I have had such an exciting day that I am just about ready to fall over.
To begin at the beginning…
I had got to start the day with an interview at the Council offices. The council had received a complaint about a taxi driver who refused to leave them at their hotel, but had ejected them rudely and unceremoniously at a garage a mile away from it.
You might not be surprised to learn that I was the taxi driver concerned.
The customers felt entirely aggrieved that they had not had the entire journey that they had wanted, but for which they had declined to pay, and wrote to the council to express their distress. The council then wrote to me with a request that I provide an explanation.
Regular readers of this page will be aware that I am entirely accustomed to idiots, and in fact there is a fairly rigid criteria that you have got to meet before you are actually ejected from my taxi: you need to be both horribly offensive and unwilling to pay. I don’t mind too much about either one on its own, but both together are a fairly certain route to being chucked out.
Our licensing officers are actually jolly civilised people for whom I have a sneaking admiration, if you disregard the dreadful moments when they materialise on the taxi rank with a bang and a puff of green smoke and want to know how long it is since you have hoovered under the seats.
Today they were reasonably understanding. They suggested that perhaps it would be less problematic if I were prepared to accept whatever people are prepared to pay if it meant that they didn’t shout and then write complaining letters. I think this is a brilliant idea and have got every intention of applying it when I have got to pay my next set of licensing fees, it will cut down my expenses splendidly.
In the end we parted on entirely amicable terms, and I went to get my hair cut.
This was balm to my soul. A charmingly chirpy girl washed my hair, and told me, surprisingly, of her burning desire to learn how to milk cows, and of a local farmer who had promised to teach her. I have done quite a bit of cow milking, and explained helpfully that the key to it is getting them to keep their feet out of the bucket. She seemed to be bursting with the excitement of this new adventure, and I wished her luck with it. Cows are all very nice until they sneeze in your ear. The results are unpleasantly viscous, and you have got to be fairly robust not to mind, which is probably why most farmers are solidly unflappable types.
The haircut was lovely. I had started to resemble neglected shrubbery, so much so that even Mark noticed, and insisted that I did something about it. I am now neat and easy-care again, and a little contentment has crept into my soul.
Once tidily trimmed I dashed over to the farm, because it was the Day Of The Camper MOT.
Mark was frantically nailing the brakes together, and I helped by hoovering the cab out, and we set off.
It has been almost two years.
We were sick with the dread and the anticipation of it.
We drove excitedly to Kendal, trying to become accustomed to people pointing and waving.
The Autoparts man passed us and tooted his horn and waved frantically, pleased that we had finally made it out into the wide world.
Mark went to help the MOT man, standing behind the van and shouting which lights had lit, and listening to him talking about his Harley Davidson.
I sat in Reception and read a magazine about being a good housewife.
It passed.
My stomach did lots of somersaults.
After that we both felt weak and light-headed with the relief of it.
We did not want to go back to the farm.
It felt like the moment when you rescue a relative from a long-term stay in hospital and take them out for the day.
We did not want to take it back.
We drove back to Windermere and sat down by the lake for a while, drinking tea and watching people looking at the camper van. I have discovered that I like people looking at it and smiling, but do not at all like them wanting to be friendly and chat afterwards. It is beyond lovely to have done something that makes people smile, but it is uncomfortable and awkward to have them come up to me and tell me about it.
We broke down on the way back to the farm, because of something electrical. Mark had to hot wire it to get us home.
We thought perhaps it isn’t ready to come out of hospital just yet.
A bit more convalescence, perhaps.
