It has been the quietest of uneventful days.
Don’t say you weren’t warned. There is always YouTube if you are bored and seeking thrills. The adventures of an elderly taxi driver on a quiet November day in the Lake District are never going to merit a warning from the Board of Censorship.
It really has been quiet, enlivened only by my shouting at Mark, who neglected to tell me that he was going to be coming home later than planned last night, and then left his phone out of signal. In consequence of this shocking neglect, he had a burned dinner.
It was not really burned, because I have met Mark before and know better than to commit my cooking to a time frame when he is mending things. It was, however, horribly desiccated from an extra hour and a half in the oven, and lacking in its original succulent culinary appeal, so I told him that he could eat it by himself and went back to the taxi rank to sulk.
Mark had not finished mending my taxi, so I was still in his, and it turned out not to be a very good idea in the end. There are not many customers wandering about Bowness at half past midnight in a Sunday evening, and I sat there shivering and glowering in the unheated car for ages before fortunately somebody got in. As it turned out they wanted to go practically to the end of our street, so I used that as an excuse for coming home, and sloped back into the welcoming glow of the wood-stove.
Mark was in the shower, and after a while came down being terribly apologetic. I was cold by then, so it didn’t help his cause at all, and instead of being understanding I had a glass of wine and read some of my book until my feet had warmed up.
In the end of course we were reconciled, which is one of the inevitabilities of being married, nobody gets divorced over a disproportionately crunchy dinner. We decided that we were both getting terribly stressed over the approaching exit from the shed, which gave us a convenient scapegoat in Mark’s sister. Obviously it must be her fault that I was grumpy and Mark was distracted.
It is in any case true, it is a terribly worrying thing to be trying to do, and I have promised to go and be helpful tomorrow. I have a depressing intuition that this is likely to mean more flagstones to be shifted, and so I am sitting on the taxi rank eating chocolate to build up my strength in readiness.
Mark had to go back to the farm this morning to finish my taxi, which needed new brake things as well as a gearbox. I don’t quite know what they were but I do know that every time I put my foot on the brake now we come to a startlingly hasty standstill.
In the meantime I have done housework things, like bringing logs in, you all know about my daily occupations. After that I went to sit at my desk to do things with my story.
It has been edited for me by a chap who has a small, albeit completely insignificant, publishing house, but who is kindly and enthusiastic about my efforts. He is not going to publish it for me, because although he is English, he is based in China, where there is not much demand for stories about ravening Scots. Despite this he has been quite astoundingly helpful and buoyed up by his changes I have made some alterations, shifted my pitch and am going to try and send it to some places who might actually be interested in it.
This took ages, and several litres of tea. I had only just given up when Mark came home to get ready for work.
We are at work now, and it is raining.
The picture is the last rose in the garden, because it made me feel cheerful this morning.
I am looking it it now and trying to recapture the effect.
