Oliver’s friend is here.
Oliver came downstairs on Saturday morning wanting to make sure that it was all right, because he thought I seemed mildly put out. I explained that apart from the obvious problem that this is my normal state of being, I wasn’t, in the least. I did not at all mind his friend’s imminent arrival but was not very much looking forward to the arrival of the visiting dog. His friend does not require taking out for walks on a lead, comes when you call him, mostly, and does not bite or poo on the floor.
The visiting dog has arrived now and although it has not pooed on the floor so far, it ignores everything you say to it and bit Mark when he tried to get it out from underneath the table.
It regretted that quite quickly. I do not imagine it will try it again in a hurry.
I do not think it is very well. It is very thin. I gave it some cheese when I was making sandwiches for the taxis, but it would not eat it and Rosie wolfed it down instead, it will have to be quicker than that if it wishes to participate in nice things.
Oliver’s friend has not bitten anybody. He and Oliver went down to the lake this afternoon and hired a boat. They are reasonably accustomed to boats, as a consequence of Gordonstoun’s determined conviction that it is important that all students become able to sail on the High Seas as well as manage rudimentary arithmetic and a basic command of Latin. Hence I think an afternoon with a little puttering motorboat on Windermere might have been quite a mild and soporific way of occupying an afternoon.
They are back at home now, playing some kind of computer games whilst we are at work. We told them that they are not to drink the expensive wine, not that there is any decently expensive wine, but they can jolly well drink the stuff in the Red Wine Box from Asda, not my carefully hidden secret bottle of Bordeaux.
Other than this sudden influx of new members of the household, the weekend has gone fairly quietly. Mark has been fixing the window winder on his taxi. This broke ages ago, and makes taxi customers grumpy. They tap on the window to talk to him and then when he does not wind it down they become huffy and stomp away. He does not mind this, because nobody wants huffy customers, but today he fixed it.
This led to a small nuisance because his taxi is misfortunately possessed by an electronic demon from another dimension. The windscreen wipers come on by themselves when you open the boot, and stay on for weeks at a time. It opens the boot by itself sometimes, and turns the engine off when you are going down the motorway. Today it locked itself with the keys in the ignition whilst he was trying to fix the window. This was especially infuriating because all of his tools were in the car, and at the time the windows were all closed. It made him swear an awful lot, I hope none of the neighbours were listening.
Fortunately Oliver and his friend were out and did not have to have their sensitive little ears abused.
He fixed it in the end, by taking the wing mirror off and poking a bit of pipe through the hole to press the window control. This opened the window and all was well, except that the radio had been on for ages in there, talking to itself and flashing lights on and off, and so when eventually he came to start it for work the battery was flat and we had to push it up the alley.
We have got a replacement Body Control Module for it which might help with the exorcism, although it is entirely possible that once it is in place the car will refuse to work altogether, so we are not exactly in a rush to install it.
We will worry about it when we come back from Bath.
I do like the camper van.
It does not have anything electronic anywhere.
