We are not at work.
This is because we do not have a usable taxi, not even between us.
Mark, as you know, has dismantled mine into a million pieces, all of which are now spread around the yard and his shed, and some of which have left their echoes on my washing. He keeps finding more and more things wrong with it, and so the MOT, which should have been tomorrow, has been delayed until Monday. The Autoparts bill is creeping up steadily by the hour. We will either have to win the lottery or run away.
For the last few nights I have been using his taxi, as you know from my endless grumblings on the subject, however today I drove it down to the village and the driver’s window made a nasty grinding noise and refused to open.
Mark dismantled the door, because you can never have too many bits of taxi in your garden, and said that the wires had rusted away and we needed to order some more from Autoparts.
These will not arrive until tomorrow, and so his taxi now has the door card missing, and the window does not open. It is quite important to have a window that opens if you are a taxi driver. People think that you are rude if they bang on it and you ignore them. I know this because it is mostly what I do, if they want a taxi they can just get in, and if they don’t but are interrupting my book with some other trivial query, then they can buzz off and look right in front of them, which is usually where it is.
Paddy once put a notice in the window of his taxi after one exceptionally irritating summer, which said This Is Not The Tourist Information. He took it out because he got so fed up of people tapping on the window and saying: ‘Scuse me, so where is the Tourist Information, then?
Obviously the taxi rank was so close to it that they were standing under the sign as they asked.
On balance we decided that it was easier just to have the night off and carry on fixing everything tomorrow.
I am looking forward to the night off very much. We are going to watch the television. I can’t remember when last we did this, and am feeling very excited about it. I would like to watch a film on Amazon, and have thought of a few but am stricken with concern about whether or not it is all right to watch them without the children being here. It would be very sad if they wanted to watch films as well but couldn’t.
I am sure we will manage to find one that they would not want to watch. Anything with Bill Nighy or Judi Dench in it, probably.
I have not been helping with the Taxi Fixing Project in the garden. I have been wiping gearbox oil smears off the washing and hoovering and tidying and generally doing Other Things.
I have had yet another go at setting up my University email. This worked all right on my flat iPad thing, but will not work on the big computer in the house, which I hope is mostly where I will be needing it. I have become very frustrated and despairing about this, although I am pleased to say I have learned lots of new things already. I have learned that I need a thing called an Outlook Express, and I have downloaded one on to my computer. I do not know what it does, although it looks very bright and sunny and has a User Friendly Interface. It gets emails, which will be handy, although still will not share them with my mail thing.
I wish the children were at home. They are always very clever at this sort of thing.
I am going to go away and think about films.
