I am on a wet taxi rank.
I am not wet. I am in my taxi which is dry, but all of the customers are wet, and spouting the usual insufferably irritating drivel about how rain is Good For Taxi Drivers.
It is so good that I am seriously considering buzzing off back home.
Of course I won’t, for the usual reason of having spent all my money, and also because I have got a good book and a flask of hot tea.
The book is about dying, which is topical because I am sorry to report that Elspeth’s mother died this week. I am not reading the dying book because of Elspeth’s mother, it is merely one of those happy coincidence things. I am sorry about Elspeth’s mother. She was one of the very few people I ever met who was entirely self-reliant in life, and I liked her.
Also I will never now get chance to give her back the coat hanger of hers that I seem to have acquired. I do not know how I got it, but I know it was hers because it has got her name on it, presumably after her days on board ship. I have had it for years and years, and suppose I have stolen it now. I will keep it and remember her every time I use it, which I do, often, because it is one of the ones over the stove for hanging up wet washing. I have always thought of her every time I have used it, but in the sense of thinking: I really ought to give that back. Now I can just remember that she had a lathe and a shed full of useful tools and some cats and an undaunted approach to life, although possibly an insufficient quantity of coathangers
Elspeth will be like her when she gets old, only more crotchety.
In fact it is rather nice to be here on the taxi rank with nothing to do apart from write to you and read a book about how I can die with dignity when my time comes, because I have had a day stuffed full of laundry and cooking and dusting and hoovering.
I was distracted briefly by Rosie whimpering. She cried and came to be a nuisance around my feet and cried a bit more.
She was in a dog fight yesterday which has left her with a small hole in her face, so I wondered if it was hurting. The dog fight was entirely her own fault. She met a collie dog in the park with a ball in its mouth. She tried to steal the ball, so it bit her.
I was consoling but not especially sympathetic.
I hauled her on to the sofa to inspect her injuries, which are exceedingly minor. She stopped crying then, and I realised that it had been because she wanted to be on the sofa with Roger, and not about her sore face at all, but she was there then so I had a look.
It looked a bit swollen and sticky, so I thought I would do a bit of amateur vetting, and put some TCP in some warm water to wash it.
In the end I had to summon Oliver for assistance.
I have never known a dog wriggle and yelp with quite such determined vigour.
She kept up a self-pitying squeak as we held her in a headlock and then held her nose still into the bargain, because even in a headlock she carried on contorting furiously from side to side, wagging as hard as she could.
In the end it was washed, and I put some Germolene on it. She was still wagging so much that I got Germolene absolutely everywhere, I hope it washes out of my skirt and Oliver’s dressing gown, but some went in the sore bit.
She retired grumpily, but forgot instantly at the offer of a bit of sausage, which sent her ecstatic with delight, if only all good spirits could be restored so easily.
Oliver has crossed Vet off his list of things that he wants to do when he grows up.
So have I.
Have a picture of our walk.
