In fact I started the New Year on an amusing note.
Of course we all watched the fireworks together, and it hardly rained at all, and they were brilliant and wonderful, as they always are, I wonder how old one has to be before one becomes blasé about fireworks. I am almost sixty, but enjoy them every bit as much as I did fifty five years ago.
We had no Lucy this year, she arrives tonight, although her absent shoes were filled by a Girl who tagged along with Oliver, and who was pretty and giggled a lot. Please be assured that he has no plans for matrimony at this stage, he still has a very interesting new computer.
Once the fireworks were over we hurtled around delivering everybody back to their homes for the next few hours, and my last job of the night was from outside the nightclub.
Everybody had gone home, and I thought I would go took, but a young man came rushing out and begged me to wait ten minutes for some of the staff. They had some clearing up to do, and were too tired to walk in the rain.
I sympathised and agreed, and poured the last of my tea and settled down with my book to wait.
After a little while the young man returned. He was foreign in some way, although I am never exactly sure which and can never decide if it makes me a closet racist if I ask, it got poor Lady Hussey booted out with her P45. Anyway this chap was from somewhere that wasn’t the Lake District, as evidenced by his strongly incomprehensible accent and reasonably courteous manner.
He apologised again for the delay, to which I assured him I was indifferent, and after a moment he said how much he appreciated it. I nodded and hoped he would buzz off, being at an interesting bit of my book, but he hovered by the window and said: I never get in your taxi because I am always too scared of you.
This is exactly the sort of customer relations I have always striven to perfect, and I looked at him with interest and asked why.
When I come here t’ree years ago, he explained, I get in your taxi. I go up hill and I say to you Is too much, and I haggle. I tell you taxi fare is expensive, and you say to me I don’t care what you think you tiresome clown, and if you no pay you go back where I find you. Then you take me back down hill and make me get out. I never argue with taxi driver again but always I afraid of you.
I sent a mental salute to my past self, and nodded gravely.
Tonight it is very expensive indeed, I explained, because it is New Year.
I no care, he said, because I very glad for your taxi. Please forgive me for being tiresome clown.
I forgave him, and took them all home. They paid and tipped generously, and I felt pleased with the result, which seemed to me to suggest a very successful interpersonal management strategy.
We sampled the Southern Comfort when I got back home, although I think it might be improved by the addition of some apples, it has a rawness about it that perhaps is not to be compared with the sixteen year old Abelour single malt that is our preferred breakfast companion on non-working mornings.
Today started very shortly afterwards, because we had to get Oliver to work for eleven, and there was a lot of groaning and staggering involved. We all compensated for this with a sleep whilst he was in between shifts this afternoon.
In other news, I have completed my assignment. It is done, finished, edited and handed in. I am relieved about this, although a little lost, it has been an utterly absorbing project, and part of me wishes it could carry on, which of course it can’t.
I have told Mark that I want to do less housework and more writing in the New Year, and he nodded but probably it won’t really happen. There just seems to be so many things in life that I want to do.
Cleaning the bathroom is not one of them, but I do it a lot all the same.
Maybe 2023 will be easier.
