Dear Diary
Some months ago...
Mr Splog: What would you like to do for your birthday my love?
Norah: Ooooh! I want to go to the ballet and a posh restaurant and wear a pretty dress and wander around a romantic city and go to a gallery and buy pretty things and see a comedian and stay in a hotel and go to the fair and... [continued for some weeks]
Mr Splog: But of course - we shall do whatever you desire my sweet.
***
Last week...
Norah: Have you thought about what you'd like to do for your birthday my darling?
Mr Splog: Yes. I'd like to go to the Sellafield Visitors' Centre please.
Norah: The what, dearest?
Mr Splog: The Sellafield Visitors' Centre. Please.
Norah: Ahaha! For a second there, I thought you were suggesting that you wanted to go to the visitors' centre of a large nuclear power plant! For your birthday! Ahaha! It's a joke!! Ha ha! A joke! Right? A joke? Darling?
***
And so it was that on Monday morning we pointed our little red car North West and off we set. I have never been to the Lake District before and amused myself navigating according to the less traditional rationale of 'Places With Names That Make Me Snigger'. The MP3 meandered happily about the annals of our (often shocking) collection of tunes and I discovered that not only is Bill Withers an excellent punch line to a duck joke, but he's also ideal in-car karaoke material.
The Sellafield Visitor's Centre was... well... oh okay I did sort of enjoy it. It was very well done, and free, and we were the only two people there so when we had to do touchscreen polls in the cinema bit it was interesting to note that "50% of this audience voted for wind power" (Norah whistles and looks at ceiling with best innocent face on.) And I actually learned something (before I had a vague idea the Nuclear Power Was Bad, but now I can back that up with all sorts of reasons why).
We had a rather bracing walk along a pebble beach and flung pretty stones into a murderous sea. We stopped off in a deserted playground on the way up to 'St Bees Bakery and Caterring' (sic) and I swung really high on a swing and watched a purple storm bruise over the cliffs towards us. Then we ate greasy pies in the car in the rain.
The only thing worse than the hotel was the Chinese restaurant we found in Whitehaven, so we took the precaution of getting far too pickled to care about the grub and shab and found the cross waitress and the nasty coffee very funny indeed.
Having been in the Lake District for nearly 24 hours and not seen so much as a large puddle by Tuesday morning, I demanded lakes. Well - first I demanded scrambled egg and lots of coffee, then I demanded that we go via Fritzington and Cockermouth (fnar) and then I demanded lakes.
And it's just as well I did!
Because if we hadn't taken that route we might never have come across The Pencil Museum!!! I'm not sure what kind of a person could drive past an excitingly signed pencil museum (the sign posts were in the shape of large pencils) without going in, but we're certainly not that kind of person. In we went, collecting out free pencil as we went in. I had my photograph taken with the world's largest pencil. I saw a real spy pencil with a secret map and compass in it. I learned more things about pencils that I ever thought I would. After half an hour all the large pencil shaped decor was making me feel a bit like Neil Buchanan though, so we had to be on our way.
The only thing left to do was to call in at Kendal for some Mint Cake. Pah. What a swizz! It's just damp hyper-sugar with peppermint oil. Bleurgh.
And then we drove home through the snow, music shuffling eccentrically from Led Zep to Jeff Buckley and back via Jethro Tull.
All in all, it was almost enough to make me forget that I'd just spent the previous two days with my mother-in-law. Almost.
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