Me Cousin Rachael

With apologies to Daphne du Maurier. Also, apologies if my controversial satirical blog sounds more like Bridget Jones’s Diary these days. I mean, really, really sorry. I went off BJD when I read somewhere that Colin Firth’s character was based on TTK when he was Director of Public Prosecutions before he came out as Big Brother’s evil twin and Lord Alli’s favourite. That and Hugh Grant remoaning all the time. Enough to put you off your Weetabix. TTK is so loathsome that I’m finding political commentary increasingly nauseating. I need a break. Having said I was beginning to sound like BJD, what follows is not exactly a diary of problematic romances but a romanticised diary of problems. 

I mentioned in my previous blog that 97-year-old Uncle (Mum’s brother) had passed away, and me and Sis were off up north for his funeral. I don’t drive long distances very often, and when I do, they’re planned meticulously. I find out where all the loo stops are, how long each leg should take, and possible detours should one or other major road be up the creek. After all, this is England. 

It never goes perfectly to plan.

The first leg took me to Bletchley, less than 10 miles / 20 minutes away, to fill up with petrol before joining the M1. I pulled up at a pay-at-pump and read in disbelief that before I could fill, I had to choose how much petrol I wanted either in litres or value, and the pump would stop automatically at the chosen limit. I had no idea how much I needed as I was about 1/4-full but not dead-on 1/4. I didn’t want to underestimate and end up having to splash-and-dash at M1 prices, or overestimate and have the pump spill all over the forecourt. Indeed, I could see a load of sand where someone had obviously had a spill not too long ago. I decided to underestimate and pressed several buttons several times with several reattempts until I gave up and moved my car to a pay-cashier pump. I inserted the nozzle, I pulled the lever, the pump started, after a while the pump stopped. I looked at the display – I had availed myself of £1.21-worth. I stormed into the shop and begged for help. A very polite, patient, helpful little girl talked me through the process I had previously followed, and it worked this time. She admitted that the pumps were temperamental. So am I.

Things can only get better, thought I, forgetting how feckless Sis is. I’d arranged to meet her at the very clearly explicated M1 service station just after junction 38 on the northbound carriageway. But she had taken a taxi to the southbound side. So I jumped back into the car, sped up to junction 39, round the roundabouty thing and back on the M1, southbound this time, to the services. After a disgusting cheese-mayonnaise sandwich, I drove us down to junction 38, round another roundabouty thing, then back up the M1, wistfully passed the northbound service station, and on we went.

The M1 transmogrified into the A1(M) that we followed to Scotch Corner, where we exited, but only because I squeezed between two HGVs when I initially got in the wrong lane. We agreed that we didn’t need a pitstop at that time so carried on. Big mistake. Huge. Scotch Corner to Keswick is a long way. By the time we got to Penrith, I’d lost the will the live. By the time we got to Keswick, I was a gibbering wreck. I was in room 4 and Sis in 103; I got the keys and paperwork mixed up several times. It was the turn of the little man behind the desk to lose the plot. Supper (and cocktails) couldn’t come soon enough.

The next day, we walked to the church and took our places in one of the pews reserved for family. Our two cousins, their spouses and offspring arrived en masse. They looked like they’d just come from a marathon screening of Bambi, Watership Down and Old Yeller, apart from Cousin 1’s (C1) hubby, who wears a permanent smile and a twinkle in his eye. He saw me and Sis and gave us a grin and a wave as if he’d spotted us in Waitrose.

The service was lovely, and we made our way to the grave for Uncle to be buried with his beloved wife, whose funeral we had attended the year before Mum passed. Sis and I held our breath: would Cousin 2 (C2) topple into the grave like she nearly did at her mother’s funeral by dint of her Princess-Kate heels and the uneven ground? Actually no. She’d improved her graveside technique since last time and bent her knees (inwards) as she dropped the white rose on to the coffin.

After the therapeutic wake, I nipped back to my room, changed into a more comfortable and colourful summer frock, cardy, flat shoes and playful earrings for a mooch around town. I popped into a little store for a bottle of Prosecco to take to C1’s the next day as she’d invited us over to supper. I remembered her as an excellent cook, even better than me. I went to pay at the counter and asked the pleasant-looking man if I could have a carrier bag. 

He stared at me and asked. “Are you from round here?”

Assuming that my hybrid Cumbrian-Yorkshire-Cambridge accent had confused him, I replied, “Yes and no. I was born near here but live down south now. Just popped back up for a few days to see family.”

“Oh,” he said. There was a pregnant pause. “You have a nice smile,” he added eventually. “You’ve made my day.” 

Jeez. I was dry-eyed throughout Uncle’s funeral and the wake; I was even dry-eyed at Mum’s. Not so much Dad’s, but that was a momentary blub. Now I well up? I mumbled an embarrassed thank you, fled out of the door and down towards the Lake. I passed the ice-cream kiosk that Uncle had traded from for years after he’d retired from the police. I welled up again and kept walking. I cut back through the woods, popped into the antiquarian bookshop – Hubby wasn’t there to stop me – consoled myself with a chocolate ice cream, then back to the hotel for an early supper with Sis.

The next day we drove to Whitehaven to have lunch with some of Dad’s side of the family in an eatery in the renovated art deco bus station from where we used to catch the bus to Keswick when we were tiny. I think of this lot as the ‘engineering side’ of the family: three cousins work at Sellafield, and Uncle reversed his retirement to decommission the Marchon chemical plant. 

I was this close to agreeing to take Grandfather’s grandfather clock that was collecting dust (and spiders and mouse droppings) in Uncle and Auntie’s garage. It needs extensive repairs (the clock, not the garage. Then again …). The last time I took a family heirloom off their hands – Grandfather’s two dilapidated, Doré-illustrated family Bibles – it cost me a fortune to have them restored. I also took over Auntie’s family tree project and spent years filling in the gaps, extending lineages and chasing down documentary evidence. There’s a reason that Hubby refers to them as the expensive side of the family.

After lunch, Sis and I strolled up the hill to our old house and reminisced about the view overlooking the former industrial docks where, as a toddler, I lost Leopold, my stuffed toy tiger. Think Calvin and Hobbes, but I was perfectly behaved, unlike Calvin. We then wandered back down to what is now the marina and hung a left to Grandfather’s old shop. I easily found my second antiquarian bookshop of the weekend nearby. I spent quite a while trying to decide which books not to buy while chatting with the proprietor, a local legend. “You’ve pulled again,” Sis said cheekily. A quick tour of the cemetery to say hello to Grandfather (of clock and Bible fame) and other rellies, and it was back to the car.

We had a clear run to Keswick until we got to actual Keswick, and then gridlock. Stop-start. Shuffle. Ride clutch. Anglo-Saxon vocab. One right-turn was holding the rest of us up, because the turning traffic had to cut across the queue coming in from Borrowdale that looked like a mass exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land. (I’m surprised the fashionistas haven’t cancelled Moses.)

A couple of hours later, it was no better. Sis and I stood outside the back of the hotel waiting for C2 and her hubby to pick us up to take us to C1 for supper. She appeared on foot from an unexpected direction, explaining that they had got caught in the Borrowdale traffic, and the only way to get to us before midnight was to escape illegally down a one-way street, park illegally and for C2 to run down (in those heels?) and fetch us.

Once at C1’s we admired the gorgeous view from their patio – sheep grazing on the hill to the right, Latrigg to the left – while sipping superior Prosecco (or PerTesco, as Sis calls it). This side of the family I call the ‘business end’. They all did or still do own local small businesses. The lifeblood of the British economy. (Grandfather – the clock and Bible one – also ran a small business, but he sold radios, TVs and musical instruments, which has kind of an engineering slant to it, so he still fits in with the Whitehaven lot.) When it comes to wealth and job-creation, balancing books, fairness and opportunity, there’s nowt ‘the business end’ doesn’t know; their judgement and opinions matter more than most. I would love to know how C1’s hubby can express such anger about, say, Rachel from accounts while all the time looking as if he’s amused by a slapstick episode at the café that afternoon.

C2 and her hubby drove us back to our hotel on thankfully quiet roads. Always the gentleman, he entered a do-not-enter pedestrianised street to drop us off at the door. Did he know he’d married a policeman’s daughter? And Uncle was a proper copper. He arrested bad people long before arresting good people became Government policy.

The next day I drove us home. Comparatively trouble free all the way, until I was four miles from the barn and got stuck behind two combine harvesters for about two miles. Being a weekend for reminiscing, I recalled one of Dad’s favourite TV programmes from the 1970s – Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) – when Randall was chasing a baddie, and a tractor pulled out in front of him; he said exasperatingly, “Thank you very much, Farmer Giles!” For some reason, Dad found that funny.

And I welled up for the final time that weekend.