Moving sentiments

I am beginning to feel like the bit in The King And I where the king’s children defiantly tell their teacher that they do not believe in snow.

I do not believe in drought.

The rain has lashed down for the last day or so, giving way today to a chill damp and a mild drizzle which has completely failed to dry the washing today, despite it being pegged in the garden for the entire day. When I brought it in this evening it was as limp and hopeless as it had been when I hung it out.

The house is so dark and unwelcoming that I have lit the fire.

We gave up work early last night, because nobody wanted to be in the great Cumbrian outdoors last night. We were just setting off for home, at around midnight in the torrential rain, when I got a job out to Hawkshead. This turned out to be four mad, drunk chefs who had decided that the middle of the night after the pubs shut would be a good time to move house.

We went to one house, in Ambleside, and stuffed the boot of the taxi full of their numerous bags and boxes, and took them to another, in Hawkshead, all the time splashing through the massive rivers which are currently cascading down every street. We were all drenched by the time we had finished, but I didn’t mind because I was going home anyway, and in any case it had more than doubled my night’s takings.

I had had somebody from the Water Board in my taxi earlier on who told me that he had known it was a mistake to book his holiday here when he had found out that the Lake District is the only place in the UK with absolutely no risk of drought whatsoever.

It is in no such danger. I lay in bed last night listening to the rain sluicing down outside, and wondered if this might be a good time to move house.

Things were no better this morning. The fells were muddy and sodden, and every beck is swollen to a torrent. The cows were standing in the tarn, mournfully and inexplicably, waist deep as the rain lashed down around them.

The fells are not a very happy place at the moment anyway.

The sheep were back on the fells yesterday after a couple of weeks of being elsewhere, and they were making an awful racket.

Virtually every one of them was bleating at top volume.

It took me a few minutes to realise that there were no lambs among them.

All of their lovely fat lambs, who admittedly by now were almost as big as the sheep, had gone.

The bleating was not the beautiful sound of a country day. It was the sound of anguished mothers calling for their lost babies, assuming that all the babies were called Baa.

We are so dreadfully ruthless. I do wish sheep didn’t taste so very nice. I don’t eat them very often, although that is more due to cost and a relentless tendency towards indigestion rather than principle. I don’t eat cows much either, although they are cheaper, because I don’t especially like the taste, also the same indigestion difficulty.

Anyway, the sheep were dreadfully sad, as sad as people would be, and I grieved for them. It might be a little while before I have a kebab.

They were quieter this morning, but I do not think it is because they have forgotten, which is what people like to think. They can think this because sheep can’t talk, still less enter into therapy after the dreadful kidnapping of their babies. They remember all right. They were standing close together, mournful and quiet in the rain.

Goodness, this has become a cheerless diary entry. I am supposed to be trying to make the world a better place and encouraging people to see bright things and feel merry.

I have just looked at the weather forecast, hopefully, but there is no encouragement to be found there. Worse, I looked at the weather forecast for Surrey, which is where Number One Daughter lives, and it is fully ten degrees warmer there.

I wonder if she might like a lodger.