It has been a January day of not very much excitement.
It is winter.
It is not very exciting to be in the Lake District in January at all. You have in front of you several hundred words depicting tedious non-event. You might do rather better to read a newspaper, which would cost more but would at least include your horoscope and a crossword.
We woke up at almost lunchtime and took the dogs out to be emptied. After that we sat in the kitchen and drank tea until we could no longer put off getting ready for work.
I would have liked to put it off, because we are depressingly unbusy on the taxi rank at the moment.
I would have liked to go back to bed, actually, but obviously I didn’t. I made hot pancakes with cream cheese mixed with chicken, almonds, lemon juice and garlic, sprinkled them with chopped red pepper and rolled them up to put in our picnics.
I am glad I did that because it was the most exciting thing I did all day, apart from washing our dressing gowns.
What a page turner this can be at times.
I had got to wash our dressing gowns because Mark absent-mindedly spilt coffee on his this morning whilst trying to think and drink coffee at the same time: but they were beginning to be a bit less than fresh after several weeks of Christmas holiday, partly because of the enthusiastic companionship of the dogs in our bed in the mornings. We spread a large towel on the bed to reduce the transfer of dog smell on to the quilt, but Roger Poopy likes to rub his head enthusiastically up against us in order that we do not forget what a good dog he is, and if unchecked will try to suck bits of dressing gown and stuff his nose inside the sleeves.
Anyway, I washed them on a hot wash and hung them over the stove to dry. The dressing gowns, not the dogs, obviously.
That was another exciting highlight of the day.
We washed up and filled the fire with logs and emptied the dogs again.
Eventually we went to sit on the taxi rank, which is where I am now.
There are lots of other taxis here as well.
I am not very popular tonight. This is because we all have to remember what order we arrive, and when it is our turn to take the next customer, we have to go and sit at the front of the taxi rank.
It is a big parking space and until we are first we just sit anywhere. I keep forgetting when it is my turn, because I have not been paying attention at all, and other taxi drivers keep pointing at me and trying to wave me to go to where they think I should be. They are not going to get out and shout at me because it is raining.
Fortunately everybody knows that I am very rubbish at this and they are very helpful in sending people over to my taxi even if I have forgotten to go and sit at the front and have become distracted. If this were not the case I might well be in danger of starving to death.
I am not in danger of starving to death.
I am here on the taxi rank, eating cream cheese pancakes, drinking chai from my flask and actually I am enjoying the peace and quiet. It is so much nicer than in the summer, when people interrupt my solitude every few minutes wanting to go somewhere but have forgotten what it is called..
It is not very exciting in January.
It is a very quiet sort of life.
Have a photograph of the Lake District.
I took that.
