I have spent a considerable quantity of the day giving a witness statement to the police.
This activity is not an unusual event in the life of a taxi driver, indeed, it is such a normal part of my experience that the last time I rang the police to inform them about some dodgy activity to which I was being an inadvertent witness, the lady who answered the phone said: “And is that Sarah?”
Despite this it still takes up a disproportionately large amount of time, and I failed completely to paint the bedroom.
I had fully intended that this would be my achievement for the day.
The rooms at the front of the house are near the main road through Windermere, which is kept solidly busy all through the summer with traffic proceeding at two or three miles an hour.
The result is a powdery black dust which coats the front walls of the house like the products of a recently erupted volcano, inside and out.
It is two years since we painted our bedroom, but the front wall and ceiling around the window are both black, and Oliver’s room, which is above it, is worse.
I thought that I would paint it today, in the spirit of having some time at home and earnestly wishing for a beautifully pristine house.
I thought I would just do the bit around the window, as a temporary measure, until I could be bothered to empty everything out and paint the lot properly. Also until we can afford some paint, which at forty quid a tin, three tins minimum, is no small investment.
I moved everything away from the window.
I took the sheets off the bed to wash and piled curtains and furniture on top of it.
I took the sheets downstairs and chucked them into the washing machine.
The lodger appeared and made some coffee.
She needed some advice about the best way to live her life, so I stopped getting on with the bedroom and started explaining to her what she should do.
After a while I thought that this was not exactly getting on with things, so rather than deprive her of the benefits of my wisdom, I made a cake with some going-black bananas whilst I talked.
Eventually I stopped for breath and she belted for the back door.
I was by myself then, because Mark and the dogs had buzzed off to the farm.
Mark had brought the loo back from the camper van. He had emptied it but not cleaned it, because there is a limit to his wonderfulness and he was in a hurry.
I cleaned the loo and filled the watering can and the water carrier and put the whole lot in the wheelbarrow to take round the corner to the camper van.
The water was for filling the flushing cistern tank for the loo. It is a new upmarket arrangement and you put this water through a hole in the outside of the van, now cunningly disguised as a plant pot.
I trundled down the road with a loo in the wheelbarrow and hardly noticed that I looked ridiculous until I got to the camper van and could not get the little loo hatch doors open, and turned out to be blocking the pavement with a watering can and a loo in a wheelbarrow.
I tried to phone Mark to find out what he had done with the keys, but he was at the farm where his phone had no signal.
That did not stop me trying again, and again, and again, whilst people squeezed along the pavement past me, saying “Excuse me,” and trying to avoid the wheelbarrow full of loo.
I parked the wheelbarrow as inconspicuously as I could and ran home to see if the keys were there.
They weren’t.
I rushed back to the wheelbarrow and tried again.
Eventually Mark answered, and once I had stopped shouting he explained that the keys were in the van, but that he had not locked the tanks.
I tried the doors again and they just opened easily.
I picked up the loo to put it back and the wheelbarrow fell over, covering me and the pavement with the contents of the watering can.
I poured the last of the water into the tank and took the wheelbarrow back, parking it briefly outside Sainsbury’s whilst I popped in for some melon for our picnic.
When I got home the washing machine was beeping its head off to tell me that it had finished with the sheets.
The oven was doing the same in respect of the cake, and the doorbell was ringing, which was the police.
I dumped the wheelbarrow in the back garden and rushed to answer the door. The police had to wait whilst I took the cake out and pegged the sheets on the washing line.
Talking to the police took ages, as these things usually do, and as they were going the lodger came home.
She made some coffee and I made our picnic whilst I explained to her how she could live her life better, only quite soon she remembered that she had got to go somewhere.
I almost got the paint out, but it turned out to be at the back of the under stairs cupboard behind the Christmas decorations.
I shut the door and left it there.
Mark rang to say that he was coming home to get ready for work.
I rushed upstairs to the bedroom to try and tidy up.
I was still hoovering cobwebs off the windowsill when he arrived.
He helped to put things away and then organised a cup of coffee and some headache drugs.
After that we went to work.
I have called this entry a Cathartic day because that was what the lodger’s Irish friend said about it. “Goodness me,” he said cheerfully, “it’s all cathartic, don’t you know?”
I had got no idea at all what he was talking about but agreed politely, perhaps it’s an Irish thing, the opposite of a Protestantarthic day, or something, probably related to sin and expiation somewhere along the line.
I think I have expiated mine.
The cake turned out all right.
Have a picture of the Lake District.
