After I had written to you yesterday I rounded off my evening with a fight.
It was the usual sort of thing, a customer who didn’t want to pay. He went miles away from anywhere, to a farmhouse at the end of a dark lane.
When we got there and it turned out that he didn’t have any intention of paying, he called me some very rude names and stomped off.
I do not mind rude names, and he owed me twenty two pounds, so I jumped out and ran after him.
He went around the back of the house.
It was completely dark.
He must have heard me coming, which would not have been difficult, because I was shouting after him that I wanted him to pay his fare, but when I got round the corner of the house he was waiting for me in the dark.
This made me jump a bit, because he was a lot bigger than I was. Being twenty five years younger and a man helped to stack the odds in his favour as well.
I drew myself up to my full height, which is still short, and told him, threateningly, that he had jolly well better go and get some money and pay for his taxi.
He opened the house door and told me to go away, only he didn’t say go away.
I stuck my foot in the door and told him that I was going to phone the police. They would not have come, because of austerity, but he didn’t know that, and I didn’t see why the police should have an evening of undisturbed tranquillity whilst I was being robbed, so I thought I would phone them anyway.
He snatched my phone and held it above his head, which made me jump in an undignified way for a few moments as I tried to retrieve it.
He said some more rude things, and there was a short scuffle, at the end of which I had retrieved my phone, and the noise had woken somebody up.
It was an older lady, older than me, and she came downstairs and told him irritably to stop making a noise.
When she realised what was happening she said that she would pay the fare. She glared at me, as if I went around Windermere picking midnight fights in people’s gardens for my own amusement. She told me crossly that taxis were too expensive and I should go away, which I did, once I had got the cash.
In consequence it was considerably after four o’clock when I crept into bed, trying entirely successfully not to wake Mark up, who was snoring. There followed an extremely short period of complete oblivion before the alarm went off at half past seven and the new day was upon us.
Once Mark had gone off to work I took the dogs for a paddle up the fell.
Roger Poopy has become attached to an old cricket ball of Oliver’s which he has chewed into confetti all over the carpet. We took it with us, and when we went through the Rec on the way back I threw it for him, which drove him into such a frenzy of excitement that he could hardly chase it.
He bounded after it with a series of joyous leaps, barking his head off, and once he had retrieved it he did a whole delighted circuit of the Rec by means of a celebration. He allowed me to throw if for him half a dozen more times, until the excitement overwhelmed him and he collapsed, still barking, with the cricket ball between his paws.
He ate it then.
When I came back I took the sheets off the bed, by way of discouraging myself from getting back into it.
It was hardly raining at all.
By dashing in and out at tactical intervals I am pleased to announce that today I won the Washing Game almost without losing a point.
I washed all our clothes and the sheets and towels.
In between showers I did some kitchen things. We have got some friends coming to visit us tomorrow, a chap from school upon whom I have not set eyes for forty years, and his wife, who I have never met at all, because they weren’t married when we were at school.
Obviously I am looking forward to this very much. They are having a holiday in the Lake District and they are going to come and have dinner with us.
I put some meat in to marinade with spices and chopped garlic and onions.
Then I cleaned the upstairs rooms. It is not too difficult to achieve this now that we are only using two floors of the house, but the bathroom was a bit black mouldy all the same.
I scrubbed and polished and hoovered and thought what a good thing it was that I had changed the sheets. Of course your dinner guests never know if your sheets are smooth and fresh and clean, or if they have got yellow greasy stains and hair all over them, but I know. I can entertain my guests with all the middle-class confidence of somebody who knows that their bed is pristine evidence of their efficient perfection.
I cooked and hoovered and cleaned, and in the end I came out to work, which is where I am now.
I am starting to feel sleepy.
I wish it was bedtime.
I have just discovered that Oliver has written a post as well, so I am going to go away and read it.
Have a picture of Windermere.
1 Comment
I wonder how many others read that as ‘ put the meat into marmalade’ with a resulting excited anticipation of a new culinary idea?