The sun shone today.
It shone so brightly that I dried the sheets outside in the garden for the first time this year.
I was very pleased indeed to have achieved this, and briefly opened a window to celebrate and let some fresh air into the house. I closed it in less than five minutes, because of the icy draught that resulted, but it cleared some of the dust and damp and dog smells away.
It appeared that Oliver had celebrated his new freedom from school regulation by staying up playing computer games and probably talking to paedophiles all night, although I think most paedophiles are unlikely to be hunting for vulnerable small children on Nightmare Of The Dead Zombie Bloodbath at three o’clock in the morning.
This morning he was very pleased with his staying power although less enchanted with the resulting sore eyes and headache, and resolved that tonight he would not only be in bed by seven, but would also remember to clean his teeth. You will be pleased to hear that he managed to achieve both of these targets.
Having a fixed bedtime at school has made him suddenly unhealthily interested in outstaying it, before boarding school days he just went to bed when he got tired, and he would come downstairs and request a story at about eight o’clock every night.
However, once you have got a rule it has got to be thoroughly broken, so we are leaving him to get on with it until either he sorts his ideas out or has a complete mental breakdown, whichever he prefers. It is easy to do this with the youngest one of your four children, because by then you are quite untroubled about accidentally breaking them, having had their robustness demonstrated again and again in the face of your earlier misadventures.
Mark went off and rebuilt bits of camper van, which is still Project Unfinished. We don’t have a holiday booked in it until April, so at the moment the pressure is still tolerable, but we both know that it will result in some sort of domestic slanging match towards the end.
In April we are taking it to France, which is when we have got our complimentary EuroDisney Adventure booked, and we are going to stay in it on the journey down and back. This is the game plan at the moment, and it is looking a little more possible, since it now has the right number of wheels and an engine. He has not yet cut the hole in the floor to accommodate the new oversized gearbox, which is the next part of the plan, after which it will need things like a dashboard and a lid over the top of the engine. It is going to be lovely, as I am sure you have noticed from the photographs.
I did things like washing and tidying up and ringing the Inland Revenue, which was an experience I would prefer to forget, and then had a little sleep and wrote some more of my book. I do not have anything like Oliver’s commitment to wakefulness, and am always ready to slope off for a snooze.
Eventually, of course it was time for work and I made my weary February way to the taxi rank. We have a new taxi driver, well, new in that he has only been on the rank for a few months. He told me tonight that he isn’t really one of nature’s taxi drivers, and that it is only a temporary thing until he finds something better.
I listened patiently, and nodded, but obviously didn’t believe a single word of it. Every taxi driver always imagines that this is what they will do, and almost none of them ever manage it, apart from Number Two Daughter. Number One Daughter doesn’t count, because she was only ever a taxi driver as a bit of unofficial moonlighting.
I have not managed it at all. Taxi driving is a slippery slope, which starts off with an attitude problem and culminates in being completely unemployable. If nobody wants to buy my book then I will be one for ever.
There are worse things.
The picture is a house I have borrowed for my story.
