Perfection

I am feeling unspeakably smug with my world.

I have got all sorts of things done today that I have been putting off for ages, and it has filled me with the serene knowledge that I am a very good and perfect person.

I have not only successfully insured the taxis for another year, but I have also managed to get my act together enough to send copies of the insurance certificates off to everybody who would otherwise have to be cross about their absence, like the licensing authority and Lakeside Taxis.

This is a huge achievement. I have spent days and days of negotiating with pretty much every insurance company on Google, and now it is done and all the paperwork as well, which is the bit I always forget or get muddled about:  and now I can look at the empty space in my in-tray where I stapled together the completed paperwork and then filed it away tidily in the drawer, and I am very pleased with myself for being so organised.

After that I took some money out of our special insurance savings to pay for it, and felt like a virtuous person all over again. I didn’t have to set up a Direct Debit that I would occasionally forget about and get charged thirty five quid for, because this year, for the first time in my life ever, I have finally grown into the sort of sensible person who saves up a bit at a time for their insurance so that when they have got to pay it the money is waiting in the bank.

I did not have to search down the back of the taxi seats or collect empty lemonade bottles to be taken back to the shop, or even sign my life away on the bottom of one of Premium Credit’s horrible tiny print agreements which say that they will come round and humiliate you in front of all of your neighbours if you have a financial misfortune.

I was really, really grown up.

I telephoned our broker and gave an instruction to sell some stocks and put the money in our current account by Monday, and I thought that this was the most impressively organised grown up thing ever in the world to be doing.

I don’t really understand what stocks are, but that has not stopped me buying some and actually they have done brilliantly well, just for anybody who is interested. We wisely invested our hard saved insurance money in something called high risk stocks which have made loads of cash so it is perhaps as well that the insurance is due now before any interesting events happen on the stock market, which I do not in the least understand either.

After that I sent an email to our patient accountant explaining some of the more embarrassing mistakes I had made on the paperwork I sent to him yesterday, although I don’t doubt he will find plenty more to draw to my attention soon, then I paid some bills and we bathed the dogs and cleaned the bathroom and swept the stairs and hoovered up everywhere.

I washed the sheets from our bed and dusted the bedroom and polished my empty in-tray in the office.

I am sure you can see now why I am feeling myself to be a paragon of perfection today. I am so pleased to be having a day when everything is going just the way it would if I were a character in a novel about successful people.

It is an unfamiliar but splendid feeling not to be worried about anything, and I like it very much indeed. I was so very pleased that everywhere was looking shiny and sparkling and smelling of polish that I called Elspeth and invited them to come to dinner later on in the week so that somebody as well as me would see how clean the bathroom was. Of course Mark sees it as well but I don’t think he is very interested, certainly when he does it he never seems to care about getting the cloth properly into the difficult bits round the sink. I don’t suppose Elspeth will be very interested either, certainly I can’t really point it out. I am not one of life’s great socialites, but even I know that ‘haven’t I got a lovely clean bathroom?’ is not an inspiring start to conversation, probably only excelled by: ‘and would you like to look at my new insurance certificate?’

I know that tomorrow is another day, and that perfection is only ever fleeting: but all the same I have jolly well enjoyed it while it has lasted, which will probably be until Mark goes to clean his teeth shortly.

Ah well.