We were tired and cross this morning. The entire household had been woken up at nine o’ clock by some friend of Oliver’s making the computer jingle with a FaceTime call.
Obviously none of us, including Oliver, were awake. The children have slipped effortlessly back into their nocturnal lifestyles, and we had not been in bed for very long.
When it rang for the third time it was painfully clear that we were not going to drift back into our peaceful slumbers again, so we gave up and made coffee. We rubbed gritty eyes and yawned and glowered, and eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and into the day.
We were emptying the dogs in the sheets of rain cascading over the Library Gardens when we came across one of the other taxi drivers doing the same.
It dawned on me as we said our good mornings that we hadn’t seen him for a while. Since Roger Poopy wanted to stop anyway, with the clear intention of doing some unspeakably indecent things to his dog we asked how he was getting along.
He is a Polish chap, and as he talked I remembered the beginnings of the events that had unfolded.
A few months ago he had been driving his taxi when he had blacked out, become unconscious and driven into a wall. Miraculously, nobody, including him, had been hurt, although Lakeside Taxis had been reluctantly obliged to cough up for a new taxi and a new wall. They had been cross about this.
The police had not been very happy either, and had grumbled a great deal about people driving taxis when they are not fit. Since you have got to pass a medical before you become a taxi driver, it had surprised everybody, and there had been dark growlings about some unspecified skulduggery.
What sort of skulduggery I can’t imagine, since it is difficult to fake robust good health, even to the most indifferent of doctors.
The driver himself had been understandably upset by the whole thing, and so had taken himself off to his GP for an additional MOT and general service check.
The GP sent him to the hospital for the sort of tests that hospitals do, and he was issued with a clean bill of health. The blackout was dismissed as overwork and overdrinking and general overuse of his whole body.
Being a clean living sort of chap, he had not felt very comfortable with this verdict. His mother was especially difficult to convince, and summoned him back to Poland where she could take him to their family’s witch doctor, or whatever they have in rural villages in the more distant parts of Europe.
The Polish doctor also sent him to a hospital for checks, where a three inch brain tumour was discovered. They told him that he was jolly lucky to be alive, having not been finished off either by the tumour or by the car crash.
Since he lives in England and has been paying into the UK tax and insurance system he was not covered for anything to be done about the brain tumour in Poland.
Since the UK medical system had not personally found the tumour they would not do anything about it.
In the end he had to pay cash for a six-hour operation in Poland where a neurosurgeon hoovered the inside of his skull out.
He used the money that he had been saving up to get married, and his family clubbed together for the rest. His mother made him promise that he would go back to church and mention his gratitude to God occasionally. He thought that he would probably rather be broke than dead, and considered that he had had rather a fortunate outcome.
He showed us the scar, which was behind his ear and causing some problems for his glasses. He told us, happily, that the problem was completely cleared up, and that he was out of danger.
Better still, his girlfriend still wanted to marry him, even though he had recklessly spent the cash.
He chirped about good fortune and the wonderfulness of life. We agreed fervently, in between dragging an overexcited Roger Poopy off his dog, and trying to kick him into obedience, surreptitiously, in order not to be suspected of animal cruelty. He is a disobedient idiot when his reproductive organs are involved.
We parted cheerfully, in the torrential rain, and Mark growled at our tiresome dog until he followed us, reluctantly.
Somehow the day seemed rather nicer than it had been.
It is good to be alive.
