It has been such a busy day that I am not entirely sorry to find that it is painfully quiet on the taxi rank.
Every taxi in the Lake District is sitting here, hopefully, waiting for somebody to want to go somewhere, which on the whole they don’t seem to.
I am sitting here and not caring if anybody goes anywhere or not, because the peace and quiet is so welcome. Apart from not having any cash, that is. As you know we have taken a bit of a financial hit over the last couple of days.
Not that anything we can earn here tonight is likely to make any difference. It will take a lot of taxi fares at £3.70 to make up the cost of vehicle purchase, road tax, a couple of tyres and some insurance. Anything we earn tonight will be a mere raindrop in our sloshing sea of financial woes.
I am feeling a touch wearied by the whole affair.
Partly this is my own fault. We were very late to bed last night, because we wanted to leave everywhere finished and tidy and gold-plated before the children came home today.
This meant that we were not feeling terrifically enthusiastic when the alarm went off at six this morning.
We had an early start because Oliver’s school had arranged a concert.
Oliver was in this, not as a soloist, but as a chorister, and so attendance was mandatory, however early it started, and actually it was jolly good. There were one or two good musicians, and one genius, and my spirits were lifted by Son Of Oligarch. He is unmusical and hence was being the master of ceremonies. He mispronounced the song title Pie Jesu, and the music master, who takes it all terribly seriously, could not help interjecting: “Pee-ay Yaysyoo, boy, pee-ay Yaysyoo. You are not serving him with chips and gravy.”
After the concert we collected Oliver, who was full of exeat bounce, and had a brief meeting with his form teacher. I like his form teacher, most especially because I have an occasional taxi customer who was at public school with him, and who tells me scurrilous stories.
It turns out that Oliver is doing all right at everything, although he needs to work harder at maths and science before the dreaded Common Entrance. This is looming large on the horizon now, and giving boys and parents sleepless nights.
Last year’s leavers did so very well, with twenty two scholarships to public schools, that they have become an impossible act to follow. Oliver’s future is settled, but we sat next to Actual Head Boy’s father, who told us doleful stories of huge stacks of extra work that his son had given him to carry home, to occupy them both over the exeat weekend.
In the end we extracted ourselves rather early, and went belting off down the motorway to Lucy’s school, where we had a lunch date with Lucy and Nan and Grandad. This turned out to be a high point in the day, except that since we were practically all driving, none of us could drink.
I had a small glass of wine anyway, reasoning that the massive dinner that accompanied it would probably sponge it up. I regretted this when the combination of chicken in Stilton sauce, accompanied by sticky toffee pudding and wine, made my eyelids almost irresistibly heavy all the way back.
This did not matter for half of the way, because Mark was driving, and I dozed unobserved in the passenger seat: but then we reached Catterick, where Lucy’s thrilling new car was waiting.
It is a small green Renault.
It is all right, a bit grubby on the inside and its front tyres will need replacing tomorrow, but it is a car, and it goes.
It is only insured for Lucy to drive. Mark got in the passenger seat beside her, and Oliver and I followed on behind.
The house where we had bought it was on a hill next to some traffic lights.
You forget, oh experienced drivers, what an ordeal this is for a learner. Especially in an unfamiliar car.
It took her three goes to get through the lights, and I sat behind her in an agony of remembered learner-driver misery.
She managed it in the end, and we chugged home slowly and carefully through the freezing night.
It was late when we got back. We were very late for work.
The police have told her that they will suspend her application until they hear whether or not she has passed her test. It is on Monday.
She and Mark are going to spend the weekend practising.
I have got everything crossed.
