The day started with coffee and a review of Saturday night’s labours.
Mark was cross with himself. He had inadvertently picked up a couple who had just come to the end of a minor domestic dispute, which had culminated in the lady throwing her kebab at the gentleman. It turned out that the gentleman had still been wearing quite a bit of it when he got into the back seat.
Mark’s car still smells of kebab this morning.
I was pleased with myself because I had encountered the same couple just prior to the kebab dispute, had come to the fairly rapid conclusion that they were idiots, and ejected them from my back seat after about a hundred yards.
Mark, who had clearly not been paying proper attention, had also had a sicker. Fortunately she had been in sufficient possession of her senses to open the back window, and so apart from a negligible quantity that had collected in the door pocket, largely it was just decorating the outside of the back door of the car and had had to be watered off with the watering can when he got home.
I had collected a regular customer, so incoherent that he was incapable of telling me where he lived, so it was a good job that I knew. He knew he loved me, though, and told me about it in utterly incomprehensible detail during the journey. I declined to kiss him goodnight, but he had managed to find a tenner for the fare, so we parted on good terms.
I had also taken some irate gentlemen from Manchester who were terribly upset with the world. They had been walking harmlessly, they assured me, quite innocently, down the road when the police skidded to a halt beside them, captured two of their friends, hurled them into the back of the van and drove off.
I was captivated by this story, since it seemed so unlike the usual behaviour of our local law enforcement. In the unlikely event that they were to feel like going around Bowness arresting people, they have got a wish list of locals a mile long before they make a start on visitors.
When I got back to the nightclub the bouncers were full of a story of some gentlemen from Manchester who had been involved in a shockingly violent fight in the Stag’s Head during which somebody’s face had changed shape for ever. I thought perhaps my passengers had perhaps forgotten about this, which was why they felt so aggrieved by their treatment. I did wonder why they were all looking sweatily dishevelled, but had put it down to over-enthusiastic dancing.
When we finally went downstairs we discovered the lodger sitting groaning at the table, having spent the entire night at the Chinese restaurant where she is employed, becoming intoxicated with the kitchen porter and the pot washer. They had been obliged to stop dancing eventually when the chef came downstairs at around five o’ clock this morning, and bellowed at them all to shut up. She thought that she might have had had a nice time, she recollected vaguely, although possibly it might have been a better idea to have squeezed some sleep in somewhere.
We were as sympathetic as we felt she merited, which she thought was harsh, and left her getting ready for the day out that she had organised before her error of judgement. The plan for this was to accompany her Irish friend around White Scar Caves. Even after the third coffee and a considerable quantity of drugs she was still not looking forward to it.
We had got plans of our own, because it was the day for returning our last little chick to school. She has had a week longer than Oliver, but it has come to an end now.
Obviously we were going to take the camper van, and after much discussion decided that we would stay out overnight. Sunday nights will be fairly quiet now, as almost nobody blows a fortune on drinking, dancing and taxis on the night immediately before a week at work. Those who do tend not to have much disposable fortune anyway.
We abandoned Lucy in her dormitory and pretended that we were going to skip down the drive, ecstatic at our new freedom, but of course we did not. I felt sad, and had to be reminded by Mark that the children are having a much better life than anything we could offer them at home.
The journey home turned out to be problematic, and it is a jolly good job that we decided to stay out overnight, because we are parked on the A66, which has unexpectedly become closed.
We are about to have a shower and go to bed, where we will stay until the road re-opens tomorrow morning and we can get across the fells and go home again.
The picture is Mark, doing his maths homework here at the side of the road, and not expecting to have his photograph taken.
What a jolly good job we have got a camper van.
