We are on the taxi rank.
Not that the holidays are over, because to be honest life is going to be pretty much one long holiday from now until about March: not many people come on holiday to the Lake District in January on account of unpaid credit card bills and rubbish weather: but we hoped that today might possibly turn into a good sort of time to refresh our wallets a bit.
This is partly because it is Boxing Day, and double time, but of course it is also Saturday and hence has enough earning potential to make it feasibly worth the effort of venturing out in the pouring rain that has been the most noticeable meteorological feature of the day so far.
Boxing Day is of course the traditional time for going out for a jolly good health-giving walk. Guilt about too many chocolates and mince pies and good dinners can be completely quashed by putting on our boots and dragging whingeing children out on to some awful blustery fell side, possibly to walk over to the farm to eat Mark’s sister’s mince pies for a change. This makes us feel worthy and virtuous, but does tend to result in very muddy dogs and children, especially last year, when Oliver toppled right over into an unexpected beck and had to be carried hastily home, dripping and miserable.
However this year, thanks to the prevailing damp, it is clearly out of the question, much to the satisfaction of the children, neither of whom staggered downstairs until about half past eleven this morning, and neither of whom have bothered to get dressed today. Lucy had new fleece pyjamas for Christmas and would have worn them to go out for lunch on Christmas Day had it been allowed, which obviously it wasn’t, and she is making up for it now.
It has been a very quiet day, full of the blissful contentedness of post-Christmas feeling. I am finding it entirely peculiar to be on holiday, the whole project of not working has left me feeling slightly lost, and completely at a loose end: it seems that I have forgotten what it is that I do when I am just supposed to be amusing myself.
There have been all sorts of things that I could have done to occupy the day, like sorting out the children’s luggage, or making some new bedroom curtains, or cleaning the bath out: but none of those things seemed like a lovely way of spending Boxing Day, because everybody knows it is a holiday, and therefore the wrong sort of day completely for catching up with neglected chores.
In the end I made us a picnic to take to work tonight, hung the washing up and went back to bed, where I added another two hours of utterly oblivious sleep to the ten hours I had already clocked up last night.
Mark brought some logs in and finished cleaning grime off the taxi windows ready for work tonight, and then came to join me, the theory was that if we had a jolly good sleep today we would not disgrace ourselves by nodding off on the taxi rank yet again, which is always embarrassing and lays you wide open to ridicule from the rest of the rank. In any case I think that it may not have worked. The night is not very old yet, and already I am yawning and rubbing my eyes, it must have been a hectic Christmas.
Fortunately, because I think I am pretty much all partied out now, our party season is over. Being taxi-drivers we will not be having a party on New Year’s Eve, but will be working, with a short break in the middle when nobody wants taxis anyway, to bring the children down to Bowness to watch the fireworks together. We do this every year, it is so long since I have been to an actual New Year party I think I would just be irritated at the wasted opportunity to make seasonally inflated cash. It is a busy working night, the last one until Valentines Day.
Number One Daughter called from Ulverston this afternoon to tell us that the roads were closing, which usually heralds a very quiet night, taxis don’t do well without roads: and this turned out to be spectacularly correct. The roads were not too bad by the evening, but of course nobody was taking the risk that they would find themselves marooned by a rising Lake Windermere, and everybody has stayed at home: thus providing us with a very pleasant opportunity for an evening spent largely on the taxi rank, reading and drinking tea and eating olives, and slices of melon out of little plastic tubs. I know that there are other ways of occupying public holidays, but in the event this one has suited me very well indeed.
We have had a little sleep, and earned some money, and had a restful time.
The picture shows Mark in a lovely new jumper that some people with exquisite good taste bought him for Christmas, and which made him laugh.
I am am going to save it until we go out to somewhere smart with them.
