I am almost mobile again.
I have been loaned a rather splendid boot, which looks a bit like something Jack might have found at the top of the beanstalk, but which is otherwise quite astonishingly helpful.
My sore ankle has been repeatedly tipping me off it, to my vexation, and I have been hobbling around exercising my self-pity to the utmost. The boot makes a very satisfactory clunking noise when I walk, and encourages people to make sympathetic noises.
My lack of usefulness has not mattered, because we stayed at the farm last night, where we slept for another ten hours, and woke feeling considerably refreshed. Mark has pottered about doing useful things all day, tinkering hopefully with the brakes on the camper van, which are now working so brilliantly well that we will finish up going through the windscreen if we are not careful. Also he has dug his garden over, which is actually looking quite surprisingly like the After illustration in an allotment manual, rather than the Before one. I was very disappointed not to be able to assist with the digging, and helped by sitting in the camper van ordering seeds from the catalogue.
We have ordered all sorts of exciting seeds from the Real Seed Company. This is not that everybody else’s seeds are fake, but these are obviously better because they come in plain beige-coloured paper packets with old-fashioned green writing on them. I expect they approve of woke things as well, although they don’t say that in their advertising material. Actually I like their seeds because they are not F1 Hybrid and we can let some things go to seed to plant again next year. Also they have interesting old-fashioned varieties as well, some of which taste better and some of which don’t, but are nice to try.
We do not know how they will get on. The rabbits that had plagued the garden seem to have buzzed off. I am pleased about this because it is not very long ago since we listened to Watership Down during our camper-van trips to Scotland, and I would not have liked to have to snare and eat them, although we have eaten lots of rabbits in our time, and they are very nice.
They do not seem to have taken the slugs with them, which is a nuisance, and we seem to have a host of beautiful iridescent green beetles that have eaten every dock leaf. I was worried that these might turn into a complete nuisance when the sprouts came up, but it appears that they are a pest for dock leaves alone, which I don’t mind in the least.
The dogs charged about barking at spaniels and chasing everybody on a bicycle until we took their bicycle away etc etc. In fact Rosie only stopped chasing bicycles when we got so cross with her and bellowed so loudly, that she had to go and hide under the camper van until she thought we had forgotten. We hadn’t forgotten, and told her that she was unspeakably wicked, which made her sad.
We are not still at the farm. Number-One-Son-In-Law has had a leaky radiator at the house which they are renting to people on their holidays, and so instead of going home we have gone over there. This is not a holiday but feels like one, because we are not doing laundry or dusting or mending taxis or sawing firewood. Mark is fixing it but I am not helping at all, because of my tiresome peg leg, which is now encased in my helpful boot.
It is going to have to get better soon or I am going to become impossibly round. Walking over the fells is the only thing that stops me becoming terribly portly.
What a good thing I have got dungarees.
