I am late starting this because I have been writing to Oliver.
He has been Disheartened by a wicked rugby teacher, but this is all right because he is not going to be doing rugby any more anyway. He is going to be doing badminton, which is more suitable for a small person when everybody else who plays rugby is the size of Goliath.
Rugby teachers were always savage ruffians. I remember them from my own schooldays. They used to come into the girls’ changing rooms sometimes as well. I think that might have been an olden days thing, though. I bet they don’t do that now.
He has written another diary entry which is online now, although not about the rugby teacher, so anybody wishing for the inside stories of public school boyness can find them on these very pages for no extra cost, how pleased you will be.
I have not spent the whole day writing to Oliver. I have been to Barrow to buy some curtain material.
This is not because our own house is deficient in curtains. In fact we are entirely curtained up, due to a lengthy curtain-manufacturing project several years ago.
The household in need of curtains is Lucy’s.
I have not been looking forward to trailing out to Barrow, and have been putting it off. I was going to go last week and was secretly entirely relieved to discover that the market was closed.
I need to make them soon, though, so today I had got to get on with it.
I drove all the way over there to discover that they had closed the handy car park in the middle of the town, the one right next door to the market. I was not pleased about this, because curtains are heavy and would need lugging back to wherever I had to abandon my car.
I drove round and round in circles, cursing, and discovering that every other car park was, of course, bursting with all the cars that would normally park in the useful car park.
I was not exactly in a rush but I wanted to hurry up.
Eventually I found a parking space, dumped the car and rushed off.
I remembered halfway up the road that it was not a modern sort of car park, and I needed a ticket to put in the window.
I rushed back to the car park and discovered that the ticket machine did not take money at all. That is to say, it took coins, but did not give change. It did not take fivers or bank cards at all.
I had ten pence, a fiver and a bank card.
I wandered up and down the line of nearby shops, begging people to turn my useless paper money into something I could spend, as if I had somehow been paid my wages in Venezuelan bolivars. Eventually a lady in a pie shop took pity on me and gave me some pound coins.
The cost was £2.30 and it would not give me any change.
I thought regretfully that the loss of 70p was the price that you have got to pay for going to tiresome backward car parks at the end of what Mike Harding once described as the longest cul-de-sac in the world, and went to put the ticket in the taxi.
When I got there I realised that I had been in such a distracted state of mind that I had entered the wrong registration number on the ticket.
The day was not living up to its retail therapy expectations.
I hunted through the dark recesses of the taxi until I found a pen and a bit of paper, ironically an old parking pass from somewhere else. I scribbled an apologetic note and left it on the windscreen with the ticket. Then I remembered the flinty-hearted nature of most traffic wardens and decided that I had better do something a bit more pro-active.
I do not mind traffic wardens being flinty-hearted, by the way. I am equally pitiless in my own line of work. I give no quarter to incompetent muppets, and therefore I expected none.
I rang the council and asked to speak to Parking Services.
I waited on the phone for fifteen minutes before we decided that they were all out.
The lady on the phone kindly took my registration number and said that she would help me if I had to make an appeal against a parking ticket, which was nice of her if not exactly encouraging.
I gave up and went to the market.
I like the man on the fabric stall, we have a long history of mutual curtain contemplation.
He was not pleased to see me today, however. He was busy haranguing a hapless-looking chap in a badly fitting jacket. He was growling and waving his arms about, whilst the other chap looked uncomfortable and kept trying to sidle away.
I left them to it whilst I considered velvets and chenille weaves.
When eventually the stall holder reappeared he was still grumbling, loudly and crossly.
It appeared that the other chap had been Mr. Parking Services himself, which was why he had not been answering his phone. He was being in trouble with the market stall holders for not providing a car park.
He was being in a lot of trouble. The stall holders were becoming robustly militant. Barrow may have a riot on its hands if Mr. Parking Services does not hurry up and lay tarmac on the car park.
I added my woes to his list of complaints, and he was so indignant on my behalf that he ran after Mr. Parking Services to try and summon him back, but of course he was long gone.
We consoled ourselves by agreeing that the council was staffed by reprehensible villains who had no idea of the needs of us ordinary folk, although we were both perfectly well aware that lots of the council staff park in the shut car park as well, and must be feeling its absence keenly.
In the end I bought some velvet roll ends and some reduced leafy print cotton, and it was done.
I brought my car round to the market place in defiance of all parking regulators everywhere, and the fabric stall man brought my fabrics out to load it, and to stick a metaphorical two fingers up at the Town Hall.
It had not got a ticket, after all that.
All the same, I am not going back to Barrow until they have sorted it out.
Have another picture of a Lake District sunset. We have a lot of these because of being at work at nights.
