Oliver went off to work with Mark this morning.
He has invested last year’s earnings in Roblox shares, and needs to earn some cash for pizzas and tuck next term, should our beloved leader decide that education is a sufficiently worthy cause to be allowed to continue unimpeded.
This meant that I had the house to myself, and after the usual faff of washing and baking and tidying up the day was so warm and balmy and lovely that I thought I would plant some more seeds.
I am excited about my seeds. They are special seeds from a Seed Planting Club that are specially designed to grow into things that taste very nice.
They are so very special and wonderful that you are not allowed to buy them in this country and by law you are only allowed to get them from a Seed Club.
This is not only good from the point of view of growing Heritage Tomatoes, in this case they are supposed to be honey flavoured, but has the added frisson of being a small rebellion.
Being a fifty five year old rebel is not quite as spectacular as being a rebel in one’s early twenties. I am no Che Guavara, but I think I am thoroughly up for Seed Club tomatoes, that will jolly well show Boris what I think of him.
I have already planted some things, and some boringly legal tomatoes and some coriander have already popped up to see the world, but there is loads of space left in my seedling box, and today I filled every last space.
The seeds came with instructions about how to save the seeds from the plants, and pass them on, so if anybody else feels like being a rebel next year, just let me know. Between us we could terrify the Government.
It has been the most wonderful day. The sun kindly dried all of my washing for me. I took off all but one of my winter vests, and thought happily that the winter truly seems to be retreating at long last.
It is peculiar to discover that after years and years of greeting the light evenings with a weary but resigned sigh, this year I am so elated by the coming of the spring that I keep feeling little surges of happiness.
Throughout my night-time taxi driving career, light nights have never been anything but an unadulterated nuisance, not least because everybody can see if you have been too idle to hoover your taxi for a fortnight.
When the evenings are bright and warm, the prospect of going to work is not in the least alluring. You do not in the least want to put everything away at three o’clock in the afternoon and go off to the taxi rank to breathe in the heady summer smells of beer gardens and takeaway chips, with the added accompaniment of wasps and loud, high-spirited drunks.
In the winter you stop your day’s tasks with some relief, and slope off with a woolly scarf and some hot tea to sit patiently with a good book. People do not dawdle about, but scurry across the road and jump in your taxi quickly, out of the weather.
They do not stand next to your taxi smoking, and finishing their drinks out of their stolen glasses, and talking too loudly, in the mistaken belief that everybody wishes to hear about their conquests, attractiveness and general cleverness.
After the darkened peace of the winter the approach of the warmth and light has not usually been a moment of unadulterated joy.
This year, of course, is completely different.
Not being a taxi driver any more helps.
Of course I am still a taxi driver in my inner soul even if my taxi is parked outside, empty of diesel and with a log splitter and a chainsaw in the boot: but I have not done any actual taxi driving since the last time the Government made everything illegal, whenever that was. It is so long ago and with such spurious reasoning that basically I have forgotten all about it.
I might be a taxi driver in my inner soul, but it is becoming more and more deeply buried under layers of forgetfulness, like Kay when the icicle pierced his heart.
My whole life happens during the daytime these days. We have got to go to bed before eleven if we are to leap out of bed in time for work in the morning.
It is so long ago that I scarcely even remember that the joyful moment of time and a half also comes when the hands of the clock creep around to eleven.
This evening I looked at the moon, just a few days worth of crescent, and realised sadly that I do not even know where we are in the moon’s cycle any more, a knowledge that was once as much a part of my life as much as knowing what day it is.
I am not exactly sure about that any more either.
Have a picture of some seeds.
