It feels like cheating to shirk from writing for two nights on the run, and so tonight I am heroically bashing out a couple of words whenever I have got a few minutes, in between tourists and drunk people.
There are quite a few of the latter. The nation must have rediscovered its enthusiasm for drinking, because this weekend I have had several people leap out of the taxi at the just-in-time moment in order to relieve themselves, noisily, of the contents of their stomachs.
I suppose really I could have written in here last night. It was not exactly busy, but we didn’t hang around the taxi rank very much, and when we did somehow the time seemed to fill itself with chatting and drinking tea and then, eventually, reading. I thought, guiltily, that perhaps I should write something in here, but then it was three in the morning and I hadn’t, so I didn’t.
Not that I have got anything exciting to tell you. My taxi needs an MOT next week, so Mark has spent the day taking it apart and popping back into the house at intervals in order to rabbit on about brake shoes. I have had a frustrating day wishing I was writing either a bestselling novel or a poem and achieving neither. Worse, what I really should have been doing was dusting, and I didn’t do that either.
Dusting really needs doing. Regular readers might have spotted that it is some time since dusting has been mentioned as a day’s activity on these pages, and it is beginning to be acutely obvious. Mark even suggested that we see about asking the cleaner to come back. I would like to do this very much, she is a lady who used to clean for us, once, long ago, in between regrettable bouts of dipsomania, but I have not seen her for ages and do not know if she is having one at the moment. I did not mind the dipsomania but it was tiresome occasionally to fancy a gin only to discover that it had been surreptitiously replaced with water when we weren’t looking.
Apart from this she was a nice lady and I liked her, and a jolly good cleaner. I do not like dusting at all. If I was spending my life dusting I think I would also need the occasional bottle of gin to help the job along.
Regrettably she is no longer anywhere to be found. Windermere’s cleaners are all fully occupied polishing holiday cottages, and hence the dusting is my own private challenge. I am going to have to devote some attention to its solution before we start to lose the dogs in the horrible drifts of grey fluff that are beginning to pile up in the corners.
Maybe tomorrow.
I did not dust. Going shopping takes so long on sunny days in Windermere that you have got to set aside half of the day for it. I went to the Post Office, where I promised that we would put Winnie the Pooh back on the camper van steering wheel. I went to the butcher’s, where I was told twice by passers-by that Mark was underneath the taxi. I explained that was where I kept him. I went to the chemist, where we contemplated drunks for a while, and the chemist nodded sagely and said that he couldn’t do my job.
I couldn’t do his either, although for very different reasons, starting with not having listened at school.
I like the chemist. His shop smells of medicine and interesting soap.
After that I just rushed around getting ready for work. There were dogs to be emptied and washing to be pegged and picnics to be made, and all of the usual tedious weekend stuff. I made French toast, because I am still wearing dungarees and hence a little added roundness won’t hurt, and thought about poetry and assignments and writing my story.
Goodness, the time rushes past. I have kept on writing a bit of this every now and again, and now the night is over.
It is five o’clock in the morning. I am sorry this is dull but I have written it, and my conscience is salved. I can go to bed with a light heart, and feeling that I have discharged my responsibilities.
I am going right now.
