I did not take the picture today. I just put it there because I like it.
Today we have not been swimming, much as I would have longed to. Today we all had other things to do. Lucy was busy in Northampton being a policeman, Mark and Oliver were at work, and I had to take my taxi for an MOT.
It very nearly passed, which was pleasing. It has a few small details requiring Mark’s attention, but nothing troubling or expensive, and so I am not feeling anxious about it any more.
All the same, a taxi MOT takes some organisation.
It needed four new tyres.
This meant that I had to dash down to Morecambe to get them fitted before going anywhere near the MOT garage.
It is a tiresome fact of life that even though I have got a car to get through an MOT, the rest of the world does not go away. There are still beds to be made, floors to be swept, dogs to be emptied and dinners to be made.
I did all of these things at high speed.
That is not quite true. The dog-emptying was a bit of a leisurely stroll, because it is too hot for anything else. This is the most wonderful August. I hope it lasts for ever.
Once everywhere was mostly tidy, I belted off down the motorway to the tyre place. This was an anxious sort of journey, because it is not good to be in a hurry when you do not have good tyres, and although it was not raining, and none of them were actually illegal enough to get me arrested, they were getting to their twilight years, and it felt worryingly as though any of them might explode at any high-speed moment, and I was glad to get there, even though I do not like the Tyre Man, who is patronising to women.
He was relatively all right this morning, because Mark had shouted at him on the telephone first. This was in order to make sure he did not try and do any of the things that garage men do to women, like charging them six hundred pounds for an oil change and a brake light. He had obviously been upset by Mark because he was very nice indeed and did my car before everybody else’s when I explained I was in a hurry. I discovered when Mark looked later that he had sent a wrong tyre which Mark had asked for for some vague purpose of his own, but I think that might have been incompetence rather than malice, and so I was magnanimously prepared to forgive him.
Mark is going to take the wrong tyre back tomorrow and be cross with him, but I do not need to worry about that.
After the tyres was the actual MOT, which was another belt back along the motorway, this one with more confidence because of the new tyres.
This was a welcome relief when I got there, because I could sit outside on the bench in the sunshine whilst the chap revved the engine and beeped the horn and made grumbly noises.
Please do not imagine that I wasted the time. I had taken a pile of Oliver’s new uniform with me, and some name labels. I sat in the sunshine and sewed name tapes on to shirt collars.
Of course it is That Time Of Year. I am spending every spare minute with a needle in my hand. I have been sitting here on the taxi rank this evening, sewing on labels between customers, and one of the other taxi drivers asked me politely if I would consider sewing a button on a shirt for him, if he were to bring it to work one day.
Of course I said that I would. Buttons are quick and easy. Turning up Oliver’s blazer sleeves, because I have parsimoniously ordered everything six inches too big so that it all still fits next year, is a tiresome job. I have done one so far, but it is too dark to see any more.
I saw Mark and Oliver briefly, when they stopped by the taxi rank on their way home from work. Mark was going home to fix the camper van so I can take it back for another MOT tomorrow.
That will mean that we have got one MOT on the camper, and almost another one on the taxi.
I collected the bits for the taxi on my way home.
How magnificently roadworthy we will be.
