We have come to sit on the taxi rank in the hope of earning a new brake cylinder.
Obviously not directly, nobody pays in spare parts even in these desperate times. However, the brake cylinder is the camper van’s latest organ to have failed, and we are going to go and get one tomorrow from the camper-van undertaker in Darlington, when we go to collect Oliver.
Mark rang the organ-donor man up this morning whilst we were having a late breakfast. He could do this because today he did not go to work.
This was a relief and a joy.
We have worked until we are feeling very sorry for ourselves lately. It makes me very bad tempered to have to get up at seven when I did not crawl between the sheets until two. By the third day of this I am beginning to be very horrible indeed, and if I had any friends in the first place, after a week or so I would not have them any more.
Mark just goes very quiet and stops talking when he is tired and cross. He does not throw things and shout, and so nobody notices and it does not matter very much.
Everybody notices when I am cross.
We have worked and cleaned and fixed taxis and run about, and this morning we thought that we had got a bit fed up of it, and so we decided that we would not go to work at all.
You can do this when you are self-employed.
When I say: ‘would not work at all’, obviously I ought to add the qualifying conclusion: ‘except in a taxi’, because obviously I am on the taxi rank now, saving up for a brake cylinder. This does not count because it is not like real work. All we have to do is sit here and drink tea and watch the world going past.
This is a happy thing to do because it has been a busy day.
Mark has been cutting up plasterboard to stick on the end wall of the house. The plasterboard has been leaning against the wall for weeks and weeks and weeks, and we have not had the time to do anything useful with it. He did not have enough time to do anything much today really, but he did some of it, and made a huge mess, and it was a great relief.
I flapped about half-heartedly tidying up mess, and doing things like cooking and pegging washing in the garden.
I was supposed to bake biscuits and clean the bathroom but I did not do either of those, because somehow they were just too difficult. I can always do those things next week when Oliver is home and they have gone back to work.
Instead, I filled in some forms and put clean sheets on Oliver’s bed.
Also Elspeth rang up, to tell me that she was having a beautiful sunny afternoon sailing down the lake, and that her life was lovely. I was very pleased to hear this, because she has had a weary struggle over the last few months, these are not good times for people who take school groups off into the great outdoors, and it was ace to hear her feeling cheery.
I was also happy to notice that I was not even the smallest bit jealous, because for my part I was so happy to be having new plasterboard. Also I sewed three name labels in Oliver’s new uniform whilst we were talking, so it did not even count as a wicked idle shirk.
Mark talked to Number One Son-In-Law as well. This was to discuss building work in his house, and he said that he did not mind if Mark was too busy rural broadbanding to do much for a couple of weeks, which was another huge relief. It is very difficult trying to manage doing lots of jobs all at once, and one less will perhaps mean that Mark can put my kitchen shelf up.
Then he said that he had been busy at work himself, and sent us a picture.
I was so very impressed that I have attached it here. It is a way of earning a living that is both wonderful and terrible, certainly compared to driving a taxi. I would not at all like to be dangled about like that, and I thought that he was very brave indeed. Also he is useful to have about. If ever we need an oil rig polishing we will know exactly who to telephone.
I think we might have enough for a brake cylinder by now.
I want to go home.
