Friday 16th Jan.
After our usual breakfast and dog walk I whizzed down to
Cockermouth to buy some more white spirit, to clean out the brushes after gloss
painting – Dad had about half an inch left in the only bottle we could find. I
left Laura applying the gloss to the skirting boards and I took Callie with me
so we could have an extra walk through Harris Park, then alongside the River
Cocker into town. It is too tricky to manage four dogs by myself in town so I
had to leave three disappointed canines behind. They lined up in the lounge,
looking accusingly at me through the picture window as I drove off.
Cockermouth and the rest of Cumbria, it seemed, was a bit
grey this morning. From Harris park there is usually a super view of the fells,
with Grassmor and Grizedale Pike dominating the vista; today there was nothing
but a heavy cloud blanket which meant even lowly Harrot Fell was obscured. As
we walked through the town we found ourselves showered with hail (frozen rain
at this time of year, I think) and it left a slight covering on the roads and
pavements. I left Callie outside the shop, bought the paint and we hurried back
to find Laura looking pleased with herself having done all the skirting boards,
the door frame and the window-sill while we were buying the white spirit and
getting showered by ice.
As we finished off the pulse beat the weather outside
continued to be grotty as it can be in the Lakes. Hail and snow mainly when it
decided to, but otherwise it just got colder and colder outside. The cloud
level stayed so low that we couldn’t even see the wind turbines on the slopes
of Tallentire Hill when we let the woofies out into the paddock, mid-afternoon.
That’s low cloud!
By three o’clock we’d done all the painting and we then
spent almost an hour cleaning up all the stuff we’d used during the week.
Further time was wasted cleaning ourselves up, mutually, making sure no spots
of paint lingered anywhere upon our person.
In the news bulletin at 6pm we had a story about a guy
falling from Swirral Edge, on Helvellyn, to his death this afternoon. You can’t
help wondering about the crass stupidity of some people who must climb the high
fells when there is absolutely no visibility at all. What is the point? You
can’t see the most important reason for getting to summit, to see the view. I
am afraid I have little time for idiots who ‘must’ bag a fell top at all costs,
regardless of the weather.
I have only done this once willingly, when I took a
friend from School, in Norwich, up Blencathra in low cloud because she had a
serious, burning desire to climb it and we had put it off all the week she was
staying with me (at Dad’s) because the cloud cover never lifted to reveal any
of the giants’ heads. In the end I was persuaded to lead her up. We did the
direct route, straight up Hall’s Fell to the middle summit (it has three). On
the top we were not surprised to find there was about twenty yards visibility
in the low cloud. We were even less surprised to find it teeming with people.
In fact a group of lads asked us if we’d take their picture at the summit. I
asked them which view they wanted in the background: Cross Fell, Clough Head,
Grizedal Pike or Scotland? I don’t think they got the sarcasm. Charlotte did.
She called me a sarky bugger as we walked back down the easier route from Scales
Fell.
As a footnote to that tale, a few weeks later Dad and I
climbed Blencathra again, from Mungrisdale this time, along the edge of Bowsale
fell to Bannerdale Crags; we crossed Mungrisdale Common and then up to the
ridge via Foule Crag. It was a glorious day, so I snapped off a whole series of
pictures from the summit in a 360 degree panorama, which I gave to Charlotte when I got
back to Norwich. She was stunned by what she’d missed and agreed that climbing
up when there was no chance of a view was pointless. It is a shame this chap on
Helvellyn hadn’t been so sensible.
Saturday 17th Jan.
Our penultimate day at Dad’s and as treat we went to see
Peter Pan at the Theatre by the Lake. Dad tells me this used to be a rickety,
old, temporary structure made of old lorries and caravans fastened together and
painted blue. I am too young to remember it. I just know the current theatre,
which must have the best location of any theatre in the world. Then it was
called the Blue Box Theatre.
I booked the show way back in October, expecting it to be
a pantomime version of the story. Imagine our surprise when we got the straight
version of J. M Barrie’s play? This is not a complaint, it is an observation.
It was really well done. TTBTL have their own residential company and they are
usually employed for the whole year at a time. They do a really wide variety of
things. One of the best I have seen here was their production of Michael
Frayn’s “Noises Off” which is totally hilarious.
The guy playing Peter was a bit too old in my opinion
(but it is always a difficult call to make, isn’t it?) I saw a version of this
when I was little in Norwich, but I couldn’t remember it all that well, apart
from the way they had the Dad play Hook – which worried me a little at the
time. Here they used the same device, to very good effect. The whole thing has
a poignancy which is unexpected in what is basically a children’s play. (It was
a play before it was a novel, BTW.)
The pirates were gorgeously gormless and Dad/Hook very
convincing. I thought Wendy was too old really, as well, but that’s a minor
quibble. We both thought that the best bit was the kids’ ensemble. They were
locals from Keswick and surroundings and they played the Lost Boys and the
Indians and some of them were birds and sea creatures. They obviously had a lot
of fun. Apparently there were different teams of them so they didn’t have to do
consecutive nights, which is something I hadn’t even considered. The flying was
pretty good too. Although the best we’ve seen this year (academic year that is)
has to be that in the Snowman. I thought it was a shame we weren’t able to take
my niece and nephew to see it as they’d have loved it. Stephen was offered a
ticket if he wanted, but he didn’t. Ah well. Loll proffered the suggestion she’d
ask Kirsten if Holly and Tilly would like to come with us to future productions
in the area. This is something I’d not thought about when I booked tickets, but
in light of the ‘ballet saga’, it could be a good idea too.
All in all I thought it made a splendid finale to our
stay as house sitters for Dad. We head back to Sunny Sheffield tomorrow as the
new semester begins on Monday. Technically it is the ‘scrag end’ of the old
one, but most of the students call it a new semester so I won’t quibble.
The road from the A594 through Tallentire was a bit on
the icy side, but there was no repeat of the grotty spot of weather from
yesterday, thank goodness.
Sunday 18th Jan.
We both walked the dogs up Tall Hill this morning and
almost came a cropper on the higher section of the road which was just a sheet
of solid ice. You couldn’t get a foothold or anything. There was no grip to be
had, we skirted round it through the grassy verge and laughed at the dogs’ valiant
efforts to get across the ice sheet. Coming back down the hill the icy stretch
started long before the visible plane of clear ice and I managed to make myself
sit down rather abruptly on it. This brought howls of laughter from a certain
blonde young lady who started to award me marks for technical merit and
artistic impression. I had to do a crab-wise, undignified shuffle to the road
edge before I could get purchase under foot to stand up again. Loll was
sympathy itself, behind the sniggering façade. She said she wished she’d had
her camera to film my scrawm across the road.
Back home we skyped the aged parent and step-mother and
we showed them out handiwork using the tablet. They were impressed and Dad
really loved the rainbow and heart beat (I knew he would). We told him that we
were taking the woofies to the kennel and then zooming back to Sheffield and
reminded him that Simon would be collecting them from Glasgow airport. They
needed to give him a ring on the day their flight left Perth. He told me he
wasn’t an Alzheimer’s patient yet.
I whipped the three Dad dogs down to the kennel in Dad’s
Land Rover whilst Laura packed out car with all our stuff. Not a long job
really as all I had were my toiletries and electronics and Loll had only one
suitcase too. By 1pm we had bid farewell to Molly, Eric and Stephen and were on
our way back home. The snow level through the Lakes was about 2000 feet still,
and the A66 was clear all the way across. The road seemed relatively quiet all
the way home, TBH, especially for a Sunday. Good old Bradfield Council had gritted
our road (as usual) and so the only tricky bit was our narrow lane which leads
to our enclave. Some kind soul had obviously gritted this bit too. (The council
have provided us a grit bin but it is upto us to use it.)
At home there was a smaller mountain of mail than we had
when we came back to see Swan Lake and almost 90% of it could be thrown away
without even opening it! I wandered round to Julie’s with a bottle of wine as a
thank you – she sees to our mail when we are away, bless her. I ended up staying
for such a long gossip that Loll came around to see how much ransom Ulie wanted
to release me! We stayed even longer, chatting away.
Despite the heating having been on while we were away,
the house did seem a bit chilly. Julie had told us the temperature had not
risen above freezing for about four days in a row, so when we got back in,
whilst Laura prepped the meal, I set a fire going in the box. We were soon
sweltering, what with the heat of our meal and the heat from the stove, we had
to strip down to just t-shirts (I had a skirt on and Loll had jeans). I never
cease to be amazed at how much warmer it makes the house having my stove burning
away, I suppose the heat warms the bricks in the chimney and that acts as a
secondary heat source. By the time we hit the charp at about 10.30, even the
study, in the attic, was comfortably warm.
We foreswore a shower and just tumbled into bed after
both walking Callie up the gritted road and then along the icy path from the
end of Hill Top Wood. Luckily Lumb Lane gets the grit too or we’d have had a
problem again. It was a strange way to top and tail your day, skating along a
road surface because it’s frozen over!
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