I have had a day of being cross with the lodger.
This is not especially kind of me because she gets terribly upset when I am cross, especially, like today, when she doesn’t really understand why.
I have been cross because she has just started to take driving lessons, and her driving instructor has been pestering her to go out for a drink with him. To start with this made her feel uncomfortable and unhappy, but in the end she gave in and went out for a drink and now says that he is quite a nice chap really.
I was of the opinion that he should be publicly executed and then have his driving licence taken away from him.
I do not think you should have to decline or accept invitations from your driving instructor because I do not think they should happen in the first place, no matter how pretty you are. If she were my daughter and not the lodger I would have been telephoning the police and requesting that he be detained in the Little Ease pending a fair trial on the ducking stool.
The lodger said that she was thirty and that I should not need to worry because the driving instructor just wished to be friends.
The driving instructor is fifty. He is a revolting old man with grey hair and the sort of cold eyes that make a person shudder.
I know this because I glanced at him as I drove past him in my taxi late the other night.
I was sure that she was right, and that thirty is perfectly old enough to look after oneself, but nevertheless I was feeling thoroughly uneasy and would have liked to restore my tranquillity by seeing him safely hanged, drawn and quartered.
I explained this to Mark whilst we cleaned the bathroom together today. We do not have very much time to do things on a Saturday, because of sleeping late and working even later, and so if we are to make our lives any better we have got to get on with it and not dawdle.
We had dawdled quite enough already, having had a prolonged cup of coffee accompanied by snorts of laughter at Lucy in bed this morning. These high jinks were cut short when we remembered that her friend was coming to visit at one o’ clock, and it was ten to and we were all still in our dressing gowns. There was a panicked scramble, followed by her friend arriving to find us all pretending that we had been busily tootling around the kitchen for ages.
Mark cleaned the bath and the mirrors and agreed that whilst the driving instructor was clearly the wickedest person on the surface of the planet, it might help the lodger see this better if I stopped shouting at her, given that as far as he was aware she was not deaf.
I agreed regretfully, although my experience of being married has encouraged me to believe that points of view can be expressed more clearly and memorably with a little added volume.
I tried again, more quietly, when she came home from work. Her Irish friend had come with her and nodded sagely, and added his two pennyworth, which given that it was largely concerning snipers in Armagh, was riveting but not especially constructive: although I could see why he felt it might be relevant.
Did you know that there is actually an official road sign, in a triangle and everything, which warns of snipers? It is a bit like the ones for low bridges or deer on the roads, except that it has got a picture of a troubled looking individual waving a gun about.
Sometimes I am glad that I live in the Lake District.
The lodger agreed that she would prefer a quiet life and consented to not going out to socialise with her driving instructor, although declined to allow me to report him to the police, the social services and the DVLA.
She had better pass first time or I will telephone them all, along with the Trading Standards Office, and anybody else who might be prepared to listen to middle-class indignation.
If he drives along our street at any time soon we will need that road sign.
I have not got a picture of a driving instructor on a ducking stool, so have a picture of a clean bathroom instead.
