I have finished making the wretched cushion covers for the camper van.
You might recall that these are the ones requiring three-dimensional thinking and which I have found hatefully difficult.
You might imagine that by the fourth one, which was the one I finished today, I might have got a bit better at it. I can assure you that this is not so. I had to unpick the zip and re-install it no less than five times, and I was weary of pinning and picking out loose threads by the time I was done.
In fact I don’t even know if these last two will fit as we have not yet cut the cushions to size. We have remade the benches in the camper and all of the cushions are supposed to be the size of the two shortest ones, so we have got to cut down some longer cushions to be the right size for the new benches.
I have made all covers to fit the correct size cushions and now I have got to make the big cushions shorter to fit inside them. I am very much hoping Mark will do it.
Mark took the collection of dogs and went off to continue with his camper van labours. The puppies are becoming very adventurous now, one of them, which we have called Fat White, was so determined to carry on with its breakfast that it followed its mother all the way into our room this morning, where it sat on the floor and cried for more milk.
We think we might keep that one, partly because it is so very ugly that we aren’t terribly optimistic that anybody will fall in love with it anyway. It is completely white, except for an unbecoming patch on its bottom, and a piratical black smear around one eye, and it has uneven tufty fur where all its brothers and sisters are silky balls of appealing fluff. It was the last to be born, and appears to have dressed itself in leftovers. Also what it likes to do best of all is eat, which it does with a great deal of excited noise and gusto whenever the opportunity presents itself. Mark says it will fit into the household nicely.
Number Two Daughter has started her new job today, which she is pleased about, nobody is ever unemployed in the Lake District for very long. She likes the new job because it is driving a hackney carriage, not a private hire car, which for some utterly inexplicable reason seems to have greater status in the taxi hierarchy.
The difference, for those who are interested, which tends not to be many people, is that a hackney carriage lurks about on street corners and taxi tanks for people to flag down or to discover, and a private hire car will come round to your house when you think you fancy going out and have made a call to their especially easy-to-remember phone number.
I have done both, of course, because I have been doing this for so long that I have tried everything. Now that I am old and contented with my world I drive a hackney carriage because I am far too grumpy to bother with customer service. It is very nice not to have to go to ridiculous lengths to get customers to like you so that they will phone you again. It is much less exhausting to sit on a taxi rank and to take the customer who comes along when it is my turn. Then if they are horrid I can just tell them to get out, which sometimes I do. It is a pleasant way to earn a living.
Number Two Daughter will be doing both in her new job, which she is very happy about, although it is only for another few weeks anyway as she will be off to either Egypt or Canada in September: whichever sounds as though it will be the most fun until the ski season starts again.
She is considering what she might do once she gets too old and crumbly to teach skiing, as she knows that driving taxis is not much of a career choice. She thinks she might go and qualify to be a teacher when she grows up. I think she would be good at this, having been an unspeakable toe-rag in her own school days.
Watch this space.
