Today is a special day.
I am writing this on my new iPad.
You will be very pleased and relieved to hear that it works brilliantly. So far I have not had to turn it upside down at all. All the keys write the letter that they are supposed to, and the screen feels oddly smooth under my fingers.
I am very pleased about it, although I have not managed to get it properly tuned in yet, and have not found all of my familar apps and sites and passwords and other useful things. It is all taking some puzzling, but is a great joy, because the world is once again at my fingertips, even here in the taxi in the dark.
I am not likely to have time to write very much tonight, because Windermere has suddenly become really busy.
We have got sunshine, or at least, we did have sunshine before it went dark. With the sunshine arrived the visitors, lots of them, ambling about contentedly, looking at the lake and thinking that this is the loveliest place in the world. Obviously I am pleased about this, but I can’t help wishing that they would amble a bit more hastily, especially across the taxi rank. Wandering absently about behind reversing taxis is a risky undertaking.
The sunshine has been wonderful, and I have been feeling quietly contented with my world all day. Mark and I went over to the farm, where we chugged out into the sunshine with the camper and spent the afternoon doing some nice things to it. They are not yet seriously nice things like a bathroom, but they are lots and lots of little nice things that make life happier. Mark has fixed shelves and screwed in hooks and hung things on walls, and I have unpacked things and organised things and felt very glad to be alive. It is beginning to look and feel very bright and lovely indeed.
We have been busily organising it because we are using it again tomorrow.
We are taking Lucy back to school.
The summer is over.
We knew that it was over anyway, really, because for the last few days we have been beginning to smell autumn in the air, and we knew, with a breath of sadness, that in a very few days we would be losing our children again.
She is packed and ready, and just starting to turn her thoughts back to school, to friends and to the first thoughts of A Levels. Oliver has got until Wednesday. We are going to miss them both terribly.
We have not managed to go anywhere at all this summer. We were expecting this because of course we went away at Easter, but I am finding myself longing to travel with a desperate yearning. We think that we will go south and see Number One Daughter at half term. Our camper van should be finished and hers started by then. Probably.
Somebody has told Mark’s sister that they would like to buy the shed. Actually they want to buy everything, the house and the barn and the land and the shed.
If they do then we will have to start hurrying up and building a new shed. Mark is very excited about this. I am a bit excited about it as well.
We might have some new adventures coming our way.
The picture below is nice things hanging in the camper van. Apart from our lovely clock, there is a pretty card that a friend once sent me, and a mask brought by Number One Daughter from her travels in foreign parts, and which keeps away evil spirits. There are some clogs that Number Two Daughter brought back from her travels.
It is lovely to have such adventurous children.
