Back to school this evening, so the day had a lot of ironing and shoe cleaning in it.
We had to get up early, because Mark wanted to start fixing the car. He has come up with the very doleful news that it needs a new clutch and flywheel whilst the engine is out. I knew this really, because it has been making some troubling clunking noises for ages, but thought that they were nothing that couldn’t be resolved by turning the radio up and keeping my fingers crossed, so that is what I had been doing.
Mark said that this does not count as a long-term solution, and it has got to be fixed now whilst the engine is out if I don’t want the whole thing to collapse again, probably on New Year’s Eve which is the most brilliant time of the year for making money in a taxi, when it is double time, and not only does nobody mind that but they give you tips as well.
He has ordered them from AutoParts, along with an awful lot of other things like a timing belt and all sorts of filters and some antifreeze and some gear oil. We had a domestic incident this morning related to such reckless splashing about of cash, but of course it can’t be helped. It is a jolly good thing that he can fix it for us, and whilst he was doing it today every time he had a break he took a bit more of the other chap’s car apart as well, to earn some more cash to help things along, so it will probably all turn out all right in the end.
Whilst he was occupied and out from under my feet I washed the sheets and ironed all the children’s school things and went to the bank and made some biscuits. After this I stewed some apples with which I am making apple jelly and then afterwards apple fermenting liquid that would be turned into schnapps if only we lived in a country where it was allowed, however at the moment it is just a dripping muslin bag full of mush. After that I fed the children and took them back to school.
I do like taking them back, it is a little chance to see a bit into their worlds. We took Oliver’s rucksack up to his dormitory and unpacked it: it is his birthday tomorrow so he had got his cards and some presents which he promised faithfully he would save until morning, and then a crowd of other small mop-headed urchins surrounded him, and he was gone.
Everybody at school calls him Ibby, because you don’t have Christian names in a boys’ school. Mark says he was called Ibby at school as well. It must be quite nice to have just one name for the whole of your life and then share it with your children, assuming it is a sensible name and not something disastrous like Puddiphat which you would have to spend your life nodding and smiling about. There is an Ibbetson on the school list of Old Boys killed in the war. Oliver is very proud of that.
Lucy is not called Ibby or Ibbetson at school, but Lulu, according to the name she has had emblazoned on her hoodie. I left her in the quiet downstairs hall next to the ticking grandfather clock to make her own way up to the shrieking riot in the dormitories, and set off for home.
It was late when I got back. Mark arrived a couple of minutes after I did, and we had a coffee and a thoughtful discussion of budgets before he went to bed, in order to help with the difficulty of getting up in the morning to fix a car, and I came out to work.
I worked on my own for ages whilst he was off doing engineering things, and didn’t mind in the least, but it feels very peculiar now. He had a brief outburst of manliness before I left because he felt, guiltily, that he ought be going out to work all night as well as mending the car all day tomorrow, and for a moment I considered the possibility of getting in touch with my feminine side and letting him, but of course I didn’t, and so I am writing this on the taxi rank.
I am with Bob Geldof about Mondays, they are very quiet and dull right up until the small hours of the morning, and then just when I am about to nod off they burst into exuberant life as intoxicated hotel staff collapse out of the local nightclub, having got themselves into a satisfactorily drunken state to prepare for their lie in and day off on Tuesday.
With any luck they will all want taxis to Hawkshead.
