Thursday 21 January 2016

Black Combe...

I’ve done my chores for the day - having finished an article, paid a couple of bills and taken my gouty foot to the health centre in Windermere. I have a course of pills, for the gout, which will last a couple of weeks; hopefully it will have cleared up by then.

The weather is beautiful today; after all those gloomy skies, and all that rain, it’s good to see the sun. This afternoon there’s a slight haze, and a warm, peach-coloured light, which is transforming Black Combe - the signature hill of South Lakeland - into simple shapes, in muted pastel colours. The sunlight is catching the polished beer pumps and the face of a man sitting at the bar. A proper photographer would go and get his camera, but I’m happy to sit here, in the pub at Foxfield, and watch light chasing shadows across the fells.

A couple in the corner seem to find their dog, a pitbull, particularly fascinating. Everything the dog does - farting, grunting, lying down, getting up, lying down again - is greeted with delighted applause, as though the pooch had split the atom or found a cure for cancer. “Oh look”, they say, as the dog stares malevolently at me, “he wants a crisp”. But I speak fluent pitbull and I’m convinced I hear him say “Give me a crisp, old man, or I’ll tear your fucking throat out”…

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