Why on earth don’t they don’t make these pants in adult
sizes? Can you imagine how useful they would be for those of us who rush from
pillar to post never knowing for certain what day it is? They would also be so very
useful when it came to leaving a telephone message:
“Hi there, I was
meant to get a kerosene delivery, erm (a quick check down the front of your
jeans) yesterday and I’m just worried that I’m going to run out.”
Or:
“Hi, it’s, erm (a quick check down the front of your
jeans) Thursday, can I get someone to come and service my boiler please?”
Or:
“Hi there, it’s erm (a quick check down the front of your
jeans) Friday, could you call me when you get this message? Thanks.”
I appreciate that it could be a little embarrassing if you
were in the middle of a meeting and had to pretend to study the wall for a
second to check what was written on the front of your knickers, but it would be
so much more professional than writing TUESDAY on the back of your hand in biro
pen.
It’s particularly difficult to know what day of the week it is
when you are self employed.
I usually hinder The Assassinator and The Resident Vet (Kamikaze
Girl having gained employment and thus moved to London – the bitch) with their horses on a
Thursday but occasionally Office work will get in the way of this arrangement
and I have to ride their horses on a different day of the week. This causes
immense confusion, not just to myself and The Resident Vet who co-ordinates the
entire operation, but also to my household and all of my Childcare operatives
as well.
It’s hard to be organised when you are never sure where you
are meant to be and this is perhaps the reason why I went on holiday to Dorset with Other Half and Britney and failed to pack any
shorts or suncream.
Aside from this third degree burn on my lower leg and the enormous
inflammation that cosseted my ankle, we had a fabulous week in sunny Dorset . By some coincidence our holiday managed to correspond
with the remarkable heat wave that had engulfed Britain
and therefore Dorset was enjoying temperatures which where similar to that of the
southern coast of Spain .
We stayed in a proper chocolate box kind of house with a
thatched roof and 3 foot thick walls, which kept the downstairs of the property
extremely cool and the upstairs; as warm as your oven after roasting a chicken.
The cottage was on a small holding near to a place called
Three Legged Cross and very much in the countryside. We had our own private
patio and also (much to Britney’s delight) an outside bath. I’ll just point out
that this was a factor of novelty, as there was also an enormous bath inside
the property in the bathroom at the top of the stairs.
Britney revelled in using all of the available hot water in
her twice daily outside bathing ritual. I had shown her photographs of the
house before we set off on holiday and when I asked if there was anything
particular that she wanted to take in her suitcase for our week away, she
replied “Bath
bombs” before adding as an afterthought: “2 for every day we are there”.
The owner of the holiday cottage had a small herd of Alpacas
and every morning, usually only clad in her pyjama bottoms, Britney sleepily tottered across to the field to greet them as they congregated to have their
breakfast. It took 3 days for her to remember that they were Alpacas and not
Lamas, but they didn’t seem to mind.
I had been to Dorset a few times before we undertook this
excursion down south and I have informed people on many occasions that Poole
Harbour is only 70 miles from Cherbourg and that the sun is so much hotter down
there and the winds are always very warm.
Clearly, having a child has made me either entirely lose my
memory, or perhaps my brain simply couldn’t be bothered to travel further South than
Northampton because I ignorantly sunburnt my arms on the first morning of our
holiday sitting on the patio reading my book while everyone else was still in
bed.
There was a pair of Bullfinches that came to the patio
everyday to forage in the Forget Me knots and I adored seeing them. I have
obviously reached middle age as I now love seeing the less common wild birds,
especially when these are something of a rarity in my garden in Northumberland.
Staying in self catering accommodation made me realise that the people of Dorset use a lot of butter and I put
this down to why our picnic sandwiches always tasted so good. Butter in Dorset spreads like margarine. Butter in Northumberland
spreads like Tungsten. At home, after I’ve torn a great big hole in my slice of
bread with a lump of solid butter, I give up and resort to the spreadable
variety. The Aigle Welly Wearer says that you can tell what season it is in
Northumberland by how near the butter dish is to the open fire. In the dizzy
summer months the butter dish might actually be in the kitchen, but in January
it will be in pride of place on the mantelpiece. This keeps the butter pliable enough
so that you can actually scratch some butter from the block with a knife and
not have to resort to using a cheese grater to make yourself a sandwich.
The People of Dorset also wear shorts all of the time. And
they look normal. It’s not like that up here, people either wear shorts all of
the time, even in November or they wear them once a year. The male once-a-year
short wearers have legs that are as white as a hospital sheet and the female
once-a-year short wearers have legs that are as orange as a 1970’s Spacehopper.
The coast in Dorset was a bit
of a shock for Britney as she assumes that if you are going to where the sea
meets the land, the joining strip between the 2 will be made of golden sand.
For fossil hunting, there are crumbling cliffs and a variety
of stones that are very painful when aligned with bare feet. By contrast the sandy
beaches of Bournemouth and Sandbanks have
beautiful golden sand which is so hot you can’t walk on it with bare feet. We
spent an afternoon happily roasting on the raked sand at Sandbanks and it was
beautiful. The sea is shallow there and Britney and Other Half swam in the
water that was many degrees warmer than the North Sea .
It took us 9 and a half hours to drive home and initially
after getting out of the car and especially after the 31 degree heat of the
roadworks on the M1, I was pleased to be home. Then as we drank Shiraz with our House Sitter, the Scottish
Moose, we complained how damn cold it was up north.
The night after we returned from Dorset ,
I was sitting in our conservatory and 3 Bullfinches flew down from the hedge in
the paddock and began rummaging through the gravel on the drive. I couldn’t
believe it and I took it as a sign that Dorset
was missing me too.
Sadly, I haven’t seen them since.
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