Classy

I am putting pen to paper quickly, in the short time left before I am in class once again.

It is entirely my own fault that the time has dripped away, because we did not get up early. We wasted a very great deal of time loafing about the taxi rank last night, during which we did not make enough money to cover the fuel we had optimistically purchased at the beginning of the shift. I did not exactly mind this because I can think of no better way to occupy an evening than with a good book, some salted carrot sticks, and a flask of spiced chai.

The carrot sticks are my current favourite thing. I am not eating them bravely, in a dietary sort of way. I have actually come to like them.

Mark is having no truck with them at all. He has biscuits.

Anyway, we hung on for ages, just in case something thrilling happened, and because I was gripped by my book. This is a splendid tome about the Chicago World Fair in 1893. You might be interested to hear that the first Ferris wheel was there, and was two hundred and sixty four feet high and carried over two thousand people on every twirl. Imagine that, higher than most of them had ever been in their entire lives, what an astonishing adventure. The central axle weighed 71 tonnes, and it was jolly difficult to get it up there.

I am sure you are as intrigued as I was. I was supposed to be reading it because of my crime-writing classes, because as well as the Ferris wheel there was a serial killer, but he was dull by comparison. All the same, it was all happening in Chicago in 1893.

In the end, by the time we had finished emptying the dogs and generally arranging our lives for bed, it was almost two, and hence we did not stir again until everybody else in the world was beginning to contemplate lunch.

You will be pleased to hear that the dogs are recovered, by the way, and are once again permitted to enjoy a happy canine routine of a permanent dish of food in the corner and management consent to Access All Areas, even the bits with carpets. We had a long walk over the top of the fell this morning, and they charged about with all of their usual  joyful élan, sloshing enthusiastically through the beck and growling warnings at the walkers who said: what nice little dogs, and tried to stroke them.

I bathed them later, because they have become revolting in every way. This was not a happy experience. To say that they were woebegone does not to justice to such an extreme of dejected misery. They do not like ablutions, although they certainly needed it. The water was brown, with a lot of unidentifiable black lumps. I did not wish to investigate these, they can stay in the sink trap for Mark to empty away in a couple of years when the bathroom starts to smell horrible.

The point of the walk was not really to amuse the dogs, whose favourite form of exercise is to get into fights in the park anyway. I wanted to clear my head and contemplate writing a story.

As you know, I have written lots of stories, some of which I have even finished. There is a grim sort of dystopian novel under construction somewhere at the back of my computer, a couple of children’s stories, and dozens and dozens of short stories. However, I think that probably what I really want to write is a thrilling sort of story, the sort that keeps people on the edge of their seats and anxiously checking the end to see if the hero really does die in the terrible blast after all.

I considered this all the way over the top of the fell and back down again, but came up with nothing. Actually, that was not true. In fact I came up with lots of things, but almost all of them were so dreadful and thrilling that I do not think I would like my parents accidentally to pick them up, even if they had been written by somebody else.

Probably I would not mind the children picking them up. They are all of a fairly robust sort of disposition.

I have a horrible suspicion that these sorts of stories might sell very well indeed, but first I would have to change my name and only allow photographs in a large hat and very dark glasses.

Also I was not certain that I really wanted to spend the next six months writing something troubling. I will try again tomorrow.

Being a day off, we occupied some of the rest of it with a trip to the dentist, and I am going to have to write a best selling novel soon, because it cost us eighty nine quid. This was because the tiresome dentist, who has an eye for a soft touch, would not let us go in together and told Mark that he needed an instant filling, which took her all of fifteen seconds and added sixty five quid to the bill.

I would not allow her to do anything at all to my teeth, for sixty five quid I would rather do Mark and the pliers.

It is time for my class.

A bientôt.