I am jolly glad that I am not the sort of person who tries to park their car by driving it forwards into a parking space.
Quite apart from the unmanageable nuisance of this manoeuvre, when your car breaks down and cannot be got out again, it is very helpful indeed to have it pointing in the right direction.
You will recall that last night’s diary entry ended on the cliff-hanger of waiting for Mark to come with me to collect my car from its helpless resting place in Kendal multi-storey car park.
He got home in the end, at about eight in the evening, and we had to rush off to Kendal straight away before the car park was finally locked and bolted for the night. We had to rush so much that I had to get my coat on and go and wait on the main road so that I could just leap in as he drove past.
We made it in time, and rather to our surprise, the car park was open and lit up, with not a security chap in sight. Indeed, if ever I don’t feel like paying for parking, the thing to do is leave the car until everybody else has gone home and I could save myself a fortune.
I can tell you, however, that until you have tried to tow an unresponsive taxi through a multi-storey car park at night, you have not really experienced challenging driving.
I drove Mark’s taxi and he drove mine, because he said that I didn’t have sufficient leg-power to put the brakes on in mine in an emergency, and I was very careful, but we still had some exciting moments. Going downhill on a short tow-rope without much in the way of brakes is an adventure that I would really rather not repeat, although I expect I will have to one of these days, the world of clapped-out taxis is full of that sort of thing.
We got it home in the end, and dumped it at the back of the house. We had so much had enough of it that we did not even bother to take the tow rope off it, and it is still there.
We celebrated with a glass of rum rather than wine. This was not because of the specialness of the occasion but because we have both caught a horrible cold.
I can assure you that it is not bat flu because I have done one of the stupid up-your-nose test things, but it is entirely unpleasant, and I wish we could get better.
We have got sore throats and runny noses and earache, and I am going through handkerchiefs at the rate of four a day at the moment. Hence the rum, which was for medicinal purposes. It does not seem to be working yet, I will have to try a bit more later.
It was Salford Spiced Rum, which we bought for people for Christmas and then went back and bought a bottle for ourselves, because we liked it so much. It is divine but not nice on cracked lips, which are also a part of the horrible cold. We have drunk almost the whole bottle since we had the cold and are going to have to see if we can get some more.
Mark went off to battle the elements, with his cold, on the open fells this morning. He has got to wear so many coats and overalls and jumpers that he can hardly walk. He has got special hurricane-proof overalls, but the wind was bitter this morning, and when I got to the top of the fell with the dogs, it was filled with stinging snow.
It was horrid. I was very glad that I was not stuck out in it trying to restore the county’s broadband. If it was up to me everybody could all go back to writing letters until the weather warms up in April.
I came home and cooked sausages and biscuits, because of it being nice to have the oven on.
Mark has come home now and is sitting in my car with the Fault Detector plugged in to it.
We will see what the problem turns out to be.
Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling instalment.
