Well, once again I am on the taxi rank.
I do not mind this at all today. I have had a very happy interlude of visiting Scotland and purchasing trousers, ambling on beaches and reacquainting ourselves with a boy.
He is a very tall boy now.
He is also wiped out with the exhaustion and stress of doing examinations.
I am not at all surprised about this. It is a wearisome time.
However, I am pleased to tell you that he and Rosie are getting along very aimiably indeed. Rosie has now learned to Sit, and almost to Sit and Stay, she can do this for nearly two seconds now. She has consumed a very great deal of cheese in the process of acquiring this impressive skill, and when she returned from their walk this afternoon, she was so exhausted from her efforts that she passed out on their cushion, and was still insensible when I left for work.
It was an uneventful journey, from just north of Glasgow back to the Lake District, enlivened only by the presence of a surprising gentleman whom we passed on the side of the road.
Middle aged and generally respectable looking, with white hair and glasses, he was sensibly attired in a Barbour waistcoat and shirt above the waist.
Below the waist he was not wearing anything at all.
He did not seem especially concerned about this omission.
It was Scotland, and so it is reasonable to assume that he had not become inadvertently overheated.
We must simply conclude that sometimes the world is a surprising place.
We are at the beginning of an extremely busy week. We had to miss last night, which was something of a financial handicap, and Mark only worked for Ted for two days. This means that we are starting from a somewhat lower point than usual, and we have blown all our spare cash on trousers.
It has become plain that trousers are a useful thing to have. I do not wish to think that Mark might be inadvertently startling passing motorists.
Hence we have set ourselves a Taxi Challenge, with a target to meet before the week is out, and so we are going to be working a very great deal.
I am looking forward to this. There has not been much point in working during the week just lately, but this week is Half Term, it is the Queen’s party coming up, and we think that perhaps there might be a jolly lot of people hanging about hoping to blow all of their cash in taxis.
In between that, I have got my final assignment to write.
I have written half a page so far.
I have got about another fifteen pages to go.
Oliver will also be working, because he has got a holiday in Canada, a holiday in Italy, and a new computer to pay for. He does not need to be there tonight, but he starts tomorrow afternoon, and in between working he wants to go to the gym. He needs to become more muscular if he wishes to join the Army, and so far he has got the angular physique of a Jersey cow.
Jersey cows, for the non-agriculturally minded, do not get fat. They produce the creamiest, richest milk but do not save any of its calories on their own haunches. They are anorexically slim.
They are also absolute rotters. A Jersey cow will make a point of being horrid to all of the other cows, poking them with its horns and generally being a nuisance.
Oliver is not a rotter but nevertheless has the metabolism of a Jersey cow. I do not know where his dinner goes but it is not stored prudently on his bottom the way mine is.
It seems to be making his legs become longer.
He is going to need some new trousers very soon.
