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I have returned to the taxi rank.

Cumbria was damp and misty when we got back, soft greens and greys in the late-autumn twilight. We drove down the muddy farm track and I felt indescribably happy to be home.

We had been at the footpath enquiry again in the morning, and enlightened them with our not-terribly-helpful recollections about who had walked where and when. When we had rambled on a bit vaguely for a few minutes the nice lady in charge asked us some sensible questions, to which we mostly couldn’t think of sensible answers.

After that we were not needed any more and were suddenly free to slope off early and remember all the things we could have answered if only we had thought of them at the time.

We had been better prepared today, and had taken some emergency picnic supplies. We left these with a less fortunate witness, and rushed back to the camper van where we tore our smart clothes off and had a more organised picnic, of buttery potato cakes and fruit loaf and large mugs of coffee.

I cried into my coffee for a while, because it had been so horrible watching nice people all getting cross with one another for thinking the wrong things about footpaths. Mark said that he didn’t think that I needed to be sad, because people were not really terribly seriously upset, and it was just the way people do things when they want to have their say heard.

It all seemed to have been caused in the first place by the Definitive Map Drawer who left an unfortunately vague and splodgy line in an important place in 1952, and who could safely be blamed since he was not there. Mark thought that even the most upset people would stop thinking about footpaths quite quickly and get on with the normal cheerful business of life in time for Christmas, and that this was exactly what I ought to be doing.

I thought that this was a very sensible way of thinking about it, and we tidied everything up then, and I read my library book whilst he drove us home, and we were happy to be quietly together with the dogs again.

When we got home it was late afternoon, and I got everything unpacked and put away, and Mark put the old camper van curtains down on the top of the carpet and drained all the water out of the broken boiler and bashed about messily putting the new one in.

It was a good idea to do this, even though it was late and we were both a bit tired, because the fire had been out for two days and everything was cold, which is really convenient when you are trying to take a stove to pieces. Also we have not had any chance to do it before now because of mending the taxi. We wanted the heating to be working properly before the weekend, because Oliver is coming home for the last exeat of term on Friday, and it has not been very warm in the house whilst the boiler has been broken.

I went out to work whilst he got on with fixing the plumbing; and then later on we both went for a swim, which was lovely. It was nice to be able to stretch and splash about and steam away all the tiredness of the day. The sauna is being rebuilt at the moment, so everybody has got to use the steam room. The steam room is a bit rubbish really, because it has got health and safety temperature settings, so everybody makes it gloriously steamy and eye-meltingly hot by putting ice from the Chill Room on top of the thermostat. The youths on the desk have noticed that it keeps tripping the switch and going off, but they have got no idea why, it is a secret known only to five hundred club members and you.

And now, in the end, we are back at work, hoping for enough customers over the rest of the week to pay our Autoparts bill and save up for doing nice things at Christmas.

It is the December Taxi Challenge.

I will let you know how we get on.