I am on the taxi rank.
It feels oddly peaceful after all of our thrilling adventures.
In fact it feels peaceful because it is very peaceful. I have been sitting here for ages and ages, completely undisturbed by anybody at all. I can see several other taxi drivers from here, and nobody is disturbing any of them either.
It is a jolly good job that it is peaceful, because I have been doing my neglected university homework.
I have been feeling terribly guilty about this for some time now, although not, you will note, guilty enough actually to do any of it. Today, Mark got fed up with me going on and endlessly on about it, and said that he would unpack the suitcase and clean the shoes if I wanted to get on with college work.
I had worked myself up into a complete state of shouty flappiness by then, but agreed anyway.
It is very lovely to be back in our house, especially now that it has warmed up a bit. It has been very cold whilst we have been away, and the fire has been out, so when we came back the chill had seeped into it until it was crawling out of the walls.
It was not terribly cold, not ice-on-the-windows cold, or even see-your-breath cold, because our house really does take ages and ages to cool down. All the same it was sufficiently chilly for me to have no wish to take my jumper off, and for me to regret that I had not asked for slippers for Christmas.
It made my usual post-ablutions cold shower an exciting sort of finale to the day.
It took me ages to warm up, even though I have got my vest back on now that we are back in the north, and I spent quite a bit of the day doing things in the kitchen, which is where the fire is.
There was an awful lot to be done. Adventures are a dreadful thing for creating washing and ironing, and we can’t do anything anywhere in the house today without needing to push through endless dangling washing, steaming in the fire-smoky air.
Obviously we needed to do all of the usual day things, like getting ready for work and emptying the dogs. Mark emptied the dogs, which was outside in the even-colder cold, whilst I did the getting ready for work bit.
I got our taxi picnics ready. I have loved the exciting and sophisticated food in London, some of which was so middle-class that I did not even know what it was. The hotel served sliced dragonfruit for breakfast. I have never even heard of these, and until I saw some in Harrods later I did not have the first idea what they might look like before they were cut up.
I have eaten lots of completely unidentifiable things this week, and a few of them have given me indigestion, although I suppose it is possible that washing everything down with a blend of excitement, bourbon cocktails and champagne might not have helped.
I thought today that it is very lovely to be getting back to eating our usual calm and reassuring diet. I sliced and salted carrots and wrapped them in a cloth to dry. I stirred a little tomato oil into the spinach leaves, and filled tubs with melon and raspberries and grapes. Mark had slices of ham folded around mascarpone cheese, and I had pretend ham made out of vegetables. I like this better, and not just because of the indigestion. I am not a vegetarian, but all the same I am not keen on the occasional surprise unpleasantness when you eat even a well-cooked corpse. There are sudden slabs of fat, or slivers of bone, or grease, or gristle.
You know where you are with a vegetable.
They did not have dragonfruit in the Co-op, so we satisfied our yearning for extravagance with sushi, which was reckless but splendid, and Oliver had pizza. He usually has pizza, which basically is Italian for cheese sandwich.
After that I have spent my whole day catching up on creativity. I have not finished yet, even with plenty of time between customers in the taxi.
I am going to have to be creative again tomorrow.
This will be just fine. It is good to be home.
