I've just come back from the most wonderful weekend. We have some friends that own a house up in the northern Lakes here in the UK. They are one of the most hospitable families I know, and I'm lucky enough to have sort of grown up with their daughters. One of said daughters was celebrating a special birthday, and I was so very pleased to be invited up to join them. I travelled up at what felt like an extraordinarily early time for a Saturday morning - we set off, in the car, from the Home Counties at around 09.00 in the morning, in beautiful, classic English spring weather. Cerulean blue sky, cool to chilly breeze (think - if the clouds come over it's almost winter again!), trees and bushes showing a mist of green as the buds start breaking open, a few puffs of white clouds and of course the birds singing madly. Our expectations on arrival way up north? Possibly similar LOOKING weather, but around 10 degrees centigrade cooler! We made our way up the M40, up to Birmingham, up the M6 in a leisurly fashion, through the flat southern counties, then the rolling hills of Oxfordshire up to the urbanised midlands where you seem to hit a city every 20 minutes. We stopped for lunch at a motor way service station - such a throw back to the 1970's, despite all they do to modernise them. When they were first built I've been told that it was cool to drive out on a Friday night and have dinner at a service station near you! The weirdness of the lives of those of my parent's generation! We ate our sandwiches under some trees, on a patch of grass, just the right side of a 2 foot hedge that divided us by around 5 meters from the river of metal hurling itself along the motorway, thankfully in the glorious sunshine!
About 2 hours after lunch a hazy dark grey/blue slumberous hump appeared on the horizon, as if a the sky had sloughed all it's darker elements down to the ground, leaving all the lighter blue floating high up in the atmosphere. The leaden looking heap eventually resolved itself into a spine of mountains laying along the horizon - the Lake District! As we got closer the resemblance to a spinal cord vanished and you could see mountains peering over the shoulders of those in front, a haphazard pile of stunning highlands that eventually rose up to totally surround us. It seemed as if the car was cupped in the palm of a mountain god, like holding a bead of water steady and still in the hollow of the palms of your hand. You never really get over your awe when you see the mountains of the Lake District for the first time in a while - it's as if every time you leave you forget their granduer. I'm permanently surprised every time I go there.
Anyway, contrary to expectations, it was HOT, as hot as in the south of the UK, once we arrived at the farm house. But everything else was delightfully spring like, if dry. The fields were what I could probably get away with describing as Irish green, and of course the spring lambs were being their delightful corny selves and flopping like fresh white doodles on to the grass near their mothers, or pronking, with legs stiff and heads up, as they chased each other through the broken hedgerows. No puddles, no grey sky, no mud, no mist, no drizzle, although the trees were still grabbing for the sky bare limbed, winter dressed, not a hint of misty green drifting over them, and so making sure we could tell it was still early spring, even if we were stripped down to T-shirts! As we parked the car in front of the Howe the jackdaws drifted from their roost high in the barn walls across the cobbled courtyard like black spots in front of your eyes, raining rough sticks and straw down on the flowerbeds below. The kitchen door was wide open and you could hear voices EVERYwhere, they soaked into the air from all the buildings. Every spare space had someone staying in it. There were children playing in the gravel by the dogs' pen at the back of the house - building a den under the spreading evergreen huddled up alongside the back door. There were children in the field at the front of the farm house, chasing the ducks and playing catch with eachother. There were adults at the back of the house basking in the sun on the terrace, nursing chilly wine and sweating beer bottles. Other 'grown ups' staked out the kitchen, brewing endless cups of tea. The majority of the adults were circled around the TV in the huge barn sitting room, watching the Grand National with the delight only those who place bets on the horses once a year on the basis of their favourite tree, colour or birthplace can. It turned out there were around 20 adults at this party, and 9 children between 2 and 9.
Dinner was adults only, so the children were packed off to bed at a remarkably early hour and we settled down for a spectacular dinner of Ghanaian food. The echoes of Caribbean cooking in so many of the dishes was fascinating.
I took a short walk after dinner, MUCH later. It's so quiet away from the city and I wanted to sample it, it's very rare I get the chance nowadays. There was a slight breeze, but not cold, just cool. To catch a clear glimpse of the sky I had to evade all the motion-based light sensors hung on the outer walls of the building, and I escaped out to the field at the front. Initially I tiptoed so as to avoid sinking my heels into the turf whilst peering sky-wards, but it's a bit difficult to turn your face directly up to the sky and keep your balance teetering on your toes, so I eventually gave up and buried my heels inches into the turf as I opened my eyes wide at the sky. It's so dark up there around the Howe, there's no glow on the horizon, not one indication that there's a town nearby, in any direction. The only light came from the stars - on this particular night there was no competition from la luna, it was the dark of the moon. How is it possible for a person to forget what the night sky really looks like!? To forget how many stars there are? I've got used to the 30 or so you can see through the lucozade orange glow of London. It was beautiful, awesome, outside the Howe on that Saturday night. Sometimes I feel that so much and such a quality of light should make some kind of noise - although I suppose an astro-physicist would say the stars DO make a noise! Occasionally I even feel like the sun's roaring at me (aside - I think that was one of the most amazing things about the film Sunshine, how it somehow represented a sound no-one has ever heard with such convincing accuracy!)
especially when that powerful baking sensation pours over your skin, giving you the impression of a solid thing touching you, not something ephemeral. Of course, the star light wasn't as tangible, but I went to bed feeling a like I'd heard a zephyr blow through clear crystal wind chimes.....
Sunday, now there was a perfect day. We went for a picnic, big 'uns, lil 'uns, young 'uns and old 'uns. Packed up a cooler or two, some beer, some wine, pies and sandwiches, perfectly ripe, juicy and fragrant melon, green salad and teeny blobs of blood red baby tomatoes. We went to Crummockwater and ended up right on the pebbly shoreline. Perfect day. Children stripped down to paddle in the water, adults lazing with books and newspapers, jumpers and cardigans shed and hung over the branches of the overhanging trees, still bare of foliage. The water was completely still, sadly leading to the only comparison possible here - it was as smooth as glass, as reflective as a mirror. You could see the olive, grey, tan and gold of the surrounding mountains swimming around the edge of the lake, with the milky blue of the sky pooled in the middle. The sun was baking the white stones on the beach surrounding the lake and the only relief was an occasional breath of cooler air, which seemed to come from where the lake tumbled over the edge of a small dam into the beck that ran down into the valley below.
I'd given one of my little friends a set of my favourite books to read the previous day - the Narnia Chronicles. In fact I'd given all three of my friend's children gifts, the two eldest my favourite books from when I was almost their age, the youngest a cuddly toy - she's only a baby, after all! The eldest, a set of the Narnia Chronicles - magic and joy and sadness and hope and tragedy and comedy all wrapped up in one lovely package, the middle child the Enid Blyton Magic Faraway Tree series. I thought I'd overshot the mark a little, that they were both probably a year or so too young, but I figured they could grow in to them!! How wrong could I have been!?
That day my amazing little friend hauled out one of the Narnia books - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - and proceeded to begin to devour it sitting quietly on the pebbly beach. And from this circumstance comes one of my favourite photographs. He's still only 5, and reading out loud, quietly of course! Surrounded by bigger kids climbing trees, his sisters paddling in the lake in their wellies (water over the tops of their wellies of course!) my little friend sat quietly and disappeared into the world of Aslan and Mr Tumnus. Totally absorbed. And the photo? Well, here it is:
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