It was a bit of a bumpy landing back on Earth.
Of course the last thing that we did before we abandoned our entire lives and dashed off was tow Mark’s taxi back home after a bit of it which is called a drive shaft broke in the middle of the night.
We abandoned it in a forlorn heap in the alley at the back of the house, with the tow rope still attached, which, predictably, was where it was still lurking when we got up this morning, nobody having helpfully stolen it in the meantime, which they could have easily done with just a bit of forethought and a towing eye.
This was not a cheering sight to start the day, nor was the enormous heap of washing we had brought back from Blackpool, some of which had been worn to go paddling and smelled really dreadful.
We compounded the doleful morning by having a look at our finances and worked out that we need to earn five thousand, two hundred and twenty six pounds to break even this month.
This is not because of Blackpool, which actually was not very expensive at all really, but because of lots of other things that we have got to pay, none of which are very exciting, like car insurance, and all of which are very expensive, also like car insurance, and all of which we are supposed to have saved up to pay but haven’t, and so just to make matters worse we know that it is all our own faults for being reckless spendthrifts.
We had a thoughtful cup of coffee and a bit of a ponder about what to do next, and after a while we felt better, because there are always things that you can do about problems if you put your mind to them. I thought that I would go off to work and make a start on earning some money, and Mark thought that under the circumstances that the scrapyard in Lancaster would be the place to go for a new bit for his taxi, and that whilst he was fitting the shaft bit he would also install the gearbox he has been saving in a corner of his workshop for a quiet afternoon without much to do.
He is going to have to do this today because we have been asked to do school runs again this term, and so he will not be able to take it off the road for a whole day again, because it will be busy both in the mornings and afternoons.
I have done school runs, on and off, for years. A large and rather intoxicated gentleman got in my taxi last week, squinted drunkenly at me, and said, gruffly: “I know you. You used to take me to school.” This was not a splendid feeling.
Unfortunately doing school runs will not actually resolve our current financial crisis, rather the reverse, because we have got to put fuel in the taxis and then we won’t get paid until October. This does not matter really, of course, it is called Delayed Gratification, and you are supposed to get better at it as you get older, just somehow I haven’t.
We have got very mixed feelings about the whole thing. We have got to be there at the same time every day, even if we don’t feel like it, and what is worse, since you haven’t the cash, you can’t just go shopping on your way home if you have run out of milk, you have got to wait a whole month, which could be dreadful if we liked cereals, which fortunately we don’t.
Also it is terribly irksome to have to stop whatever we are doing and rush off in the middle of the afternoon every day: and unfortunately we forget sometimes, which gets us in trouble.
…but then the money that we earn doing them comes in very handily when we have got bills to pay, which is most of the time and especially now.
School runs start on Monday. Actually they started last week, but someow we failed to notice that. Of course our children don’t go until next week, Sunday for Lucy and Wednesday for Oliver, and we are clinging to the last days with them as hard as we can: so we forgot that other people have dispatched their children already.
When we got a phone call asking if we were available, we were in Blackpool, and rather obliviously unavailable, which was a huge relief, because if we had been asked to do them before we left, we would have had to have stayed at home and worked instead.
However, we are available now, and so from Monday we have got to start leaping out of bed in the middle of the night again, and collecting people who are not old enough to have recovered from having a shrill voice and sticky fingers. We thought hard about this but the arithmetic won in the end.
We have encouragingly reminded ourselves that it is great good fortune, which indeed it is, and that the money thus acquired will save us many anxious moments over the winter, all of which is very true.
All the same, I have a creeping regret that I have sold my soul.
NOTE: The picture at the top is the camper van. Not because it has got anything to do with the post. It is there because I like it, and it reminds me of my holidays.
Also because I forgot to take another picture before it went dark.
LATER NOTE: I thought you would like to know, I only need to earn five thousand, one hundred and sixteen pounds by now.
It gets better all the time.
