Lazarus

I can hardly say how very pleased I am to be able to share this moment with you.

We have taken a year to reach this magical event, and today it has happened.

We have oil and water, and I am happy to tell you that both are inside the pipes and not making puddles underneath.

We can turn it on at the flick of a key, and also, importantly, turn it off as well. This last has novelty value, we haven’t been able to do this for ages. We have had to stall it every time. This has been all right, and we have both become quite good at doing it with minimal embarrassment, but it will be lovely not to have to.

The end is in sight, really, really in sight.

We have still got a very great deal to do, but we think that once we have restored the prop shaft and restrung the brakes, we will be MOT worthy.

Who would ever have thought it?

It looks as though it might really be ready for the children’s Speech Days this term. How pleased they will be.

We have been there all day, tootling along contentedly listening to the birdsong. It has been just about the nicest possible day, doing things together in the sunshine.

I have done some more painting. I like doing this very much. I am an average artist at best, but such a happy one that it doesn’t matter. I could happily have stayed there for the whole evening, but we had got to come to work.

We had got to work because we are hoping to earn enough for a prop shaft and a new taxi.

Mark’s taxi has got to retire on the first of June, because the council are ageist about taxis. We have bought another taxi, in the way you buy something when you don’t have any money. That is, we have told Lakeside Taxis that we would like it, and they have rolled their eyes and said to get it out of their way and that we can give them the cash when we have got it.

I think this is superlatively kind of them. There is no way I would give me a car without handfuls of cash up front. There is no excuse, either, because they know us, and know perfectly well that we are endlessly financially embarrassed.

It has got us out of a terrible hole anyway, not that we are strangers to such a position, but somehow we keep on pulling through, the sun never quite stops shining on us.

So far we are not doing badly at all, I am on almost fifteen pounds now, and when you count Mark’s earnings as well we are ticking over nicely. It isn’t late, either, so there is plenty of time yet.

We would have liked an extra night off, because it is always lovely to loaf about twice, but we decided that it was a more responsible idea to come to work. To compensate for not staying at home and drinking wine we cooked ourselves a proper dinner, the sort that you eat from plates with knives and forks, not a picnic and a spoon.

This was brilliant. We were starving after spending the day at the farm, so we cooked ourselves a little closer to heart disease. We fried potatoes and bacon in butter, added garlic, asparagus, cheese and a spot of cream, and then browned it off. This was magnificent, some things are worth dying young.

We sat back afterwards and groaned with happiness. I washed up whilst Mark emptied the dogs, and now here we are on the taxi rank.

I feel splendidly content. Fresh air and too much dinner is just the thing for this frame of mind.

New prop shaft here we come.