I am on the taxi rank and it is as quiet as the sort of abandoned grave which might have recently housed one of Oliver’s flesh-eating zombies.
It is utterly, desolately quiet.
Pubs and restaurants are closed, hotel staff have buzzed off back to visit families in Liverpool and Newcastle whilst joiners and decorators clean away a year’s worth of lake-grubby fingerprints and repair broken locks and bashed corners and worn-out armchairs.
I like quiet. Especially I like the sort of quiet that happens when nobody interrupts me and I can write to you and read my book and agonise over my lack of novel-writing progress. Nights like tonight, and, for that matter, last night, should not be considered in terms of their negligible economic benefits, maybe twenty quid between us if we are lucky tonight: but for their countless other undoubted highlights.
There is no better place to read, write and think than a taxi rank. For a start I can entirely avoid the temptation to get drunk. This invariably leads to a marked deterioration in the quality of any prose produced, as regular readers will doubtless attest. Also since I am very obviously at work and doing my honest level best to support my family I never need to feel even remotely guilty that I have just spent two hours scrolling through Facebook whilst eating chocolate.
In any case it is a good place to be after a busy day. Mark has been to the scrapyard to try and find some bits which will make his taxi less loud, smoky and alarming. Whilst out on his travels he has very thoughtfully put winter tyres on my car.
He is still convinced that we can expect some horrible weather over the next few days, although today has been largely mild and uninspiring. I have taken him at his word and made mayonnaise and large quantities of bread today, so that if the world comes to a troubling standstill we can subsist on sausage sandwiches until the Government comes to dig us out.
My other task for the day was to take Oliver to the bank to open his first bank account.
Oliver has been given money for Christmas by various relatives and had decided that now he is so grown up, the bank would be the best place to keep it. Mark agreed, because so far Oliver’s PlayStation account has got his credit card as default payment method for any youthful extravagances, and at this time of year this is a very sensitive subject.
We like the people in the bank very much, although regular readers might recall that bank staff are prohibited from socialising with us during the working week. This edict was issued after a somewhat excessively joyous night which necessitated a prolonged recovery period last year and which made the manager cross with me.
She wasn’t in the least cross today, she was courtesy itself. She took all of Oliver’s details and wrote them down, gravely asking him all of the questions on the long form. He was on his best grown-up behaviour, and confirmed that he was single without children, and would like a debit card but did not wish to apply for an overdraft facility.
It turns out that I am not allowed access to his bank account, possibly because the bank manager knows me well. Oliver thought that this was sensible, and he listened very carefully to her descriptions of personal security measures, like not telling your mother your PIN.
He has some justification for caution, as somehow last year Amazon identified Lucy’s bank account as being the default account for all the household’s Amazon purchases. Number Two Daughter and I had almost cleaned her out before any of us noticed and we were obliged to make reparations and apologies.
He practiced his signature carefully on a spare piece of paper before finally signing the form to say that he agreed to the Bank’s terms and conditions, which we hadn’t read. Then she thanked us very civilly for choosing their bank, and we explained equally civilly that it was because the other bank in Windermere is unattractively at the top of a steep hill whilst the walk to her bank is flat.
After that we went home, feeling very pleased with his newly grown-up financially organised status, and started getting ready to go back to school.
He goes tomorrow.
The last smallest breaths of holiday will be over.
