I have cleaned my taxi out but neglected to change the story on the radio, and hence I am still scowling my way contemplatively through the entirely incomprehensible episodes of Understanding Cosmic Physics Even If You Are An Idiot, which it appears that I am, and I don’t.
The mellow-sounding chap was just explaining the difference between matter and anti-matter (you wouldn’t want to find the last sort hiding under your bed) and had just started about the different wave sizes of photons when I was obliged to turn him off.
It has become so complicated that it might be easier to follow the news, which I imagine Radio Four has now moved to the six thirty comedy slot. At the time of writing it looks as though Carrie is going to come back off her holidays and take over the premiership again. I do not like her because of rather admiring her predecessor, the last Mrs. Johnson, and also because of suspecting that she is a ruthless muppet, so I hope Liz Truss has stuck all her pictures to the walls with chewing gum.
I am on the taxi rank by myself, with only the mellow cosmologist for company, because Mark is busily mending his taxi. He has been at work all day, so I did house things, like washing Number Two Daughter’s sheets ready for a hasty changeover before Lucy gets back. I cleaned my taxi out, and considered cleaning his out as well, but when I looked at it I realised that as he has been taking bits out of the engine, he has been putting them safely in the back of the taxi, presumably so they wan’t get stolen or washed away in the endless rain. I admire this thoughtfulness but decided that on balance, hoovering it would be a bit pointless under the circumstances. You can have an elephant in a room or a gearbox on a back seat, neither of them will exactly be improved by a quick wipe.
Hence I just cleaned my own taxi. It was a bit clean already, because I got cross with Mark the other day. He took it to work and got into it with muddy boots and sausage sandwiches, which did not improve its pristine ambiance, and I said so, grumpily. Hence yesterday when he and Number Two Daughter took it to the farm to collect the engine crane and got it stuck, he thought it might be prudent to clean off the massive sprays of wheel spin mud before I noticed it.
He was absolutely correct about this. They had had to push the taxi out, and there was mud everywhere. They washed it before I saw it and even then I was unimpressed when I looked.
In between laundry and valeting the taxi, I have had a day of seasonableness.
It is October, and I have made my mince pie mix.
It is magnificent.
I started with the usual bucket of dried pineapples, and mangos and papayas, that I have had soaking in brandy since this time last year. I mixed that with suet and refilled the bucket ready for next year.
Then I drained the blackberries which have been soaking in gin for the last month or so. I mixed the gin with some sugar syrup and sloshed it into bottles, ready for cold winter evenings. Then I liquidised the blackberries and shoved them through a sieve.
Obviously I chucked the seedy bit out on to the compost heap, we will have some very unsteady crows if they get into that lot.
I mixed the smooth pulp into the mince mixture.
Readers, the resulting concoction is nothing short of divine. I am now looking forward to the mince pies as being the very best bit of Christmas.
Did you know that microwaves are basically just light that is wagging a bit faster than the sort you get out of a candle?
Goodness, I am becoming well-informed.
