It is a wet night on the taxi rank, and we have been quite remarkably busy.
This is irritating because I would like to write to you quickly so that I can read my book peacefully.
Having to earn a living is such a tiresome nuisance.
We have had an uneventful day, which is not making it easy to write something exciting. I have been chugging up the hill, ignoring the endless tedious burbling of customers in the back, considering what I might say that make the day’s activity, which was pegging washing on the line yet again, sound interesting.
I am not sure that I can, so you might prefer to go and read something else.
It didn’t even stay on the line for very long. It is not easy to get washing dry out of doors when you do not get out of bed until almost two in the afternoon.
I work on the principle that every drop of water which can evaporate outside into the great outdoors is a bonus. Water which evaporates in the house is simply breakfast for our unwanted lodger, the voracious black mould on the windowsills. The Lake District is so damp at the moment that you have got to shove your shoulder in the bathroom door to open it, and Lucy’s door was stuck completely when I tried it the other day.
Hence I hung the camper van sheets out on the line anyway, since it was only raining the tiniest bit, and indeed when I hauled it all in a few hours later, it might have been a shade drier.
I draped it all over the drying rack, and Mark lit the fire. I was glad about this, because damp air makes the world feel chilly and unwelcoming. We have not been in our house for much of this week, and we need the stove lit now, the autumn is upon us.
Obviously the creeping approach of the dark seasons has brought the conservatory-that-is-going-to-be-finished-by-Christmas into sharp focus, and whilst I faffed about with laundry, Mark went outside and carried on doing things to it. I do not know what he was doing. It was noisy and made a lot of sawdust.
We had a cup of tea before we came out to work and contemplated the plans for it yet again. We are still not fixed with our final layout decisions. We keep thinking that we are, and then one of us, usually me, changes their mind and then measuring and scowling and explanations have to start all over again.
We measured and pondered, and then measured again today, until eventually it was time to come to work. In between customers Mark has come across to sit in my taxi and we have been looking for online inspiration in pictures on the mighty Internet.
We will get there in the end.
You might like to know that we had a postcard from Number Two Daughter this morning, with some koala bears on it. She and the nice new Mrs. Number Two Daughter are about to pop across to New Zealand to have dinner in a hobbit hole.
I can reflect with some relief that all of my children are all right at the moment. Lucy is visiting Number One Daughter, Oliver is off on an abseiling expedition, and Number Two Daughter is off on her travels again.
I have got nothing to worry about tonight.
What a nice feeling that is.
