I cannot begin to describe how pleased I am that it is Good Friday and taxi fares are double.
Rarely am I so enthusiastic about coming to work.
It is not without its drawbacks. You will not be surprised to learn that many customers are most unhappy to discover that the fare which usually costs them just over four pounds is about to cost them almost a tenner.
Inevitably arguments ensue, which don’t trouble me as I have had them all many times before, my favourite is the bitter accusation: “I don’t know how you sleep at night!” to which my preferred response is a gentle smile, and the pleasing if not technically accurate reply: “very soundly, thank you, on my mattress stuffed full of money.”
The Lake District is very busy indeed. We have been on the taxi rank since early afternoon and are planning to stick to it until the last stragglers have been mopped up at the end of the night.
Even before we set out for work it has been an encouragingly productive day.
It was unexpectedly sunny and warm this morning. I did lots of washing and it all dried brilliantly on the washing line. I ironed everything and put it all away and felt jolly pleased with my own perfection.
Mark decided to take advantage of it being just about warm enough to have windows and doors open to create a chilly draft by mending the latch on the back door before we went to work.
Regular readers will know that the front door has been stuck shut for ages because of excessive damp, which is happily beginning to ease now and once again we can get in and out on to the main street. Passing pedestrians seem to have been using the front garden as a waste disposal point in the meantime, and the rose bush by the front door has become bashed about and sorry for itself and in need of a bag of restorative poo from the farm.
It has all been very bad Feng Thingy, which is probably why we are broke, because of all the energy flowing back out and straight down the loo, or however it works.
In addition to this, regular visitors will know that the handle on the back door has stuck so badly for years that you have needed to apply a special technique to get in and out.
We have not minded this, as it has saved us having to hunt out the door key and lock the door when we go away on holiday, since nobody has been able to get the door open who has not had the exact knack of pushing and twisting at the right moment, and we thought if our friends could not work it out it was likely that burglars probably couldn’t either.
Unfortunately it has been getting worse for the last few weeks, to the point where even the correct technique has not been helpful, and so in the end this morning Mark found the appropriate key in a bag of assorted and unidentified keys in the shed and took the door apart.
This created a lot of swearing and muttering, and in the end he had the lock in a thousand tiny pieces on the table and decreed that a small but vital brass bit was worn through and no longer functional. This needed a special brass lock mending kit in order to repair it and he didn’t have one, which of course is the moment as a wife when you have to make soothing-but-confident noises and hope that he works some handy bodge out instead of deciding to fix it by spending sacks of cash.
In the end he improvised in his shed with blobs of solder and some determination, pieced it all back together and we can now open and close the door with ease.
Of course this is disconcerting as we all automatically apply the fiddling about technique anyway, and invariably collapse through the door in surprise when it opens with unexpected ease.
We will have to lock it now. Mark said we can hang the key on a hook next to it so that we can all still get in and out, otherwise life is going to become a tiresome pattern of climbing in through the window because nobody knows who has got the key.
Nevertheless I am quite sure that it has improved the Feng Thingy. I expect that now we have got an energy flow all the way through the house because of being able to open both doors. We have certainly got a draft.
Between the double time and the Feng Thingy I am optimistic for the weekend.
I have got my fingers crossed for repairing Mark’s credit card.
Happy Easter.
