Shelf sufficient

This is a brief entry because I have run out of day. Mark is in the shower and all of the children are in bed, and I am here tapping away quietly in my office with my ever-loyal dog curled up quietly at my feet for company. He is always there, even though quite often when I get up, I tread on him accidentally.

I have been sad to discover during the writing of this that one of the local taxi drivers has died. We have known him for many years: and of course nobody ever retires from this job, people pretty much die in their cab. Greg was in his seventies, and retired a couple of months ago, when he knew he was sick: but not everybody does. Jim carried on driving, with the tubes in his veins for the chemo, and had to wear a long sleeved T-shirt so nobody would notice. Alan died on his day off, which would have infuriated him, what a waste of a day off. We shall miss Greg: he was a nice chap and has been a taxi driver for ever, the rank on the station looks empty without him.

Apart from that it has been a good sort of day, working on the camper van followed by a family outing to see the BFG at the cinema. Number Two Daughter has resigned from work again, which was handy as it meant she could come with us: but her appreciation of the film was marred by the shocking error that Sophie was quite the wrong size to sit in the BFG’s ear, and didn’t. We agreed that this was dreadful abuse of artistic licence, but apart from that it was a splendid film, with nice evening-sunshine colours and beautiful moonlit streets, all of which I could have looked at quite happily without needing to bother with a story.

Also I liked it because there wasn’t anything upsetting in it, I am not at all keen on things which are supposed to be entertainment and then show people being blown up or lonely or fighting one another or being chased by zombies. I like films that make me feel cheerful and encouraged about life. As a bonus this one had the Queen in it, which was nice, she is always a favourite of mine: although they could have left out the bit where she breaks wind, since I am quite sure that she doesn’t, and it was really just a further abuse of artistic licence.

We thought it was time we had an outing, a sort of miniature holiday if you like: because we haven’t been able to go anywhere yet because of the slow progress on the camper van. I have become impatient with yearning to be out and away, to breathe in the sea-smell and stop on service stations, where we can sit in our own little house and watch the world wagging past us: it is an ache of a longing and hard to swallow down.

Because of this we all took an impromptu night off work and went out to be together. Mark and I abandoned the camper van early and came home, and we pretended to be tourists, it helped with the yearning a bit.

We put the front window back today, all cleaned and painted with aluminium paint: and we put the lovely shelves up: they look ace. Even Number Two Daughter, who thinks that the camper van is a dreadful embarrassing clapped-out old ruin, said she thought it looked jolly good: which was high praise like you wouldn’t believe. We will get there in the end.

Please note the top picture. It is a shelf portrait.