We are feeling relieved about our day, if somewhat tired.
It is Saturday. This is usually a day mostly occupied by loafing about in bed in between two episodes of all-night taxi driving, except today we couldn’t.
Today Mark had to fix Lucy’s car so that she can drive it back tomorrow, and take it for its MOT test.
It failed this a few days ago due to corrosion on the brake pipes and the exhaust dropping off.
We could not get any new brake pipes, because of them being only available from a dealership, at colossal expense, at some vaguely unspecified future time which would have been far too late to be of any use, so Mark had got to make his own.
I am not sure how he did this, except I know that it involved some creative engineering.
The exhaust had not quite dropped off but was suffering from a broken clip. This resulted in it dangling, limply, from the bottom of the car, and making a complaining sort of noise, which the MOT man had failed to admire.
All in all it needed some fixing.
I am quite sure that by now not only will you have heard the weather forecast but begun to experience the weather.
This morning we did not have any weather, but we were expecting some.
We knew that it would be much nicer to be mending a car on a day without weather, and so we resolved that it would have to be done before the weather got to us.
We thought maybe we had until four o’clock, if we were lucky.
We knew that this meant that we would have to get up early.
This is really rubbish and makes you cross and tired afterwards, but as it happened we were woken up early anyway, by our non-speaking postman delivering Spider Man. Spider Man had been misfortunately left behind in Oliver’s dormitory, and had been posted, kindly, by Matron, after I refused to rush back from Glasgow to collect him, which was when we noticed his absence.
Oliver was pleased to be reunited with him. Also, his early arrival meant that we had already drunk more than half of our coffee before the alarm went off, so we could feel as though we had already achieved something virtuous, and it was only eleven o’ clock.
Mark went outside to get on with rebuilding Lucy’s car, and I turned my attention to laundry.
Oliver had brought a massive amount of this home with him, I mean a really massive amount. There were two full sacks and a couple of carrier bags, because he has been having some difficulty with the Gordonstoun laundry system.
I washed it all yesterday, and today’s job was to make it all appropriately flat, lavender scented, and middle class, ready to be taken back to school and smoothed away into his drawers.
I put some BBC radio drama on the computer to occupy me whilst I did it.
There was so much ironing that I listened to three Afternoon Plays whilst I did it. They were not very exciting plays, because all three sounded as though they had been written in order to demonstrate the wonderfully liberal open minded tolerance of BBC radio producers, rather than to invoke suspense or satisfaction, or even interest, but they enlivened the ironing a bit.
I am being horrid about the BBC here. Sometimes they do really good Afternoon Plays, it was just mischance that all these three turned out to be tedious twaddle. They seemed to be intended to make people feel uncomfortable rather than happy. This is not my favourite sort of play. I like the sort of play where the prince marries the princess and they all live happily ever after. The BBC does not seem to do those any more, perhaps I ought to write to them and suggest it.
I went out and pedalled the brakes for a while, whilst Mark bled the air out of them, and then he had finished, just a very few minutes before the first fat raindrops fell.
After that it became very wet indeed, but it did not matter in the least. We were very pleased with a successful day, because the car had been fixed just in time.
We got ourselves ready for work and fed the children on sausages and yoghurt, and then we came out into the grim night.
This is where we are now.
It has rained a very great deal, and a wind has started to work itself up. It started with little swirly blusters, but it has grown in self-confidence over the last few hours. It is now battering against the sides of the taxi like a frustrated bailiff trying to gain access to the sort of drug dealing house where the occupants have installed a steel front door. It is still raining.
I do not mind in the least. There have not been many customers, but they have all been very grateful, and I have got a pocket full of tipped fivers. This has been an unexpected bonus, and the night is not over yet.
Have a picture of some clean dogs. They are not clean any more. It has been muddy in the Library Gardens this week.
