it all back on again on our way back up the hill.

It is lovely to be by the lake at this time of year. It was grey, and damp, and misty, but warm, and the spring is everywhere. The trees are in full leaf now, and the hedgerows are bright with forget-me-nots and heartsease and cuckoo flowers and mallows and wild garlic. The dogs found a duck, swimming frustratingly just out of dog reach, and they wallowed after it, but somehow it just glided away every time they thought they might be getting close.

They charged after sticks and splashed about in the shallows and  barked at everything, and we sat on the rocks with our toes just in the water, although my trousers got soaked with excited-dog paw prints. We gazed out at the Langdales and watched the steamers chugging towards Ambleside, and thought that it was a pretty good way to spend a day off.

We are not going to spoil tomorrow by being tired. We would like the week to start with a joyous burst of energetic enthusiasm when the alarm goes off at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.

We are going to go to bed now.

It has been a very happy day off.