I suppose at least I am going to get an early night.
I have got one already really, because it is very quiet here on the taxi rank, and nobody would notice if I had a little snooze.
I am considering this course of action, because I would like a little snooze very much.
Of course we went to see our friends yesterday evening, and although we started to leave at ten o’clock, we did not actually finish leaving until eleven, after which we had to make our way home, and then still had all the usual late night things like dog emptying to do.
I did not exactly have a hangover this morning, but I did not want to get up.
It was worth it, because it had been a splendid evening. There is nothing as wonderful as dinner cooked by somebody else, and this one was an array of truly magnificent curries. We brought some onion bhajis home with us as a doggy bag, and they are not at all the sort of thing that one might waste on the dogs.
Despite not being at my most bright-eyed and alert this morning, I still had plenty to keep me busy, because the taxi needed an MOT, which it unfortunately failed.
I was not exactly surprised, because it has developed a clunk when it goes around corners, and I had thought that its chances of success were slim despite the last MOT being only about six weeks ago. This remarkably short gap was for arcane council and bat flu reasons which I can’t be bothered to explain and which are too boring to interest you anyway.
It failed, to my irritated astonishment, because the chap said that the back seats were loose and unstable. He wrote this down as a serious danger which rendered the taxi unusable until it was fixed.
When I looked I discovered that I had tipped them forward to accommodate a bicycle, and had not clipped them back down properly afterwards.
It was one of the fastest taxi repairs that I have ever done, occupying about six seconds, but it did not pass anyway. One of the ball joints is worn, which is the round-corners clunk, and a CV boot cracked, but these things were not marked as serious defects, like the seats, which had already repaired. I rang Mark, who ordered the bits from Autoparts, and said he would sort them out over the weekend.
He is going to be at work all over the weekend so probably he won’t.
He has got to go to work. When he is not installing rural broadband he can still go and build Number One Son-In-Law’s house. This is a huge relief, because I do not seem to be earning very much money in my taxi any more.
Whilst the taxi was failing its MOT I trotted into Kendal and had my hair cut, which was lovely, and is not entirely a reckless self indulgence because it will save on shampoo for the next few weeks. It is very short indeed now, which is how I like it.
Also it was nice to see the hairdresser, whom like very much, although grimly sad to see the salon. Everything interesting or pretty has been removed, in accordance with the Government imposed Brave New World bat flu rules, in case you die from the left-behind poisonous filthy touch of the person who was there yesterday. There was no clutter of the sort of magazines that I would never buy myself, but read avidly and with fascinated prurience whenever I am in a waiting room. There was no coffee, no cushions, no flowers, and the hairdressers wore masks.
It is a beautiful haircut. Go and get your hair cut. Hairdressers are not having good times.
Afterwards I called in at the television shop, to make the inspired suggestion that I should give them a deposit, and pay the balance of television money over the next few weeks, after which I would have paid enough and could then take a television back home with me.
They refused to consider this.
They explained that they would be more than happy to give me the television now, but what I needed to do was to pay them nothing, and then give them the rest over the next few months by way of a scary and troubling debt.
They would not even charge me any interest.
I was utterly nonplussed by this, because surely it would be better for them to have the money first before they gave me a television, and for me not to have the worry of owing money. They explained that it was the only way they could be sure I would pay them all of the money, and although they did not add that they did not care about my mental health, that was what they meant.
I said that if I had not got a television, presumably it would not matter if I had paid them or not.
They said that this was not the point.
I did not see what the point was, despite the young man explaining it to me, earnestly, twice.
Sometimes I do not understand the rest of the world at all.
Have another picture of sunset in the Lake District.
