Goodness me, it is cold.
I don’t suppose you need me to tell you that. I expect it is something that you know already.
I am sitting on a frozen taxi rank, looking out at a black-icy world. I don’t know how cold it actually is, because the temperature gauge on my car has been stuck at minus six for so long that last summer I got sick of customers making amusing remarks about it, and stuck a piece of tape over it. It probably still says minus six, but tonight it feels like it might be right. Everywhere is frozen very hard indeed.
It is warm in our house. I just thought you might like to know that. We have had the fire running and the skies have been so clear that the solar panel has been working, and we are blissfully comfortable. It is nice to be in our house at the moment. Christmas preparations are coming along nicely. The tree is up and there are lots of mince pies. There is only the card-making and everybody’s Christmas present to go. Hardly anything at all, really.
We had visitors this morning. My parents, who had been to a sad funeral in Blackpool, popped round to visit us on their way home. Obviously the Lake District is not on their way home from Blackpool because they live miles away in the other direction, but they were closer to us than they usually are, and so they dropped in to bring our Christmas presents.
I had mixed feelings about this. Obviously it was very lovely to have Christmas presents, all excitingly wrapped and filling the void under the Christmas tree, and it was absolutely brilliant to see them, but it did rather remind me that I have got an awful lot of Christmas present organising still to be done, not least the endless thorny problem that Lucy and Oliver still believe in Father Christmas with passionate conviction. Lucy has managed to get some time off over Christmas itself, and will be bringing her kittens to spend Christmas Day at home, and hence will be in exactly the right place for Father Christmas, who does not seem to have worked out where her flat is yet. This might be the year when we have to have The Talk about Father Christmas.
At least Roger Poopy will be pleased. He likes the kittens very much.
In the end I managed to quell the rising tide of seasonal anxiety and we had some very cheerful morning coffee and mince pies all together, made all the merrier by the brandy sloshed into the coffee. I do not usually drink brandy first thing in the morning, and it made a welcome change, I can tell you, perhaps I ought to do it more often.
We thanked them for their presents, which really were splendidly wrapped and thrilling, but had to confess that we haven’t actually bought any so far. Obviously they did not mind in the least, but guilt is starting to overtake me now and I am going to have to do something about it.
I am actually trying to do something about it now as I write, because of sitting on the taxi rank. This is the starting point for all nice things, and I have got my fingers crossed for the weekend. With any luck nobody will give a second thought to the awful weather forecast, and they will all come rushing to the Lake District to spend all of their cash having jolly Christmas parties and long walks across the bleak fells.
LATER NOTE
It has started to snow. I am suddenly very excited and have been staring out of the taxi window hoping that it will stick and then get lots worse. This is a ridiculous thing to hope because it will mean that we can no longer earn any money and then we will have to cancel Christmas, but set against the excitement of the first snow it doesn’t seem to matter. It will be brilliant to have sledging and plodding patiently through snowdrifts with armfuls of firewood.
We are going to Scotland next week.
It might turn out to be a very adventurous journey indeed.
