We have jolly well done it.
We have organised and sorted and packed and cleaned. We have finished doing all of the things on my very long list, and now we are on the taxi rank, earning some cash to take with us.
I can hardly believe that we have managed it.
We are going to Manchester tomorrow. It is the week of our Christmas party, and we are actually ready to go.
We have finished making chocolate boxes and wrapping them. We filled the last ones today, and Mark rushed round to the post office with them.
Whilst he was out he went to get his hair cut.
He certainly got his money’s worth. He does not have any hair left. He looks like a very worn tennis ball, apart from that he is not green, obviously.
I packed Oliver’s suitcase. Oliver helped a bit, in between shooting zombie cowboys. After that I packed our own. We are only going for a few days, but there does seem to be an awful lot of stuff. Smart clothes seem to take up more room than worn scruffy ones somehow.
Mark cleaned our shoes and I cleaned the bathroom. We fed Oliver on a plate of ham and yoghurt, because that was what I could find in the fridge, and dashed off, feeling very pleased with ourselves.
We are at work now. It is not very busy just yet, but it is Saturday night, and things start to happen later on when everybody is drunk.
Somebody refused to get in with me last night. He went to Mark instead and told him that he did not want to get in a taxi that I was driving. Obviously Mark was instantly curious, and when pressed for details, the man said that he had got in my taxi before, and that I had been so rude about my employer that he did not want to travel with me. He said that he was an employer himself and did not want to be around disgruntled employees.
Mark laughed and pointed out that I have not had an employer for the last twenty five years, being, as we all know, unemployable.
We do not count the prison service in this. I never tell anybody that I am working for them, mostly, as you will understand, because I am not.
The man got so cross with Mark then that he wouldn’t go in his taxi either. He said that he jolly well knew what he was talking about, and that I was a nasty piece of work with nothing good to say about the benevolent hand that fed me, and stomped off.
Sometimes customers are completely mental.
I had just written those very words when somebody jumped in the taxi and wanted to go to Barrow. This was very exciting indeed, because it was my very first job, I had got no money and the fuel light had come on.
I had planned to earn some money from the first few customers and then spend it in the petrol station.
Barrow is a long way away. It is forty five minutes drive.
I had not got very far before the oil light came on as well. It flashed at me, alarmingly.
Even I know that you are not supposed to drive cars when the oil light is on. I stopped at a garage and put some oil in, but the light kept flashing.
I couldn’t put fuel in as well because I still hadn’t got any money.
I was very alarmed.
I did not want to break the car. We are going to Manchester in it tomorrow.
I did not tell my customers of our peril. I drove very slowly and carefully to Barrow, and by some miracle the fuel did not run out, and good fortune was with me. The car kept going for the whole way. The engine did not seize up and leave me sitting helplessly with my customers in a smoking heap, in the freezing dark, at the side of the road.
I would not have liked that.
Once the customers had gone I rang Mark who said not to put any more oil in and asked if I was sure that it was an oil light. Because I am a girl sometimes I get these things wrong. It was the sort of light that looks like something that could be used to summon a genie if you needed one, and Mark agreed that this was probably the oil light which was flashing. He said that this only meant that the car needed a service, which obviously it does, it is a taxi.
I had got some money by then, so I put some fuel in. I spent all of the money I had earned from the customers and filled it right up, in one of the wonderfully cheap petrol stations that they have in Barrow.
I drove back far less slowly and carefully.
Mark checked the dipstick when I got back and said that there was plenty of oil in it, so I did not need to panic after all.
When I thought about it I was very pleased. We have got enough fuel to go to Manchester now, and some bonus oil in the car as well.
We are all ready to go.
