I seem to have got a taxi phone again.
I am scowling a bit at this turn of events, mostly because neither Mark nor Trevor is working, which means that it is down to me.
I will go and get the customers that I like the sound of, and anybody who is rude or grumpy will jolly well have to walk.
I am in my taxi on the taxi rank, and my shift has just started. I am feeling pleased about this, because frankly I have rushed around so much today that it was a relief to get to work and sit down. I am not even feeling wildly enthusiastic about writing these pages, because really all I want to do is read my book or listen to the story and knit.
We worked late last night, and this morning the alarm sounded like the trumpets at the crack of doom. We lay in bed with our eyes shut, like the dogs do when they don’t want to get off the sofa, and are pretending to be deaf.
In the end we had to get up, and staggered about trying to find our clothes. We had had such a busy weekend that Lucy has become responsible for the laundry by default, and so nothing was quite in the same places as usual, which is confusing when your eyes are still shut.
I made breakfast for Mark, who dashed off to work, forgetting his flask of tea, and then for Lucy, who could not loaf about because she had a day full of online university classes. Then I emptied the dogs and pegged out the washing, and made breakfast for Oliver, who had got to go to get his eyes tested.
It is very important that his eyes work properly, because he thinks that he might like to join the Air Force when he is grown up.
I raced round pegging washing in the garden and baking biscuits, and we tried to set off in time, but we didn’t. This meant that we had to drive like a Formula One Taxi all the way to Kendal and race in through the door at the last minute.
The optician thought that the Air Force might be possible, even though Oliver wears glasses, and indeed, needed another pair.
Fortunately he chose one from the NHS prepaid pile, which I don’t mind telling you was a relief even though we have had a good weekend.
LATER NOTE:
I am now returning to these words at long after one in the morning, because the Bowness taxi phone rang, and rang, and rang. It rang so much that I gave Mark a job whilst he was driving back through the village on his way home from work, and then I gave him another and another, until in the end he forgot that he was intending to go home, and just stayed out with me and worked.
We met one another when we were both working for Bowness Taxis, long ago when it was a very much bigger company, and it was a bit odd, suddenly to find ourselves reliving our own past. Working from a telephone is very different indeed to loafing about having an attitude problem on a taxi rank.
We rushed at high speed from one job to the next, barely stopping to chuck passengers out before the next lot got in.
It was ridiculously busy, and in the end a reluctant Trevor was persuaded to come out and join us as well. He was not at all enthusiastic about this, because of having been at work all day as well, but driving a taxi happens like this and in the end he was resigned if not delighted.
We staggered in at midnight, and the phone rang again before we had even put our bags on the floor. Mark does not like saying no to things that might earn us some cash, and so he went out to do yet another job whilst I cleared up and made our lives ready for bed.
I remembered then that I had not written to you, and so I am doing it now, with my eyes half-closed and a doleful ringing in my ears.
I have also got a mattress stuffed full of hard-earned taxi cash.
Some things are worth a bit of rushing about.
I haven’t taken a picture. Have another picture of the conservatory.
