"On my summer holidays I went to the lake District. At the lake District when I went into the bathroom I saw a blanket over the bath in the hotel I was staying in in the lake district. Before we went to the lake district my mummy and daddy planned out nicely with Grandma and Grandpa and my Mummy’s sister that they’d all go on the same day and get there on the same day and we did that so when we got there we were the last and saw them all having dinner through the window. Then the next day we all went to the river sea and I forgot to tell you my mummy’s sister has 2 children one is called Miffa and one is called Bolly so there we were at the river sea, my mummy’s sister who is my aunt was paddling and she suddenly called come and see the jellyfish so we all came and crowded round and looked, Miffa cried and my sister Lucy screamed, me and Bolly laughed. Then in half an hour we went to a hotel for luncheon, then we went back to the river sea and when we came back we sat in a different place and I went round to see iff the jelly fish was still there and ther dead and looking awfull."
This was written in 1976, the year of the drought and B&Bs putting blankets over baths to stop their patrons using all the water. So, that's, um [counts on fingers] 31 years me and my family have been summer-holidaying in the same square mile.
I like to think I'm all cosmopolitan and sophisticated, and I really haven't a fucking clue where I get this idea. I rarely leave the country, I never read newspapers, I find London TERRIBLY EXCITING, I can't cope with long paragraphs or dense prose, and my favourite books are by Dr Seuss. And I go to the SAME HOUSE EVERY YEAR for my summer holidays. WITH MY PARENTS (well, more or less - they've given up on roughing it in the hills and now stay down in the valley - we chuck them the odd bit of Kendal mint cake from time to time).
But this house, it's... well, it's kind of magical. It's called Thorcop (which my mate Doug insists on pronouncing ThorCOP with the emphasis on the cop which is just WRONG, and as I keep telling him it is in fact THORcop) and it's in the middle of nowhere, on a wild and windy moor at the end of a mile-long dirt track which threatens to decimate our car with its ruts and boulders and eight gates, all of which have to be opened and closed behind you, which is a right pain if you're driving on your own. It doesn't have proper electricity, just a generator which can only be turned on in the evenings, and the drinking water comes from a stream which runs off the fell behind the house.
At night, we leave the kids in bed and climb the hill behind the house, carrying whisky and smokes and a picnic blanket, lie on our backs and look at the stars and get very drunk, then fall back down the hill again, light candles and a fire and eat cheese and chocolate biscuits.
There's a pair of barn owls wot live in the barn and can be viewed roosting through a special hole in some corrugated iron. There's a crag and a cairn which still has a sod of removable turf which I hid secret messages under when I was nine. There's a waterfall in an enchanted forest, there are red squirrels, there's a terribly-exciting disused sheep dip, and the house is several hundred years old, and when I was a teenager and Feeling Troubled (in the way that only teenagers can) I would long for the hills of Thorcop, and imagine myself standing all wuthered and blowy on a wild mountaintop there.
At the bottom of the garden is a stream, with frogs and waterboatmen and sheep's skulls and a bridge made out of a log and a secret garden with ancient overgrown plum trees and brambles for making pie.
Ooh yes, and there's a Chocolate Fairy! If the children are good, she deposits goodies at the top of the hill behind the house every morning. Or afternoon, if she's hungover.
And it's not in the Nasty Babylon Lake District in the middly bit with all the tourists and tea shops and Brand New Walking Boots and stupid little namby-pamby white houses and Wordsworth and quaintness and everything pretty blue and emerald green, oh no. It's in the tatty bit, the wuthering bit, the PROPER bit where everything is tinged with grey and it rains a lot and you can pretend you're DEAD HARD.
And, just to get all gooey for a moment, it's got continuity. My grandparents (aged 93 and 97, I'll have you know) liked it so much they moved there and now live down the road in an ancient house with a steam train and an upside-down boat at the bottom of the garden, and I get the fun of passing it on to my son, who's already looking forward to going back. As am I. Next Saturday. Can't wait.
But bother, this wasn't very funny at all, which doesn't seem right seeing as it's NWM's gaff. I'd better tell a joke.
Q: Why was the washing machine laughing?
A: Because it was taking the piss out of the knickers!
Do not tell me it is a rubbish joke because I will not listen. It is the best joke in the whole history of jokes ever so there.
And yes, I really did have cousins called Bolly and Miffa, although sadly they give themselves more sensible names these days.
And no, I have never before or since used the word "luncheon". My mum reckons I saw it on a menu and liked the look of it.
Oh yes, and MonkeyMother: WRITE A POST NOW THIS MINUTE. Please. Thankyou.
