I have taken Lucy back to school today. This has been my main achievement in an otherwise not terrifically fruitful day.
I woke up today to discover that it was half past one in the afternoon, which is why this paragraph can’t say that I woke up this morning.
I was truly horrified with myself. There was no real need for guilt, because we didn’t actually get to bed until half past five, but I like to think of myself as a go-getting sort of individual. It is difficult to sustain this self-image if you are still drinking coffee in bed at two in the afternoon.
Mark was already awake, and chucked the dogs out and brought us coffee, and we sat cheerfully speculating about life for a bit longer, until it was so late that we realised even Lucy had got up, and dashed off to empty the dogs in the Library Gardens.
It is always a bit disorientating to be so out of step with the rest of the world. We were having our early morning walk and listening to the birds singing, and everybody else was closing their shops and running for the last bus. There were no morning papers left on the stands and nobody seemed to be frying bacon anywhere.
We went home for breakfast, which we finally managed to organise at about four, put the washing on and had a cup of tea, and then it was time to take Lucy back.
She has been reading my story, and told me her opinions on the way back, which were related to there being inadequate discussion of feelings in it. I think feelings are boring in a story, and skip those bits when I am reading, so it became an animated discussion during which it became apparent that actually Lucy would be happy to read a story with cover-to-cover feelings and hardly any adventure at all. This is what happens when your children have been to school in France for any length of time, all their films are like that.
I listened patiently and promised that I would add some feelings to it, as a bit of an afterthought, although I am not sure that I agree. I think that if it isn’t perfectly obvious how a person night feel when they are about to be executed or married or interrogated or released, then the reader needs to get out more and have some adventures of their own in order to broaden their horizons a bit.
It is not the first time I have been accused of inadequate feeling, not even the first time in the last twenty four hours, as it happens.
Two people mentioned it last night.
You don’t count the first, who was a regular customer. He is the son of Lord Cavendish, and an enthusiastic toper, and suggested hopefully that I pop back to his mansion and spank him instead of finishing my night shift. Obviously I declined, although it was my private opinion that he could jolly well do with it, he was not a figure of dignified responsibility last night.
The second was a young chap who was also astounded to discover the black depth of the void where my conscience ought to have lived. His friend had drunk rather more than was advisable, and was lying semi-conscious and groaning and vomiting in a puddle at the side of the road.
I explained to them both that I preferred not to take them home in my taxi.
The young man was far from sober himself, and in the slurry, shouty state of mind that makes drunk people so completely not endearing. He leaned in through my window, in a rather spitty kind of way, and discovered that I felt not the smallest guilt about the dreadful fates that might overtake his friend without my kind assistance. He pointed out that he might die of exposure if I refused to come to their aid, and then, he said, I would be sorry.
This last could not have been further from the truth.
I observed that his companion would actually be no great loss to the gene pool, and that I would sleep perfectly easily without taking him anywhere. Rather better, in fact, because once I had a taxi seat covered in mud and vomit then I would not be able to earn any more money and I would have to start worrying about the mortgage again.
He said that I was unfeeling and heartless, with which I had to agree. It is much easier to make money when you have persuaded your conscience to take early retirement.
I think they must have phoned his mother or something, because when I got back to the taxi rank later they had gone.
So, you have a diary entry written by a person who loafs about in bed until lunchtime and refuses to help others in their Hour of Need.
I think I must be a Bad Person.
I took the picture on the journey back to school. Since I am a bad person anyway I thought I might as well.
