I have spent much of today on my computer.
Obviously I have done all of the normal day things as well, like washing, and wishing that I could be bothered to clean the bathroom, but in between all of those I have been perched at my desk, squinting at the screen and muttering to myself.
I have had several things to do.
I have been sending Mark’s CV to a local engineering company who mend tractors and farming equipment.
The reason for this is the usual one, that we have got no money.
There is an obvious problem with working in the tourist industry in the north of England over the winter, which I presume you can work out for yourselves.
This year we have not had a summer as much as a very prolonged mild winter. As the weather is changing and the mild cool winter is becoming a wet and dreary dark winter, fewer and fewer people seem to just feel like popping up to the Lakes for a bit of a break.
Those who do come here tend not to be riotous party animals hoping for bright lights and nights of red painted tiles, which is what provides a taxi driver with a basic living.
Of course all hotel staff are riotous party animals, but over the winter they have got no tips, reduced working hours and possible compulsory holidays.
In consequence we are staring into the face of poverty.
Obviously that is not strictly true. We could be perhaps more accurately described as scowling into the face of having to put up with cheaper soap.
All the same I do not like the idea at all and we have been having worried conferences about the best way of minimising the overdraft over the months to come.
I have had the brilliant idea of finding proper jobs.
I have this idea every winter, and it almost never comes to anything, not least because we are, as you know, unemployable. This is not because of a lack of abilities, but because of an irresistible tendency to tell people where they can stick it. This is why we drive taxis.
We have talked about it a bit over the last few days, and have decided, as usual, that it would be better if it was Mark rather than me, because of his higher tolerance threshold for idiots, and also because he has got more valuable skills.
I have got no skills to speak of, the last time I had a job was in 2007, in Windermere Post Office for a few weeks, which ended when the postmaster told me that I should not tell customers what I thought. It so happened that the sun was shining outside, and so I told him what I thought, which incorporated where he could stick it, hung up my Post Office sweatshirt and escaped, free, into the approaching springtime.
I have not had a proper job ever since.
Mark said that there was no point in upsetting any other local employers and so he would see if he could become gainfully employed. He spoke to the tractor repair shop yesterday, whilst handily ordering some bits to fix his digger, and they told him to send a CV.
This sort of thing is always my job, because Mark’s acquaintance with his email is casual, to say the least. This really means that he utterly ignores it, and every now and again I log into it and clear a backlog of seventy or eighty disregarded messages, most of which have been duplicated to me by anybody who actually wants an answer anyway.
I wrote a letter pretending to be Mark, and hunted for his CV, which it turned out I had deleted in a moment of careless storage regeneration. This took ages to reconstitute, and in the end I managed it from an email sent by Number One Son-In-Law on Mark’s behalf, who also occasionally involves himself in efforts to drag us out of the depths of insolvency by pretending to be Mark and applying for jobs.
The letter was hard work, because when I thought carefully about what he wanted to say, it turned out to be along the lines of: “I am beyond brilliant at mending things, and also I badly need some extra cash. However I don’t do mornings, and I get bored easily. If you are quiet I probably won’t much fancy turning up, because I hate hanging about not doing much, and so I won’t. If you are busy, though, and need people to work all night or get things done in a tearing hurry, I’m probably the chap for you.”
It is hard to phrase that in a way that might look acceptable to a potential employer, and I can tell you it took all of my writing skills to achieve it.
If they want to interview him we will have to do some practising first.
I have got my fingers crossed for it.
The picture is the entrance to our field. The lawn at home looks much like that as well.
