Last updated 11:56, Tuesday, 08 July 2008

It was such a typically English scene. Wilkinson’s car park was overflowing with hundreds of excited children dressed as all manner of animals and waiting to join the carnival procession. There were elaborate costumes, fantastic face masks, colourful banners.

Parked along the roadside were floats, immaculately decorated in preparation for carrying little pastel-coloured princesses and queens. The brass band was warming up.

And – this is the very English bit – it was pouring with rain.

I’m not talking a light, summery drizzle, but a full-on, torrential downpour which you knew was there to stay.

Which is why all the pretty princesses and queens, who should have been perched on their floats for all to admire, were huddled in car boots – all freshly-curled hair, satin frocks and soggy shoes.

B and Millie had been to mask-making workshops the previous week. B was a chicken, Millie a swan. They got dressed at home: Millie was all in white and looked the part, B had opted for browns and reds topped off with bright pink baseball boots. But we really needn’t have bothered as their rain jackets were on the entire time.

As we drove into town, B, who was feeling weary after a three-day school trip, said: ‘Mum, it’s pouring and cold, I don’t really want to do the carnival.’

‘Me neither, let’s go home and crash in front of the telly,’ was what I wanted to say. Instead I forced myself to deliver a brief speech on not letting people down, blah blah.

Before we’d even left the car park, Millie’s cardboard mask had wilted into a soggy mess. Meanwhile, all the paint was running off B’s mask (made out of a plastic milk bottle – ‘it stinks mum, you could have washed it properly’) and down her rain coat.

It took more than two hours to get to the other end of town, where a man with a loudspeaker told us: ‘All the children can get a free hot dog and drink.’ A large gin and tonic for the parents would be far more appropriate, I thought as I looked at the endless queue attached to the hot dog stall.

We returned home, wet through and cold. After a quick tea and change of clothes we were out again, off to Keswick to welcome in two friends who were due to complete the gruelling Bob Graham Round (72 miles, 42 Lakeland summits in 24 hours) at 7pm.

The rain hadn’t relented and we all huddled under a market stall awning, watching the market man methodically taking down all the other awnings one by one, working his way nearer and nearer to us.

He very kindly left ours up while we waited for our two heroic friends (they were best men at our wedding) to appear: sodden, frozen, exhausted and ecstatic.

After a swift drink we could all go home to a hot bath and fire. And the date? Why mid-summer of course! All so very English…..