I wrote a long whingeing e-mail to my parents last night complaining about all our troubles, and then felt guilty this morning when I discovered that they had generously stuffed five hundred quid in our bank account to help us out.
It goes without saying that I did not feel guilty enough to give it back, of course, and hastily paid some of the more pressing bills and instantly felt a bit better.
I went over to the bank then, and whilst I was waiting in the queue the manager noticed me and fixed me with a gimlet stare. I am not exactly sure what a gimlet stare is, but if you imagine a beady determined look that a hungry buzzard might give to a recklessly cheerful mouse you will get the idea. This terrified me due to our current lack of funds in case I had been inadvertently guilty of some financial wickedness sufficient to attract her attention, but fortunately it was not the case.
“I think you should know that staff from this bank have been barred from going out with you during the working week, Mrs Ibbetson,” she said, to the fascination of the listening queue, “you are a bad influence.”
One of my taxi-driver friends has a real job in the bank during the day, you may recall we had a civilised dinner party last week which led, not for the first time in our long acquaintance, to some high spirits and intoxication and poor health the following day.
I apologised profusely, of course, but was secretly quite pleased, it is something of an achievement to be considered a wild and rascally influence by respectable society at the age of fifty, and by the time I got home my mood had improved quite considerably.
Mark was off fixing the car, and I had to do one of those middle-aged-lady trips to the doctor this morning. I like our doctor, he never makes upsetting suggestions about weight loss or exercise, being attractively portly himself, which I can tell you now is a fine quality for a doctor, and if you are looking for one you should put it at the top of your qualification list. Stoutness suggests a certain realistic attitude to lifestyle and probably a fondness for biscuits and red wine which will make your doctor much easier to get along with.
Lady doctors should be avoided. They are far too keen on pelvic floor exercises and diets and do not like giving you soothing medications. French doctors are the best. Ours told us that in order to have a happy and sickness-free life, every responsible adult should drink at least a quarter of a bottle of good red wine – not rubbish, mind you, but at least a Beaujolais or similar – every night. This puts him right at the top of the list of gifted medics, in my opinion, such perceptiveness should be more widely encouraged in the profession.
We remembered our French doctor this morning, as it happened, because it is Oliver’s birthday, and an obvious moment for reminiscence. Regular readers will know that we have some happy recollections of secretive do-it-yourself home childbirth, brought about by the unfortunate and overly-enthusiastic tendency of medics to think about sharp things in relation to bringing forth the magical gift of new life, which did not appeal at all, so we just got on with it at home by ourselves, which surprised the French doctor when he found out about it afterwards.
Oliver is ten now. He phoned up tonight to tell us about his cake, which the kindly kitchen staff at school had decorated with marshmallows and chocolate, and to say a polite thank you for his new book and ask for his camouflage trousers to be sent: and then promptly ran out of things to say and hung up, apart from mentioning, to my fascination and without additional explanation, that it did not snow during rugby today.
After Oliver I went to work. Mark met me on the taxi rank at about ten o’clock to tell me about his engine, and then went home to scrub the oil off before bed, leaving me to sit peacefully on the rank to write to you.
The picture shows his first Autoparts delivery of the day.
There were three more after that.
