Nod and smile

We have been Doing Things.

We did not have very much time for doing many things today. After we had woken up late, and before I had gone to work early, there was only a very little bit of day left.

I used up my bit of it in taking off the new cupboard doors and turning them a different colour. You can see them in the picture. 

I might paint pictures on them if I get time.

Mark faffed about doing things to the new walls so that they could be painted next week. We have got to coat them in some stuff called PVA which is a bit like glue, and which stops stains seeping through the plaster.

We have not done this yet because we could not find the PVA and Mark thinks that he might have left it in Barrow. He is going to go there next week to help Number One Son-In-Law so perhaps he will find it then. We need it soon because I want to paint the walls.

They are going to be striped. There will be blue and gold and cream stripes, if I manage to organise the paint. I have not done this yet either.

All of these things will happen in the end, it is just that the end has not happened today.

In the end I left Mark to it and buzzed off to work. I am trying to do different things with my night at work, which is making it a bit difficult. It is very peculiar, trying to make up some new habits to have instead of your old ones, a bit like trying to give up smoking, or not saying rude words because it is Lent.

I am trying not to look at Facebook or to read the newspaper any more. This is because both of these are full of upsetting things that make me feel as if I were living in a story written by George Orwell.

Upsetting things are not just on Facebook and in the newspaper. They are even here, in Windermere. Right in front of me, here on the taxi rank, from my very seat I can see two very large men, dressed like policemen, which they aren’t, wearing stab vests which say: Tactical Response Unit, in big letters.

They are here to make sure that nobody on their holidays talks to anybody else or does anything proximitively social.

I suppose at least they are paid security guards, not Boris Johnson’s superlatively horrible idea of a volunteer task force of marshals. Those people are just going to be ordinary people, our neighbours.

He is going to get all of the believers to supervise and police the unbelievers. This works jolly well, as everybody who saw Goody Proctor with the Devil could attest.

I do not like feeling worried about the world, because it is giving me indigestion. 

I have written and written to Boris Johnson but he does not seem to be taking any notice, even though I explained that I am a taxi driver and therefore know what I am talking about far more than any idiot statistician or public health expert he might be listening to.

Since I can’t change what Boris is doing I have decided to change what I am doing, which is why I am trying not to read the newspaper.

I shall find a bucket of sand, preferably one that a cat hasn’t found first, and bury my head in it.

Also I am going to put stories on the car radio instead of being tempted to turn on Radio Four.

I have decided to find something nice to do instead. I have cancelled my subscription to the newspaper. I am going to get some more books for my Kindle and I will need some knitting wool and a pattern for a jumper.

Also I have decided not to look at Facebook whilst I am at work.  I have got to look at it a bit, because of putting these pages there, but I have decided to resist the temptation to waste half of the evening scrolling through terrifying news articles interspersed with pictures of kittens falling off wardrobes and toddlers eating chocolate and swearing.

I did this tonight. It was not as difficult as I thought it might be, because lots of people wanted to get in taxis, but also I realised that anybody who has got anything important to say sends it to me in a message anyway. I had lots of interesting messages tonight, and I thought that this was the bit of Facebook that I liked best.

Mark does not seem to have any of these social media problems. He does not read newspapers or Facebook anyway and would not know what was happening outside Oak Street if I did not tell him. He does not even take very much notice of anything that is happening actually on Oak Street. If I wanted to know which of our neighbours was having a rascally affair with another one or was being pursued by the bailiffs I would not ask Mark.

Mark reads things on his computer  about developments in electric car technology and about batteries and boilers. Sometimes he tells me about them but I do not listen. Listening only leads to asking stupid questions and confusion. Sometimes it is better just to nod and smile.

On the whole I think that this is probably more sensible than getting worried.

Today I am not going to listen. I am just going to nod and smile.