Heatwave

The heat and the glorious sunshine are still, miraculously and joyfully, carrying on.

I am sitting next to a lake which is positively glittering under a hot hazy sky, and having my annual fantasy about this being irreversible global warming and summers being like this now for ever. This never turns out to be true but consoles me when I listen to dreadful guilt-inducing hippies going on about carbon footprints. Blue skies in the Lake District are always ace and make everybody so very happy, it is lovely to see so many people having such a nice time.

To my utter astonishment Bowness and Windermere Town Council has decided to celebrate the unexpected arrival of the summer with a rock festival, no less, and in a couple of weeks we are being visited by 10cc and Status Quo.

I could not have been more astounded if Mark had confessed a secret yearning to wear high heels and lacy underwear.

I am astonished that such rock gods have sunk to this level. In my youth they were forever unattainable, and it is incredible that they are going to pop round to our own village and sing songs on the green: but it is the truth, they are really coming to Windermere.

If the weather stays like this it will be beyond fantastic, with fireworks and excitement and hundreds of people. There is a poster up in the post office, and a big poster over the top of Crescent Road and they are very kindly going to raise some money for people who were flooded.

Of course we won’t be able to actually go to the concert because of it being at a weekend, but I am quite sure that we will be able to hear them from the taxi rank. When I was a youth my mother complained that you could hear them from my bedroom even over the television. It is very exciting indeed, and if only I didn’t need to earn a living I would go and bop about with all the other elderly rockers for a couple of nights.

Number Two Daughter was not at all star struck by the imminent arrival of some rock legends to Windermere in a couple of weeks. She said that they were about two hundred years old and ought to know better. She is at that age where she knows a very great deal about a lot of things, and has ridiculed my taste in quilt covers dreadfully. I think we had better take her to Appleby Fair with us on Monday, that is the place for looking at beautiful pretty things with stuck on plastic diamonds. You have got to be really careful about these because they come off every time you wash them, Mark is slowly going round my Appleby Fair plates, sticking diamonds back on a few at a time.

Talking of plates, the new ones for the camper van arrived this morning. Mark says that I need to get everything for the kitchen together now so that he can organise the shelves properly, which is so exciting it is like a small bounce every time I think about it. We have got plates and our own beautiful china mugs and some tins with roses on to put coffee and tea in. It is all so lovely that I have asked Mark to build shelves and not cupboards so that we will be able to see it all. He thinks that he will be able to get on with it after the weekend.

Of course it is the weekend now, and we are very busy. We got up this morning at about ten, tidied up and emptied the dogs, cleaned the taxis out and organised picnics, and then with one accord the whole household went back to bed by way of  preparation for the night to come.

Number Two Daughter was first to wake up, late in the afternoon, followed slowly by the rest of us: and then it was time for working, Lucy to the Chinese and the rest of us to charge about the Lake District in taxis.

It was very busy indeed. There are thousands of people here.

Hurrah.