We had thought that we would try and get out to work early this afternoon, because of the holiday crowds, but we didn’t. Indeed, it was just after six by the time we finally hurtled down the hill and on to the taxi rank.
This sounds shockingly incompetent, but in fact it wasn’t, because we didn’t get up until after two, by which time I expect that you had finished your lunch. This gave us four hours for dog-emptying and house cleaning and taxi cleaning, and I made taxi picnics whilst Mark rushed off to the farm to spray some Round Up on his stinging nettles.
I am not sure this is a good idea. We might have to eat them soon.
We are having sesame prawn toast for our picnics. This is nice even cold, and I am feeling very pleased with the creative impulse that inspired it, I will do it again. In fact it is so nice that I am having to force myself not to eat it all at once, and am obliging myself to eat the less exciting things, like tomatoes and peppers.
I do not generally do this sort of thing. If something is not my very favourite thing to eat then I do not put it in picnics. There should not be any mundane bits of dinner, only things that we really like. We do not need to fill up with dumplings and potatoes now that the War is over.
All the same I had not quite expected how much I would like deep-fried prawn toast. It is so bad for me I can hardly resist it.
The day started on a shockingly irritating note with a letter from the Council, telling us that we could charge the newly increased fares from April 9th.
The letter was dated April 14th.
We can’t just charge the new fares. First of all we have got to get the meters recalibrated. I wrote to the taximeter man but he has got to get the appropriate computer program and it is all news to him as well, and so it will be another week.
I am trying not to spoil my contented equilibrium by thinking about it at all, otherwise I think would be inclined to go and wee through the Council’s letterbox. They are not even rotters. They are just indifferent and badly organised.
It is only five percent in any case, barely worth the thirty quid it will cost to get the meters changed anyway.
In any case we have had a small bonus today because when Mark was hoovering my taxi out he found twenty quid under the seat. It was under my seat, and so it was probably twenty quid we had earned rather than a serendipitous bonus, but we were very pleased about it all the same. We stuffed it in the secret teapot where we hide money from ourselves and then only remember it when we want to go out or get a take away.
We must have been living the high life recently because when I looked there was only two quid rattling around the bottom of it.
Not that we have got any time for hedonistic shirking off for some time now. First there is work, and then the trip to school. Oliver has taken a Day Off today, not from actual cash-producing work, or course, nobody takes time off from that during the Easter holidays, and he has rushed off to work this evening to raise funds for pizza deliveries next term.
He decided this morning that he had had enough revision for the weekend, and would spend the day loafing about blowing up baddies with his friends from school in his computer.
We are wholeheartedly in agreement with this. It is hard work being Oliver at the moment. He has booked himself two holidays with Lucy this summer, they are going first to Italy and then to Canada. We have made no financial contribution to either so far, they have been funded by their own labours. He has hoarded his wages in his bank account, and uses his tips for school extravagances.
He is even eating dinner at work.
I do not even need to worry about leaving him a late-night picnic.
