Bikini clad blondes shock Lake District tourists! LOL

Friday July 25^th

Penultimate dog walk and swim at home, this morning.

After brekkers drove into work relatively early and got down to our final day at work together too. I know this is a total misnomer as I am in Archives and she is in reprographics but it does seem like we have been colleagues for a month. I must say it is very nice working with you lover but we have been very careful not to make demonstrative displays of affection in the place. I think I would feel the same if my lover was a guy. It wouldn’t seem right, somehow.

Had a slightly distressed Skype with the nieces when we got back from work; it must’ve been getting on for midnight in Perth. Today was the last day of their mid-winter school holidays, they won’t be able to come camper-vanning with me and Laura to the places we went last year. I hadn’t realised their hols finished so soon, but I did go out much earlier last year I guess. I had a mad confab with Big Sis and we have agreed that we can take them for a couple of weekends away in the van so they don’t feel left out. They thought it was brilliant and want to go to Busselton and Shark Bay. Busselton is ‘doable’ in a weekend; I think Shark Bay may be a drive too far for a three day trip. I didn’t tell them that though.

Laura and I walked down to Dom’s together with Callie and I walked back through Coumes Brook. I promised to take the car down tonight to collect her in case she was whacked out. I arrived early after completing the next Paretsky novel and had a long gossip with Dominic who thinks he has some relatives somewhere in Perth. I told him there was a large ex-pat Italian community in WA so it was entirely possible.

Laura was tired out and glad of the drive home. I walked the pup while she fell asleep in the chair in the lounge. She managed to shuffle up the wooden hills and was out like a light almost as soon as she hit the charp. That is tired.

Saturday July 26^th.

We decided to continue our morning routine as usual just so we could say bye to Sarah for a couple of months. She said nice things like she’d miss us and she hoped we had a great time. I mentally added Sarah to my Aussie goodie bag list.

We had everything packed and ready yesterday so all we needed to do was to load up the car and set off. We did this after breakfast and a last minute clean up. I went round to Julie’s to check she was OK with being our mail monitor and she said she was fine. That done we headed up country to Dad’s house. I stopped at Molly and Eric’s and we went and chatted with Molly and Steven, Eric was away working, of course. Molly was pleased to see us both and invited me to join them for tea – which led to the usual awkward moment when Steven asked, “Why aren’t you staying here Loll?”

You’d have thought at 14 he would have worked it out by now. Maybe he is in that long African river. His sister couldn’t possibly be a lesbian, surely? We dumped our gear at Dad’s after our chat with Laura’s Mum and then had the mad idea of driving down to Crummock and having a paddle or swim in the lake, maybe our last in the UK this year. I suggested we change our outfits so we could put swimming cossies on under our clothes. If we hung about long enough after swimming we could probably dry off without having to worry about cossie changing at the lakeside. I put on a knee length, sleeveless, jersey dress, Laura wore her blue, shortish shirt dress, both hiding brightly coloured bikinis. We had a couple of microfiber towels and our underwear in a small day sack too.

I should have guessed the shore by the fish ladder would be busy with both the weather (very warm) and the number of cars parked there – almost full. There was a hell of a lot of people down by the ladder so we decided to walk on round to the outlet tower and swim there perhaps. As we had put our jelly shoes on when we reached the shore we just started walking in the water at the edge of the lake after crossing the two bridges over the fish ladder bit. We threw Callie’s retrieving dummy out into the water for her to have a swim every now and then. The water was deliciously cold and refreshing feeling but you just knew that not too far out from the shore it would be very cold indeed.

We walked over the bump by the fallen trees to get to the bay underneath the northern summit of Melbreak. Here there are some conveniently placed boulders to sit on, one of which is broken to resemble a seat in both appearance and comfort. We surprised an old man and his wife by pulling off our dresses, dumping then and my rucksack on the rock seat, and running into the water. It was lovely and cool and as cold as I thought.

The lake floor here drops away pretty quickly and it becomes deep enough to swim only a few feet out from the shore. The water took my breath away as I began to swim out. Laura gave a half scream as the cold of the water came up to her neck. The only trouble with swimming in a lake (or the sea) with Callie is she tries to be out there with me, even when I am standing up, so I have to remember not to be out of her depth for too long or she gets really tired out!

It was really lovely to be swimming in my favourite lake in the Lake District but I was surprised at how tired I felt after relatively minimal exertion really. Our 100 lengths a day in the pool don’t prepare you for the reality of wild swimming, I suppose. We had a good old splash about and with the water being so clear I had a few dives to the lake floor to investigate what was down there. There were no fish, I must have frightened them away but there were at least a dozen or so bloody bottles. Mainly beer bottles, probably accumulated over the years by thoughtless tourists just chucking them into the water. That could be a slur on the tourists, more likely it would be yobbish West Cumbrians who had come out for a barbeque by the water and treated the place the way they seem to treat everything else round about, as one giant rubbish bin.

We had a sit in the sunshine to dry off and catch a few rays in the process. This did the double function of drying our bodies and swim wear so there was no need to struggle out of our bikinis and into our underwear underneath a towel!

The meal at Molly and Eric’s was lovely, especially as Eric seems to have stopped his sniping at me for stealing his daughter. [It was her who came on to me you stupid man!] I think the fact I am taking her with me to Australia has made more of an impression in his mind than the fact we having been living together for eleven months! Why can’t he just accept our relationship in the way my Dad did. His words were, “Whatever makes you happy makes me happy too.” Maybe it is because Dad is an Australian not a narrow-minded West Cumbrian!

They wanted to hear all about the flight and where we’d be staying. I found them Suze’s house on google maps and we looked at it with street view. I called up Rottnest Island (our first excursion destination) and showed them our mooring point in Stark Bay – which will be deserted at this time of year! I explained about borrowing my sister’s camper van (showing them pictures from last summer on my Nexus 7) and how we’d be doing the same route but in reverse. They were told about my nieces being so disappointed they couldn’t come too, like last year, so we have planned two weekends away with them in the camper as well. I think by the end of my massive PR campaign for Western Australia they were convinced I wasn’t a malign influence on their ‘innocent’ daughter.

We took Callie up Tallentire Hill before bed time and Laura told me that her Dad had finally accepted (to her) that he was horrified when she came out to them but has at last “…made his peace with the situation.” I am so pleased. I was able to confirm that I thought his reaction to our plans etc and his general attitude to me was almost like the old days before we had even become a couple.

We proved we were a couple for quite a while at home afterwards.

Sunday July 27^th.

I walked Callie up the Hill again and Laura zoomed back to her Mum and Dad’s as the girls were coming over for lunch and she really wanted to see them, she went to chat with her Mum and find out what time they were coming. The ‘girls’ are Molly’s other two daughters, Kirsten and Avril, both with respective husbands Rob and Andy and with Kirsten’s two children, Holly and Tilda. They were arriving at about noon to eat about 1.30. I was invited to come along too. If the weather was fine we were going to eat in the garden with Eric doing the traditional UK manly thing of burning meat on the barbeque! That was what happened, no, not burning the meat!

I raided Dad’s wine cellar and took four bottles of Uncle Hilmar’s wine with us to the meal plus one of my Lemon meringue pies which was lurking in the freezer and I am sure needed eating! It was a really enjoyable gathering, very silly and bantering with the wine (and beer for the guys – well they are West Cumbrians!) flowing frrely. Once again I did my PR routine for Western Australia and they all seemed sold on the idea of going, if not on the idea of over twenty hours of flying to get there.

Callie disgraced herself a little bit by snaffling Holly’s burger when she was wafting it about while talking to her grandpa. How was Callie to know that the wafting motion wasn’t an indication that she could come and take the proffered food? Callie was very gentle but I think it was the surprise of the thing which made Holly burst into tears. I suppose all the adults, who’d witnessed Callie’s misdemeanour, laughing at what had happened didn’t help Holly much either. She is only 5, bless her and not used to dogs. No one in the Thomas family owns a dog.

When we came back to Dad’s at about 6pm, Laura told me that Avril had whispered to her she thought she may be pregnant. She had done a self-test kit about a week ago which was positive and she had an appointment with her GP next week in Aspatria to make sure. She had told Laura (in secret) so she knew before she flew off to the other side of the world. I thought the news might have made her a bit broody but her words were along the lines of, “I can’t see why she wants to have one just yet at all. I don’t fancy thei idea myself.” I kept my own counsel on this, as I was really pleased for Avril and think she and Andy will be great parents.

We were so stuffed with food from the long long lunch we just had a brief snack for our evening meal and then snuggled up on Dad’s sofa to watch some of the Commonwealth Games events on TV.

A quiet end to a busy weekend, I suppose.

[This entry posted from Warnbro, Western Australia at 5pm on August 1^st.]