On The Beach

It is jolly cold. 

The skies are clear and I think it is going to freeze.

I hope it waits until after I have gone home from work, because after all of the rain we have had lately, a hard frost in the night will make the roads very exciting.

Mark did not go to work today because of needing to stay at home and cut firewood. There was so much of it that we could hardly get in and out of the yard, and it most certainly would not have made an exhibit at the Ideal Homes And Gardens festival.

I offered, insincerely, to help, but fortunately he said that there was not room in the yard for two people and the exciting circular saw. I was not at all sorry about this, but felt a bit guilty anyway, and so spent the day cleaning the bathroom and the middle floor of the house, which is my worst job, by way of penance.

Mark took the dogs out this morning, and met his friend in the park.

His friend was having a difficult time. 

He has not been able to get an appointment with a dentist, because of our Brave New World Order, and pulled out his own tooth.

Some of the roots broke off and have been going rotten in his gum.

He has been trying to get them out with a razor blade and some tweezers. He was feeling gloomy about the world as a consequence of this.

Mark came home rather cheered up. No matter how bad things are there is always somebody worse off than oneself.

I did not empty the dogs because I had got to go to the hospital. 

I had an appointment for breast screening.

Having been told in March first that I ought to have one, and then that people with bat flu were more important, I had forgotten all about it. Just lately the NHS has changed its tune and decided that it can do other things as well as bat flu after all. They started telephoning me and writing by every post, so eventually I rang them back and made an appointment.

They told me that it was important that I was neither early nor late, which is always a challenging bit of punctuality to organise, but something of a taxi driver speciality. It was a moment of great personal satisfaction to have neither dawdled nor hurried, and still to have walked through the door at exactly ten twenty nine and thirty seconds.

The nurse on the desk did not care in the least, but said: Name, in a bored tone, and sent me straight through into the clinic.

We will draw a veil over the screening, which was moderately undignified, but otherwise uneventful. Probably one would not do it for amusement.

In its favour it was very quick, and I was home again just an hour after I had set off. 

Partly this was because there was almost nobody else driving around the Lake District. It has become very quiet.

There is hardly anybody left here now, and the place has the oddest feeling, a bit like in the book called On The Beach, where the world has been nuclear bombing itself. Everybody is dead, except the citizens of Australia, who are sitting about waiting for the fallout to drift over and the end to come.

The pubs have sold out of beer. The cafes have given away their bread and eggs and sausages. I need to clean my taxi but I am not going to because there is no point.

We are all saying our goodbyes to one another. We will not see some of the other drivers for a month. We won’t see the customers either, although on the whole I won’t miss them.

There is just tomorrow night left to go.

The picture is our new living room windowsill. I have lit a candle for my absent children. All three daughters have telephoned me tonight, which is lovely. I am looking forward to our approaching bout of imprisonment, when I won’t have to hang up halfway through a sentence because some idiot with a bad leg wants to go to a hotel just round the corner, but which is all uphill.

I am thinking of them all anyway.