On the way, we also found a sweet bargain at a kitchen store that is going out of business. Denby plateware 50% off! So we are 2 lovely cereal bowls and 2 pasta bowls nearer having decent plates. Which is a silly and frivolous thing, I know. But it made us very happy. And our cheap piece of salmon tasted nicer on such lovely plates. Last time my mum was here, she offered to buy us a set of good plates. I refused on the grounds that our odds and bobs would last til we could buy our own. One of the bowls I was basing that on now has mold under the enamelling... I know mold can grow anywhere in this country, but...!
Lastly, but not leastly, we spent the Easter weekend with friends in the Lake District - a much-needed and absolutely wonderful break from the city and research. Our friends were perfect hosts: they gave us a ride up and back, fed us to bursting point, took us round Keswick, walked up hills that must have been mere strolls for them and generally made us feel at home in P--'s lovely family cottage. Our bedroom was at the back of the cottage and every morning we could wake up to this view:
A quick digression...on the way up to Keswick, we stopped for lunch at Aysgarth Falls in the Dales National Park. It really is stunning - and where one of the fight sequences in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was filmed. That didn't stop us enjoying the scenery. Here is Nasser smiling up at me from the banks of the river just below the upper falls.
Our friend prepared not one but three egg hunts on Easter Sunday - something completely unanticipated and unbelievably sweet. And it made me very homesick and rather nostalgic: when I was a kid, my grandparents' house was beside an empty lot that was left untouched for years. It was 'the forest' and I spent hours playing in it. Every Easter, when the weather was nice, papa would hide eggs in the forest, under the carpet of pine needles, and I'd scrabble around finding them with my sister and brother. This year, when Nas and I woke up, we found a two trails of eggs leading from our bedroom door - one for each of us! - and out into the garden. In the afternoon, there was a string maze and in the evening an honest-to-goodness egg hunt with clues all over the cottage. Above and beyond the call of duty
! And left us both with the most stunning chocolate hangovers ever. This was the haul from the first egg hunt...Sunday, we climbed up Cat Bells - a hill we could see from the back garden. The weather was perfect - sunshiny and golden with enough of a breeze to keep us well on our toes at the top! The view was amazing - the Lakes is so incredibly stunning. I can see why Wordsworth loved it so - I still can't understand how, in such a beautiful location, he still wrote such awful stuff. The clouds are never lonely up
there there's never only one.On Monday, we dyed our Easter eggs - our good friend was kind enough to send with us some dyes from Bulgaria. They made bew-tee-fool eggs which we took out into the fog and clouds of Lattrig and sent rolling down the fells. I can't remember which one won - though my friend and I discovered that unpeeled, hard-boiled eggs are bouncier...
Apparently, Lattrig is the traditional site of egg-rolling in Keswick. We were the only ones up there that day - the weather being unsuitable for much other than chasing sheep and imagining how great the view would be without the fog.
So that was our weekend. If we could've, we'd never have come home. But no - it's nice to be back with Logan and Laila and our books and on our street. We have a new neighbour who has a lovely puppy. The weather is getting warmer - we're planting our potatoes on Friday. We're already planning on going back to the Lakes though...
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