"A Ship in Harbor Is Safe, but That Is Not What Ships Are Built For" John A Shedd
I stepped out of the wet room, naked and soaked from head to toe in mud. It was dripping from my hair, it was under my fingernails, running down my body and the entire wet room was covered in it. Dirty wet winter Cumbrian mud. There is nothing else like it. The door frame was plastered in it, the beautiful, tiled floor and walls, the previously sparkling white ceramic sink, the mirror and the glass, floor to ceiling shower panel. Mixed with warm water, it ran like a filthy waterfall down every hard surface, into every crevice and along every ceramic valley. Behind me, stood two dripping wet dogs, looking up at me with eyes of adoration. It was a scene from a disaster movie and the four-legged reprobates who had activated project pandemonium stood in blissful oblivion, worshipping the sodden ground upon which I stood, waiting for the next awesome activity to begin. Their intermittent shaking set off unwelcome brown explosions that compounded the massacre. I wanted to run away and cry forever.
Rewind half an hour and I was, of course, the architect of this whole sorry scenario. A rookie faux pas in the ways of our new life.
We live down an unmade lane, surrounded by farmland, moors and mountains. On one side can be found the Yorkshire Dales National Park, on the other is the Lake District National Park and to the immediate North, the Pennines. We are immersed in England’s most vast and rugged countryside. Daughter goes to school in one National Park, Son climbs in the heartland of another, and recently camped in the Pennines. Our new lives are in and of this landscape which we have fully embraced and love immeasurably. Access to it begins at our front doorstep and we need look no further than the boundary of our garden to find wild rivers, trees for climbing, naturally forged dens and the perfect land for our big, bouncy and energetic dogs to live their best lives in; chest deep in mud and water. This latter penchant for fun and games is exactly how I found myself in the aforementioned predicament.
Whilst we moved to Cumbria from a town, and I spent many years living in London, we are definitely not strangers to the countryside. We have long spent our weekends and holidays in the forests and rural settings around Suffolk, Devon and the Lake District. Our children have been raised to be confident in the countryside and feel at home wild camping with nothing but camp-fire for warmth, light and food. They are used to preparing themselves for a day climbing a mountain carrying their own supplies and using a compass, (orienteering, or "bore-ienteering" as my daughter affectionately regards it). Our now grown children were carried on our backs when they were too little to do the walking for themselves, in all weathers. Holidays on a working farm have exposed them to the joy of collecting eggs in their pyjamas and wellies and falling asleep to the sound (and smell) of cows, sheep and pigs. But living in this deeply and generationally pastoral world has immersed us in rural life that no holiday or stroll in the Suffolk countryside entirely prepared us for. We’re doing ok I think it’s fair to say, but mistakes have been made. Like the expensive cream sofa (I don’t want to talk about that) and deciding the best way to clean the dirtiest dogs you’ve ever seen in your life was to strip naked and take them into the wet room. Spoiler alert, this was one of the worst ideas I have ever had in my 42 years as a human, 20 years as a professional and 14 years as a mother. (More as a dog mother, there are no excuses for the madness).
To say nothing for the mild flooding that occurred under the door and into the central sitting room, I had not considered what I might do with BOTH dogs after I had washed them and brought them out of the wet room into the middle of the house. I suppose I thought they might be beautifully clean, muddy water having run effortlessly away whereupon all three of us would salsa victoriously from the shower wrapped in clean towels. I still have absolutely no idea why this outcome should have occurred to me as being even a vague possibility. The Golden Retriever ONLY likes wet, cold, dirty water and had me chasing her pleadingly around the wet room with my best “Doggy come to Mama” voice. The clean running water reached everything but her, hence the happy chocolate coloured retriever that emerged from the shower room of despair. The German Shepherd puppy the size of a small house thought it was Christmas and Birthday all at once and had the time of her life doing everything and anything that didn’t involve the shower. Plastering, carpeting, dancing…
It took hours to clean the wet room, re-stoke the fire to gather more hot water (eco-house joy) wash myself and remove two thirds of the Yorkshire Dales National Park from the lines of my now aged face, and that’s right, clean the dogs. Outside.
Like much of our lives here in Cumbria, life occurs outside. Come rain, snow, horizontal sleet, wind or sunshine we put on our big coats and we go outside. We have traded our holidays on working farms for spending time with our friends and neighbours on their farm, where new life and the end of life have become part of our every day. The only traffic that drives past our front door is tractors and quad bikes with sheep dogs as passengers. And when we leave our front door, it’s largely boots and head torches. We give way to chickens and sheep in the road and mud is as much a part of our lives as the fresh, pure air we breathe.
It’s fair to say that we have developed dual wardrobes, are in love with our boot box and own clothes that only ever get put on and taken off on the threshold of the doorstep. I owe the utility room my sanity and our outdoor space is as important to us as our indoor living environment. Tarmac roads and white lines of our past life are now unmade lanes and the children go outside onto the land to have a fire or explore the wild beck, in place of their rollerskates or a spontaneous game of badminton. We can and do still enjoy those aspects of life, but we have to travel for them. What is on our doorstep has changed. We moved 300 miles for a different life, and we found it. We have been embraced as locals and we learn from the real locals every day.
But some things can only be learned from bitter experience:
Don’t strip naked and shower your dogs in a wet room.
That is not a Cumbrian thing to do.
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