Walking difficulties

The Indian summer seems to be drawing to a close, and today we had rain.

It is still warm. Even now, in my taxi, I am still comfortable in a cotton dress and sandals, but the air is thick with the feeling of rain, and dark, and the season is changing.

We have not yet had the scent of autumn colouring the days, although when we went into the Library Gardens this morning the air was heavy with the syrup-smell of candy floss, and we realised that the burnt sugar trees have gone yellow. Our neighbour has left us a bag of apples, and we know that the summer is all but over.

Tomorrow, or today if you are reading this with your cornflakes, is the day when the night and day are the same length, and in a few weeks it will be dark at teatime.

Mark went to the farm after our walk around the Library Gardens, to collect some bits. This was because my car needs an MOT next week, and when he looked at it he discovered that there was a chunk of metal in the back which was so rusty that when he poked it with a screwdriver it fell out.

This has not really mattered, because it was the supporting bit for the wheelchair seatbelts. I never carry wheelchair passengers, so its decay has failed to attract my attention.

I do not abstain from carrying wheelchairs by choice, but because I do not take bookings or wait on the railway station, which is the way most wheelchair users find their taxis.

Most people who are misfortunate enough to be stuck in a wheelchair have got the foresight to book the right sort of taxi when they go out for the night. They do not tend to come bowling out of nightclubs too drunk to stay upright and hoping vaguely that there will be an appropriate taxi waiting outside. In my twenty two years of taxi driving experience, so far this has not happened to me  even once.

Hence I was unaware of the precarious state of the seatbelt mountings.

We looked at the dodgy strut with some concern and felt relieved that it has never been put to any kind of use. Mark said that it was in such a state that some previous owner had mounted the wheelchair supports just by glueing them on.

He went to retrieve some bits, and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden in his welding mask, constructing a new bit.

This means that when the drunk wheelchair person does eventually show up I will be prepared, not that I have got the first idea how to use any of the wheelchair apparatus in my taxi. Mark has shown me how it all works, but it is such a confusion of controls and switches and harnesses and ramps that I am just as mystified as I ever was. It might help if I had got a wheelchair handy for a bit of practice, but I haven’t, and so I will just have to hope that the drunk wheelchair person will at least be sober enough to know which wheel goes where.

Mark welded the strut back, but even so he has not finished doing the rest of the repairs yet. There is a troubling clunk which sounds like an MOT failure, and he has replaced the brake pads, which have been complaining about overuse for some time.

I left him to get on with it and carried on with Lucy’s curtains.

I have got them all cut out now.

This is more of an achievement than it sounds, because there is not a single bit of our house except our bed which is wide enough to spread out a piece of fabric fifty four inches wide.

I do not like cutting things out in our bed, which finishes up being full of fluff and bits of cotton, and there is always the opportunity for an accidental misfortune with the scissors and the sheet. In any case the curtains were longer than the bed length, so I did the best that I could on the living room floor. This worked all right until Roger Poopy came back from the farm with muddy paws.

Only Roger Poopy had muddy paws, because Mark did not take both dogs with him.

He shouted for both of them to come, and Roger Poopy bounded after him with enthusiasm practically squirting out of his ears.

His father came as far as the door, realised that it was raining, and crept back in and got back on the sofa.

He is getting old.

He has been hard work on walks lately, because he does not much like walking because of his sore knees. What he likes best is dawdling about sniffing things. I do not mind the dawdling about, because it gives me an excuse to stop and gasp for breath without anybody thinking that I am idle, but it is not a combination that works well with Roger Poopy’s impatient longing to race about at high speed, barking at things. Also it means that any walk takes absolutely ages.

I picked him up and carried him on our walk last week, but he was so completely affronted that I had to put him down after a few yards.

Really he does not at all like walks any more, but he is determined not to be left at home. Instead he tags along reluctantly, growling at Roger Poopy whenever he gets excited about something, which is all the time. He also growls at passing children and at anybody who bends down to try and pet him.

I will be like him when I am old.