Hello from this weekend, where I walked a bloody long way with some of my best friends. I ate more food than I have for about twelve months but in twelve hours, and cannot be certain but suspect my dad left on covert ops to start a fire on a national treasure, more on which later.
Where to begin. Perhaps with the observation that the fun things in life do depend quite a lot on the people you do them with, but that secondly, it wouldn’t really have mattered who I was with because I challenge anyone not to enjoy the kind of soul-burstingly beautiful autumn day walking twelve miles in the Peak District which my friends and I had on Saturday.
We go away every year to 1. walk a very long way followed by 2. drink a very large amount. Usually it’s to the Lakes, but I’ve been threatening them with a stay at my parents’ house in the Peak District for a long time. It finally came to pass.
My mum didn’t disappoint. Their house used to be a B&B, which means there are plenty of well equipped bedrooms to choose from. Why, then, my mum - who is genuinely one of the most hospitable people on earth – always chooses to make up one less bedroom than the number of guests is beyond me. We could have had a room each.
We didn’t.
What this meant that two of my friends were sharing the room with two (I’m not going to say child-sized, but effectively, child-sized) single beds. Yes, it IS the room where my children normally stay. There WAS another, totally unused double bedroom available. With its own bathroom too. Which mum, as is her baffling way, decided would not be made available to her guests. Welcome!!
Anyway, mum also has a silent approval-based system with towels, which she thinks I don’t know about either. You can judge how loved you are or are not, by which of her three-hundred strong towel collection she chooses to bestow upon you. And also whether or not you get them folded into a fancy B&B style 3d puzzle or not. Will it be the matching soft set she got in the Cole Brothers sale in 1989? Or just the one she used to use after P.E. at school some time around 1956? Because she still owns every single thing she has ever owned, ever, including a cellar full of very old furniture from lives-past; a cellar so capacious and overstuffed you could genuinely convert it into two fully furnished studio apartments with very little trouble at all.
Now it’s an old house, theirs. It was once a village pub. It so happens that the twin-bedded room my friends were billeted to is also the one where you could roll an orange from one side of the floor to to the other, as it is completely on the wonk. My friends, some bottles of wine the worse for wear, discovered that you can also roll an extremely pissed woman from one side to the other too. At midnight. Fun times!
The other great thing about my parents’ house is the showers. Since moving in about fifteen years ago, my mum and dad have taken a resolute ‘if it’s still working, don’t touch it or EVER change it’ approach to interior décor. This is why the hallway still has the original swirly pub carpet from the 80s and the electric showers in the guest bedrooms sound – and I shit you not – like they run off the diesel you’d put in farm machinery. Rather than replace them when they’ve periodically broken over the years, my dad with his background as an electrical engineer has just patched them up with miracles and prayers and counterfeit parts of dubious origin so they keep on running.
When you first turn on the shower in Room 1, it emits a guttural roar not dissimilar to what you’d experience if you were standing under the wings of a Boeing 747 on takeoff. This noise escalates as the water heats up, until you’re basically having a wash under what sounds like a malfunctioning, screaming petrol strimmer. It’s quite hard to relax and enjoy the warm water while the ancient primal parts of your brain are signalling that you’re probably in Great Danger - that water and electricity shouldn’t be mixing at this improbable volume, and you are probably standing under the beginnings of a small electrical fire.
This is why I chose to stay in Room 3 instead. However, I’d forgotten that while the shower in room 3 only sounds a tiny bit like a circular saw, the pressure of the water is enough to flay your skin clean off your living bones. It comes out in tiny little needle sharp jets which are so forceful I imagine you could probably etch yourself a tattoo with them. It physically hurts to stand under it. Call me old fashioned, but I do not believe a shower should actually permanently injure your nipples, but well, here we are.
Bodily trauma aside, we all had a Very Lovely Time. I planned a route to walk which took in all of my favourite places; those places I grew up with and in that feel somehow part of me, and it was the kind of high, clear autumn day where every view makes your heart want to burst. I smiled a lot, and realised quite how little I’ve been smiling recently. Time in the outdoors with good people is time well spent, and it was a blessing I do not take for granted to spend time with my parents too.
I wasn’t expecting to see my dad at all actually. He was supposed to be away for the weekend, so I was surprised to find him there on the night we arrived. As a younger man he spent two years living in the the Antarctic, and as a result now periodically gets invited to do Interesting Things as an Antarctic veteran, one of which this weekend was to visit a famous research ship which was shortly to depart for the other end of the earth. The Sir David Attenborough is better known as Boaty McBoatface, and that was where my dad was heading, for a private tour and veterans lunch on board. Fun times.
So around breakfast time on the day of said lunch, we all got a news notification, sent by my sister. It simply said ‘DAD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE???’ and a link to a BBC news story. Now see if you’re with me here, but I find it EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS that after months of No News At All about Boaty McBoatface, the ONE DAY my dad goes to it, it hit the headlines with reports of a ‘small electrical fire’ on board.
Can this be a coincidence? I think not.
Boaty Mc-Antarctic-bound-Boatface.
My dad, the ex-antarctic exploring, electrical engineer…
A small electrical fire….
Perhaps he just went down there to tamper with the showers. Who knows…
Well HELLO THERE.
Some fun stuff for you this week, by way of things that made me smile. (assuming it’s beyond your gift to go stay with my mum and dad and walk twelve miles in the sunshine to make yourself smile. Don’t feel bad. I’m just lucky that way.)
First up, THIS. I defy you not to watch it over, and over, and over. It made me howl.
Second - The Lucyverse newsletter. I’ve said it before, but it just keeps on getting better and better. I’ve never met Lucy, but if I did I would want her to write a scathing review of something I eat and then be my BFF for ever.
In case I die in a mysterious electrical fire and never again get to write you this newsletter, this abundant and glorious link contains enough glorious links to fun shit on the internet to last you for the rest of your natural life. Hats off to Emma Beddington for compiling it.
Do you watch Ghosts? It’s the final series ever, ever, on BBC iplayer at the moment. I feel happy and sad all at the same time. Ghosts is ace.
That’s all for this time. I am aware I promised kiss-and-tell-all expose of my recent time in Ibiza, but frankly what happens on the white isle stays on the white isle, so you’ll just have to imagine the fun I had. Here is all I will say:
Toodleoo!
About me
I’m Lindsay Butcher and I write words down for a living. I’ll write for you too if you like? Commission me to be hilarious on your behalf by replying to this email…
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Your writing always makes me smile, hope you are doing good, it sounds like it.