Whilst I was away yesterday, the postman had shoved a card through the door telling us that there was a letter waiting at the post office that could not be delivered without a signature.
This was very scary. It was addressed to both of us. We were worried in case it was from a bankruptcy court or criminal lawyer and we had done something dreadful without knowing about it.
Mark went to get it.
We looked at it with horrible trepidation.
It turned out to be from the Transport Commissioner telling us that our licence to operate a bus service had lapsed and that we must not run any more buses on pain of prosecution.
This was a massive relief. As you might be aware, we do not have any buses any longer. We have got quite enough problems to worry about without ferrying old ladies between the hairdresser and the butcher, and children to school.
We looked at one another happily.
After that, everything in the day seemed like a lighthearted joy.
I must own up to having spent almost the whole of the rest of the day asleep. It might be difficult to fill seven hundred words telling you about this.
We did wake up this morning. We got up and emptied the dogs and the dishwasher, went to the post office, had a celebratory cup of tea, and then in unanimous agreement, went back to bed.
When we woke up it had gone dark again. We got ourselves dressed, Mark cleaned the fire whilst I organised a picnic, and we came out to work, which is where we are now.
It has been an uneventful, but welcome day. For some time any day which has only involved going to one sort of work has felt like a holiday. We have become tired, and sleep was the nicest thing in the world. I have a pet theory, for which I might add that I have got no evidence whatsoever, that Alzheimer’s is encouraged by missed sleep over the years. If you miss enough chances for the brain to repair itself then it turns to mush between your ears. I do not wish to go mental in my declining years, and so I am very much in favour of afternoon naps.
I was glad to sleep anyway. I have managed to work myself up into a complete state of flapping about whether or not I am about to become an employee of Her Majesty, so much so that I can hardly think straight.
I have discovered, to my surprise, that I would really like to do it. Of course this may be partly because of the old truism that nothing is as desirable as the thing that you can’t have. I don’t know if it would have helped to have realised this before I went for the assessment. Either way I have made the astonishing self-discovery that I would like to be an assertive person in polyester trousers and shiny boots, and the more I think about it, the more I think it might be a good idea.
This puts me in a very different frame of mind to my previous cheerful indifference. Up until now I have considered the whole thing to be an adventure, the sort of thing that is interesting for a week or two, and then is forgotten as more pressing concerns crowd in, like cleaning the bathroom.
Unexpectedly, it matters very much.
I confessed as much to Number One Daughter, who said sensibly that in that case, even if I hadn’t passed this time I would just have to keep trying.
I think that I might do that.
I hope I have passed this time, then all I have got to do is the bleepy thing, and a whole new life awaits.
In the meantime I can’t concentrate on anything else at all. My whole life might be about to change, and I am dying to know one way or another.
I might be about to turn into an entirely different person.
Another few days and I will know.
Have another picture of the Lake District.
