I have had an Outdoors Day.
I am not outdoors now, obviously, since the taxi does not really count as outdoors because of its excellent heating capacity which will warm up to a very comfortable twenty eight degrees. This is so perfect that I have even taken off my outside jersey.
I have still got my underneath jersey on, over the top of my thermal shirt and thermal vest. I feel the cold.
I took the dogs out over the fell this morning, despite the howling icy wind, which actually made it impossible to stand upright on the top. I balanced on the rocks for a few, mildly anxious moments, and then stumbled down, with my arms outstretched, in case of mishap, which fortunately didn’t happen.
I knew that if I went home and took my boots off I would be completely unable to persuade myself to brave the Great Outdoors for a second time, so we went straight to the farm for logs. The dogs galloped behind the taxi with great excitement, Roger actually managing to keep up, although Rosie, who is rather rounded, lagged behind a bit, and I had to stop at the top of the hill to wait for her as she pounded determinedly after me.
Once again I was struck with an enormous sense of gratitude to Mark, who had prepared the stack of bone-dry, tidily split logs handily by the gate. I was less grateful to an utter muppet who was renting the holiday house on the other side of the gate, and who was so completely incapable of turning his car round in the massive turning circle that he actually drove up behind me where I was loading and asked me to move so that he could drive up to the gateway a hundred yards away, to turn round there.
He couldn’t turn round there either, so great was his driving incapacity. I drove ahead of him and then reversed at high speed all the way back after him when he had finished his humiliating efforts, just for a sense of superiority which I hope upset him.
I fought the blustering wind until my fingers and nose were numb and I had filled the boot of the taxi, then I hauled it back home. The dogs ran for the first mile and then sat in the footwell in the front, the boot being full of firewood. They collapsed in front of the fire as soon as I let them in, and they are still snoring now.
I did not collapse in front of the fire.
I unloaded the firewood and went up to Booths, in pursuit of everything they had failed to stock when I went yesterday. They were still failing to stock most of it, much to my frustration, and I have got the Wrong Sort of peppers with my picnic tonight, sometimes life is full of difficulties.
After that I went to the chemist, for hair conditioner. I do not put this on my hair, I have a special high-value bottle of magnificence for my hair, recommended by my hairdresser and presumably manufactured out of spun gold and the tears of virgin princesses. I am reconsidering my purchase of this, because really I can’t tell much difference any more, and in any case my hair is only about an inch long all over, so nobody else can tell either. I quite like the Elemis stuff in the Midland, but that could hardly be described as an economy purchase.
I use the chemist’s hair conditioner, at £1.20 a bottle, for conditioning my woolly jumpers when I wash them, one of which is the Underneath Jersey that I am wearing now.
It is silky-smooth, and smells splendid.
All the same, I don’t think I would like to put the same stuff on my hair.
I might just go and look at the Elemis page while it is still quiet.
