I have got half an hour before I have got to dash off to work, and so I thought I would occupy it with writing to you.
This is partly because it is the dreaded Bank Holiday weekend, and if I try and write to you from the taxi rank I will become irritable and offensive if I find myself being interrupted every five minutes, but also because I have had enough of the day’s scurry, and so I thought I would prefer to occupy the last few minutes with an activity that involved sitting down and drinking tea. Writing to you means that I can do both with a completely clear conscience.
The weekend has been as lovely as one might expect. There are a very lot of visitors here, not all of them are even driving Uber taxis, and every inch of lake shore is crammed to bursting with hot, sticky tourists, shoving wailing toddlers in pushchairs and dragging furiously on e-cigarettes. I took Oliver’s lunch down to him at the Bowness car park this afternoon and there were so many cars, so many people milling about aimlessly into the road, as if getting run over is not something that can happen in the Lake District, like Disneyland, that it took me over half an hour to complete a journey which should have taken about five minutes. It would have been quicker to walk.
It would not have been quicker to walk back. Firstly it is all uphill and secondly I made a detour, and came up the next valley and cut across the top. In any case I had had enough of walking, having already trailed over the fells with the dogs, and being in the sort of frame of mind where nothing is as interesting as the prospect of breakfast.
There are some new cows on our morning walk. I am sorry to say that some of the belted Galloways have disappeared, we will not think about where they might have gone, and in their place is a gaggle of young Aberdeen Anguses.
The newcomers are not yet as placid as their predecessors. Indeed, they were in such a state of excitement on their first day that I thought probably they were completely new arrivals and had just collected their luggage off the carousel at Heathrow. They saw me coming and trotted excitedly towards me in a large, mooing, high-speed gaggle, inspiring Rosie to turn tail very sharply indeed and set off in the opposite direction. She had to be coaxed back once I had finished yelling and waving my arms at the cows, which fortunately worked, because the fells are quite dry again, and my feet were clad only in flip-flops.
There is a reason that farmers do not wear flip-flops when they are manhandling young bullocks.
Since then we have reached an equanimity. This morning they were all clustered around the gate, scratching their itchy bits on the latch and leaning blissfully against its smooth support.
This did not make it any easier to get through the gate, especially since Rosie had run off in great alarm and was refusing to be recaptured.
Eventually I managed to catch hold of her tail, and subduing her frantic struggles with threats and not a little force, picked her up to carry her.
The gate would not open because of the cows leaning on it, and I had to clamber over and force my way through, which was no easy achievement whilst carrying a small, wriggling, terrified creature, and occasionally glancing back to reassure Roger Poopy, who had reluctantly slunk underneath the gate and was trying to pick his way through invisibly, whilst the cows sniffed him with great interest and blew cow-snot in his ears.
The cows were too warm and contented to move and I practically had to climb over one snoozing gentleman, lying contentedly in their midst and belching contentedly.
Rosie was petrified by then, frozen into horrified immobility. Once we were through the cows I put her down, and she hurtled off up the hill as fast as her little legs would carry her rotund frame.
It is making our morning walks very peaceful, because all tourists are turning round at the Cow Gate and heading off in the opposite direction. The fells are just about the only place where there are no picnickers or howling children or badly-behaved dogs, other than my own, obviously.
They will all go home tomorrow.
I am looking forward to it very much.
