It could be that I need a holiday.
I was getting into my taxi to go to work this evening when I remembered that I had forgotten my cup of tea.
I make a flask of tea to take to work, which I drink out of a little china cup, and I eke it out slowly to make it last all evening. When I work during the day I also take one of those tall insulated thermal cups full of tea. I drink this as soon as I get to the taxi rank, and it is a nice tranquil thing to do after belting around the house trying to make sure everything is tidy and perfect and Mark and Oliver’s dinners are ready for when they get in.
I hate the cup, which is cheap and ugly and feels horrible in my hand, but all the same I treasure this moment. The tea is the most magnificent luxury. It is red chai, made with cinnamon and peppercorns, loose leaf and spicy and black. It is lovely to have the day’s chores behind me and to have five minutes just to be quiet in the world in between customers.
I knew I had made the tea and rushed back into the house to find it, which I couldn’t.
Eventually I discovered that I had put it down on the floor next to my bag, and somehow must have knocked it over. The mug had rolled off underneath the dishwasher, where the tea had all leaked out.
Readers, I burst into tears.
I thought about the waste of the expensive tea, and that I was too late for work already to make any more, because it needs to steep for ages, and the world just seemed too bleak and horrible to carry on.
I rushed off to work and sat sadly and tealessly on the taxi rank, dutifully sewing name labels into trousers.
Of course I still had the flask of tea, but with with ten hours of taxi still to go I could not splurge on the luxury of a whole mug full all at once. That would have to be drunk later, the way the Japanese do, in tiny ceremonial cups, and probably shared with Mark as well, should he turn up.
It did not matter, I thought, in a gritted-teeth Pollyanna sort of way. I had plenty of things to be pleased about. This was my very last sack of clothes needing to be labelled. I would finish them this afternoon, and then my sore fingers could be at rest.
After a while I found an email on my computer.
It was from school.
They have had a lot of instructions from the tiresome Scottish Government about what they are not allowed to do if they are to be permitted to re-open.
Gordonstoun had had a bit of a think about it and decided that the problem with disease is that it is caused by a lack of healthy fresh air. It could all be kept perfectly at bay with lots of healthy food, exercise, and all of the windows being open all of the time. In consequence, this was what they had decided to do.
I quailed for Oliver.
Gordonstoun is hundreds of miles to the north of here, on a frigid stretch of coastline which faces directly out to the North Pole, a mere few hundred miles further on.
As soon as I got a customer going to Windermere I dashed home and rushed upstairs to investigate the position in regard to Oliver’s thermal underwear.
There was lots of it, all suitable for a very small boy.
Oliver is now a rather large boy.
I got myself into a terrible anxious flap.
In the end I rang Mark and told them that after work they would have to dive into Tesco and buy some new thermal underwear. Eight sets, in order to thwart the Gordonstoun laundry rascals.
In the event this proved a bit problematic, because not many people are desperate to purchase eight sets of the same size thermal vests and long johns in August, and they had to visit several shops.
I realised wearily that eight pairs of long johns and eight thermal vests meant a further sixteen name labels.
So much for Pollyanna.
I was so depressed at this thought that I made myself another cup of tea anyway. For the economically minded amongst you, I re-used the tea leaves, which you might remember I put into home-made teabags, which are faithfully emptied and washed and hung to dry after every use.
Sometimes I think I might make my life more difficult than it strictly needs to be.
I had not yet emptied this teabag and it was still sitting there in its little dish. I chucked another half spoon of tea into the bag as well. This was reckless extravagance but what the hell.
I went back to work, and my Pollyanna self interrupted my gloomy frame of mind to observe helpfully that I might have another sack of name labels to do, but at least I had a cup of tea.
Positive thinking is over-rated.
I would rather have a holiday.
Have a picture of the Lake District. I took it from my taxi this evening.
