Most satisfactory

I think I like my new taxi quite a lot.

It goes exactly where you point it, and stops when you put your foot on the brakes. The heater works and there is plenty of storage space for tea and sandwiches. Very bestly best of all, the door catches are simple to operate and in full view. 

The catches for the sliding back doors were inside the handles on my last two taxis. Nobody could ever find them, and almost every single customer failed either to open, or to close the doors, and usually both.

This made them cross before they started. Some people were so cross with their own inability to close the doors that they shouted lots of abuse and got out before I had finished saying ‘good evening’. I know that this sounds unlikely, but I promise that it is true, and happened at least once a week. Drunk people can be quite surprisingly unreasonable.

I stopped saying ‘good evening’ if they shouted abuse, and responded more thoughtfully. Nobody can accuse me of not paying attention to my customers.

Anyway, all these newly resolved small happinesses make for a very agreeable workspace, and I am feeling contented with my world. 

You will not be in the least surprised to learn that there are all sorts of things wrong with it that are going to need Mark’s attention over the next week, not least that the horn doesn’t work, the headlights don’t work on full beam and the windscreen wash seems to be blocked, but these are all minor details, to be expected in a clapped-out taxi, and do not bother me in the least. I have had many, far more serious and distressing problems in my taxis. I have had more than one which has needed to have taxi cards propped against the dashboard in order to cover up the large red flashing light which says STOP. If ever you get in a taxi and the dashboard is similarly adorned, you might consider getting out again if your journey is an important one.

Of course, Mark did consider looking at them today. We worked late last night, and got up late this morning, and when we looked out of the window the sun was shining.

We thought gloomily about spending yet another day messing about with a taxi. 

You might perhaps have worked out that we are not always exactly bursting with passion for our lifetime career vocation. In fact that might be something of an understatement. There are quite a few days when we struggle to whisk up any interest at all, and this was one of them. We have spent the whole week messing about with taxis, which has seemed like a terrible waste.

Nobody wants to spend a sunny day mending a broken fuse relay or poking pins into windscreen washers, and so we didn’t. 

Instead, today, in the lovely sunshine, we threw open the doors and windows and did proper, real life things instead.

We ambled round the Library Gardens with the dogs, smelling the new blossom, and then Mark put the cement mixer on and carried on with the construction of the new conservatory.

It was ace to be in the garden, even if it is a muddy wasteland at the moment. It is the site of our dreams, which is what matters.

The hyacinths around the back door are in full bloom, and the heavy scent wafted into the house with the sunshine. I have planted thirty of them this year, and the results have been so satisfactory that I shall be adding another thirty to them next year. They are glorious, it is a happiness just to walk past them.

I made peanut butter and mayonnaise and a fruit yoghurt drink for work. I wandered in and out of the garden and hung the washing round Mark. I did not mean to move his string line, he did make a fuss.

He hadn’t done it when I took the photograph, but he has got the front bit of wall finished now, the outside layer of bricks at least, and it is almost too exciting to tell you about. It is all starting to seem thrillingly real. It is lovely to have done even such a little bit to it. We have got so much to do next week that there will be no conservatory-building time at all, and it will all be put off for a bit longer.

It has been a most satisfactory sort of day.