Critic

I have insured the taxis and now I am going to bed.

There has been a great deal of day in between those two events, but they are, I think, the most important.

The taxi insurance bit took ages, because organising insurance is a bit like a sort of reverse eBay. You ring one broker and get a price, and then another half a dozen to see if they can give you a lower price. Then you go back to the first one, tell them triumphantly that you have got it fifty quid cheaper, and they go Ah-hah, we have just found a fifty one pounds discount under the desk, you can have that, goodness me, what good luck. You thank them kindly, get it in writing, and then ring the other one.

This can go on all morning, and indeed it did.

It stops when one of you gets bored, and it could be either of you, because insurance companies do not like this game any more than I do, and if you are not careful they get to the point where they say impatiently: just buzz off and get insurance with them, then. I say that with taxi customers who try to haggle. It takes me a very short time to become impatient. They say: Goodness, that’s expensive, can you do it any cheaper? Then I say No, Get Lost, and wind my window up, and that is the end of that.

In the end I did in fact make a reasonable saving on our insurance, which actually was almost a thousand pounds cheaper than the first quote. Taxi insurance is jolly expensive, possibly because taxi drivers are always getting customers who are far too drunk to wear seatbelts, and then fall off their seats and bang their heads. They always say they will claim on the driver’s insurance although nobody has ever tried so far, so probably they just forget when they stagger home and pass out.

I don’t wear a seatbelt anyway because we are exempt. I have a seatbelt clip from a scrap yard that I fasten into the slot so that it does not ding annoyingly the whole time. This is quite nice and independent, but if ever you read a note on these pages explaining that I have been catapulted through the windscreen you will have to sigh resignedly and think that it was all my own fault.

Apart from that I have spent a very lot of the day trying to write a Critical Analysis of my own poetry. This has got to go on for three thousand words, which is proving difficult because all that really needs saying is This Poetry Is Rubbish, and I still have two thousand nine hundred and ninety six words left to fill up.

I did, however, find the name of the rhythm used, thank you all very much for your entire lack of intellectual support. The rhythm for I had to write a poem but I thought I couldn’t do it is in fact called a Quartus Paeon. You have learned something new now. It is the name for a line of poetry which has a foot of three unstressed syllables and then a stressed syllable, and has four feet.

What a handy thing an education is. You will be glad that you have been perusing these pages next time a tricky question comes up on University Challenge.

I have got a meeting with my tutor on Wednesday but I won’t be able to show off that fascinating little gem because I haven’t got the first idea how you pronounce it.

I will just have to send him a letter.