School Run Friday

We had got to get up to do school runs this morning.

Mark groaned quite a lot on his way down to make coffee, but after that it was quite lovely really, because we opened the curtains just a bit, and lit an English Fern candle, and sat there in the flickering candlelight with the grey dawn just easing in through the window, and felt very happy with the world. It was warm and safe and beautiful, and the coffee smelt good, and neither of us had a hangover, which was a result.

This turned out to be just as well, because the children on my school run were aged five and six, and talked incessantly for the entire journey, in the way of children who have not yet developed an appreciation of mornings. They told me, mysteriously, that the taxi driver they usually had was blue coloured. This actually caught my attention, because I hadn’t really been listening to the rest, which was largely concerned with information about their cat.

I challenged this assertion and explained that on the whole people tended towards shades of pink or brown: but they were  absolutely adamant that this one was blue, to my fascination, I resolved to keep my eyes open for him, and made a mental note to salute Lakeside Taxis on such a creative approach to Equal Opportunities. I told Mark later, who sensibly pointed out that one or two of the Lakeside taxi drivers have got some fairly comprehensive tattoos, so I suppose the mystery ends there, really, which is dull but probably right.

Once we had done the school runs we just went back to bed, because it is not a nice thing to get up at seven and then carry on working until four o’clock in the morning, and it makes me bad tempered and horrible to people when I do it.

After a while our friend Dave turned up at the bedroom door, he had come in so quietly even the dogs had not noticed, and they jumped off the bed and barked, in an embarrassed sort of way, but it was too late then, if he had been an axe murderer we would have been hacked to death in our bed, so it is a good job it was only Dave.

We all had some breakfast and Mark and Dave went off to the farm to fix Dave’s car, which Mark told me later was a very tiresome job, because all of the bolts had rusted on. I was left here by myself, and I very nearly went back to bed again, but felt guilty at the thought of such idleness, and so spent a very happy morning designing our Christmas cards instead, which as I am sure you will agree, is nearly as exhausting as trying to get rusty bolts out of old brakes in the rain.

I am pleased with the idea of making Christmas cards, and ran an experimental one through the printer. I made an informational X on the paper so that I would be able to see how it fed itself through the printer and thus feed the completed card in correctly to print on the other side in the right place, but even with that information I couldn’t work it out at all, and after several failed attempts where “Merry Christmas” came out upside down I gave up, and Mark will have to do that bit because he is good at working difficult things out.

After that I tidied up and did some house jobs, and took the dogs for a walk, which was rather nice, the sun just trying to gleam through the rain, and before I knew it, it was time for school runs again, for which we had to borrow some money out of Oliver’s wallet for fuel, because it turned out that we didn’t have any.

I did a different school run in the afternoon, a teenage boy who did not comment at all on his usual taxi drivers, regardless of their hue, but talked, also without stopping, about cars, all the way home, and I let him out with a profound feeling of relief that we are not doing school runs regularly any more. I much prefer the night time customers’ approach to conversation, which is invariably alcohol-fuelled and either cheery or offensive, but at least usually fairly comprehensible: and then went off to try and earn some cash.

The photograph shows the Library Gardens this afternoon, the tiny glimpse of hopeful sunshine, which was cheering to the soul and so I thought I would share it with you.

LATER NOTE: Paris. How unspeakably awful for those terrified people…