I am not on the taxi rank.
We are having a night’s holiday at the farm. Mark is faffing about in his garden and fixing Oliver’s one-day-to-be-car, and I have been editing my story and composing a synopsis to dispatch to agents.
This is going to be very short because I don’t have very much to say. I am having an agony of worry in case I haven’t yet managed to write a reasonable story and will have to be a taxi driver when I grow up after all. I have spent all of today polishing and contemplating and underwriting and rewriting and finally investigating agents and dispatching it to some who might be interested.
My tutor told me to send it first to the ones I wanted least, so that I could learn from their refusals, but I hadn’t got the first idea which ones I wanted least, because when you read their websites, all of them are masters of wonderfulness guaranteeing to get you a publishing contract within a couple of hours. In the end I just chose those whose photographs looked nice on Google. I have sent it to three agents with benevolent-looking photographs and if none of them want it I shall have to approach some who look a bit more daunting. It is very difficult to find a way into the publishing business, I can jolly well tell you.
I have written a letter to try and make myself sound clever, by which I mean that I have jumped quickly over the bit where I explain that actually I am a taxi driver, and tried to emphasise my learned educational qualifications, of which so far, as you are aware, there are none whatsoever.
Not to worry. I am sure it will be just fine.
It has actually been rather a wonderful day. We are parked in our field. Mark has been bashing things about, and hung up a washing line so that we could get our clothes dry and stay another night without needing to go home for anything. Hence we have been looking rather like gypsies, and people, especially the people who bought Mark’s ancestral home, have been staring rather hard at us as they have passed. They have all been engaged in upmarket sort of activities like cycling and walking spaniels, and have been a bit tight-lipped about the sudden appearance of Mr. Tumpy’s Caravan bedecked with washing and dogs, right in the middle of the National Park Area For The Middle Classes Only, along with a broken down car on bricks next to it.
The dogs have had a marvellous time, actually. We opened the door whilst we were still in bed this morning, and they barged through it and rampaged about for ages. They have been rampaging for most of the day and are now unconscious under the table, having been fully occupied barking at spaniels and trying to get their noses into the rabbit holes for the whole day.
It has been truly wonderful. We did not set an alarm and were horrified to discover that we had slept for ten hours, and wasted half of the day. I would not even have woken up even then, being engaged in a troubling dream about trying to climb a very wobbly ladder, but Mark needed to visit the bathroom.
We are going to stay until tomorrow, when we have got to go home. I am very sorry about this, I would have liked to stay for the rest of my life, but I can’t.
It is being the loveliest of holidays, and with any luck when it is finished I will have a fully functioning story and Mark will have fixed Oliver’s car.
PS My foot was sore but I have had two glasses of wine now.
PPS. First cuckoo today.
