Last night, during which we waved goodbye to an extraordinarily dull 2021, and heralded the hopefully more exciting 2022, was the quietest New Year’s Eve in recorded taxi history.
That isn’t true at all, because of course nobody records the history of taxi driving, what a dull read that would make. More accurate to say that during one of the many endless quiet patches, we all stood around on the taxi rank grumbling about how few fares we had taken, how little cash we had made and how much better it all was twenty years ago.
It was very, very quiet. The night club had optimistically opened and was charging a tenner a head for admission, and probably made about sixty quid.
It was double time, so of course we made sufficient cash to cover our needs, but it was a surprise. Even with the Scots it was still quiet, perhaps people are not interested in going out and having social lives any more.
I had plenty of time to read my book in between customers, which was a splendid read, albeit a bit troubling. We are studying crime writing next term, and I have discovered that I am not temperamentally suited to reading upsetting things. This book is about a husband who is having an affair and the plot hinges upon whether or not he murdered his wife.
I woke up this morning from a terrible and lurid dream in which Mark was having an affair. He did not exactly murder me, but he took her on holiday in the camper van, which was just as horrible.
I knew in the dream that I ought to be lovely and sweet to him to remind him that he was happier at home with me, but I was so filled with rage and grief that I could not do anything other than shout abuse and wail in misery, which even in the dream I knew was not exactly a tempting prospect.
Do not have affairs. They are hideously cruel agony for everybody involved.
Fortunately Mark is not having an affair, and when we woke up I told him all about it, and he laughed a great deal. In fact all was well that ended well, because it was a great joy to wake up and discover that my life was not in a million shattered pieces, and I could just carry on living it happily.
The living it happily did not start until lunchtime, because of it being New Year yesterday. We hopped out of bed at around one o’clock, and after that most of the day was a bit of a rush of trying to organise tomorrow’s departure for the Big Smoke, and tonight’s final burst of hard labour.
Oliver had to be at work by three, which made his day very short indeed.
He has made a New Year Resolution to get fitter and healthier. This is not because he is bored with existing on pizzas and yoghurt, but because he wishes to be accepted into the Army in a couple of years, and frankly at the moment he is a walking example of the definition of a line, length without breadth. He is going to have to eat a lot of pies and lift some weights if he is going to be wider than a rifle.
I have not made a resolution this year. I ought to, because I was very impressed with the success of last year’s, which was to clean the bathroom every single day, and which I have managed to the point of self-satisfied smugness. I am avoiding it because of not wishing to make my life any more difficult than it already is, I can jolly well do without resolving to dust the bedroom every day, for instance. I would like it to be dusted, but not enough to do it.
If only it was all right to resolve to do nice things instead, how much better life would be.
Perhaps that is what I ought to resolve this year.
I resolve to do some nice things.
I think I will start tomorrow.
