I have not yet written a short story for this week’s class and hence am avoiding the university website because it is making me feel guilty.
I have got to write a story about a crime. I have thought about a crime, but not quite yet worked out how to do it. It can’t be all that difficult. Most criminals are not very clever. I will think about it a bit more.
Despite not doing the university work I was supposed to, I have still been peering at the computer for much of the day.
Instead of writing How To Do Crime books, I have been writing a speech for tomorrow.
I have got to go and talk at a meeting in the Town Hall.
The local council, in their wisdom, has finally given in to my repeated entreaties and promised to reconsider the thorny issue of increasing taxi fares. That is, it is thorny for taxi drivers. The council does not think it is problematic at all, indeed, they had quite hoped that if they ignored the problem, it might just disappear.
I am not prone to disappearing when I want something and I have been a nuisance. One entertaining letter, written by the civil servant administrators to the politicians on the local council, explained that no other taxi drivers wanted a fare increase, just the one very annoyingly persistent one.
It took some time to arrange the resulting deluge of petitions and complaining letters that descended upon their desks, but descend they did. They were accompanied by complaints addressed to the Chief Executive and the local MP. We have not had an increase in taxi fares since 2014 and it is jolly well time we did.
Feeling amongst drivers is now running so high that this time I will not be the only driver who is making a speech. There are at least six others that I know of. It is going to be a long meeting, and already I have made some leaving-early excuses, because I don’t imagine for a minute that they will actually make the decision tomorrow.
Anyway I have got homework to do., It is my class tomorrow night.
I have not spent all day writing a speech. This afternoon we have had visitors.
It is a long time since we have had visitors, so long that I had to check myself at the beginning of the sentence to try and work out whether or not I was allowed to tell you about them. It has been a long and weary time of not being allowed to be noticed doing anything nice.
Nobody had any cameras, so probably it was all right. Also I have not been telling people that they have got to stay two metres away from their dying relatives, so I don’t suppose anybody would care.
These visitors were our friends Kate and Kevin. I have asked Kevin to write me a reference explaining that I would be a good Masters’s’ student. Kevin is a good person to ask because he has had a real job once, and I think probably passed some O Levels and everything, although those might have been a while ago. Certainly he is not the sort of person who becomes a taxi driver and then can’t find his way back from Lancaster by himself.
Anyway, he has said he would. Write a reference, obviously, not become a taxi driver.
I put down on my application that he was something important in FENSA when we first met. I don’t think that he was, I think he did that at some other time, but all of his jobs have had such important-sounding Chief Head Honcho Chappie titles that when I was trying to get the form filled in I was not able to remember anything about any of them, until eventually I remembered that he had once had something to do with selling double glazing.
The application form specifically asked what your referees did for a living when they knew you. I think that this might have been to stop you asking other taxi drivers from writing your reference.
Anyway, we had a pleasant afternoon, drinking tea and eating biscuits, it is lovely to see friends and not be worried in case anybody might tell the police.
Perhaps I could write about this for my story about crime.
I do not think I am cut out to be an actual criminal, although I might have been better at it than our beloved leaders seem to have been.
Kate had been swimming in the lake. I would quite like to have a go at that but have never been sufficiently organised to purchase a wet-suit. Mark has said that he could get one for me, but I rather hope he doesn’t. I won’t have any excuse not to join her than.
Elspeth’s dog still has wind. I have been looking around for old corks.
It is time for me to go to work.
See you tomorrow.
