I have discovered today that the last time England won this football award was when I was a year old.
Imagine that, all of my lifetime and even with footballing heroes like Kevin Keegan and George Best and some other one who might have been called Stanley Barlow, we have never won such an important prize.
I am very glad I am not interested in football, what a depressing experience it must have been for everybody of my generation, who have hoped in vain for their entire lives.
I am very pleased to see the younger generation looking so excitedly cheerful about it. Somebody ought to warn them that it does not happen very often, so not to get used to it.
It astonishes me to see how very quiet Windermere is whilst a match is being played, and more so to think that this hush is pervading every corner of England, how odd that we have been collectively silenced in our millions by the kicking of a ball.
How terribly frightened those young men doing the kicking must be.
I do not have the faintest interest in football, but nevertheless would be very pleased if we were to win, because it would make so many people so very cheerful. I would like to be in a country where the pervading mood was joyful delight. It would make a very welcome change.
It seems to be being very good for the sales of alcoholic drinks. There have been some very intoxicated individuals staggering around Bowness. I should have bought some shares in breweries, note to self for next time.
Mark took the taxi back to the MOT garage this morning, but this morning’s chap said that since the other chap had sent off all of the paperwork to the council there was nothing he could do, and so I have telephoned another garage. The chap on the phone was cheerful and encouraging, which made me realise just how much I hate the garage we use at the moment, and I thought that even if they are ridiculously keen at this one, they would be better.
There are only a very few garages that are allowed to MOT taxis. They have got to be approved for the purpose by the council. There is not one in Windermere.
There is one in Bowness, but Mark says they are not very good. Indeed I went there once, when Mark was working away, because of a rattle on the car wheel. The chap tested it and told me that it was very dangerous and I must take it off the road until it was fixed. I asked if he would fix it, and he said that he did not know what was wrong with it, so he couldn’t. Fortunately Mark came home that weekend and said that a bolt had come loose. He tightened it, which took about a minute and fixed it straight away.
I am not going to think about the garage any more. Mark has said that he will sort it out, and does not seem concerned, so I will leave it in his hands.
Maybe one day the garage man will turn up in Bowness on a day when it is raining heavily and I am the only taxi, and I can be avenged.
I like that thought.
Mark sent me the picture this afternoon. He was installing rural broadband at the top of a tower. He rang me to tell me that if he did not ring me back in half an hour then I should call an ambulance. He does this when he is doing something a long way from anywhere, because if he had an accident and fell then probably nobody would know, and he might die on a lonely fell side and his body be eaten by the sheep.
I agreed that I would and set an alarm on my phone.
He did ring me back, which was a jolly good thing, because it occurred to me afterwards that I had neglected to ask where he was.
I have got the picture now. He was there.
