I was turning up the sleeves on my new Himalayan jersey this afternoon, when I was surprised by a call from Barclaycard Visa.
It was their transactions department, wishing me to know that they were investigating a dodgy-looking transaction on my account.
Obviously I was concerned about this. I have not made any transactions on my Visa card for ages and ages, and I sighed, and said to the chap, who sounded as though he was an Indian, although he said he was called Jack, that I thought he was talking nonsense. I added that in my opinion he would do well to go and find a proper job, the sort where he was not trying to steal money from unsuspecting English old people, and wondered, in passing, if his mother knew what he was doing for a living.
He became very cross then, and suggested some quite astonishing sexual activity that he thought I might perform, which suggested that he might not have been really from Visa after all, who would have thought it?
I have been a taxi driver for a long time, and there are no obscene suggestions that I have not already heard more times than I would ever have been able to accomplish, so I explained that even if I did such things, it most certainly would not be with him because I preferred to reserve my sexual favours for people whom I felt I could respect, and he was merely a small-time petty thief. I added that I thought his mother would not be very proud had she heard what he had just had to say, and wondered how he would feel about young idiots telephoning and making such suggestions to her.
He let out an angry howl and hung up, leaving me feeling, quite smugly, that I had had the best of the encounter. I waited for a while to see if he would call back, but disappointingly, he did not. I finished the sleeves on the jersey, which, it turned out, had been designed for somebody whose arms were twenty two centimetres longer than mine, and went off to go to Sainsbury’s instead.
It would be nice to think that he repented in the wake of our conversation, and went off to get a proper job, but I don’t suppose he did really.
I am very glad I am not his mother.
It has been another magnificently busy weekend. The Lake District has been bursting with sweating pink people and we have been rushing about making our fortunes. We did not make it to bed until almost half past five this morning, by which time it was thoroughly daylight. I like the summer times for this. The birds were performing an absolutely full-throated dawn chorus when I took the dogs for their end-of-evening emptying in the Library gardens, and it had rained the tiniest bit, which was not enough to be useful but which made everything smell overwhelmingly lovely, sort of misty and heavy with blossom.
We considered taking a couple of days off once the weekend is over, and going to the seaside, but then we remembered, rather disconsolately, that Mark’s taxi is falling to bits and is due an MOT on Thursday, so that was the end of that. We consoled ourselves with the reflection that we could tidy the house and pretend we were in an hotel instead.
We have got some gin in the fridge. It has been there for ages, it is a good thing it doesn’t go off. When the house is tidy and the taxi has been fixed we can have a gin cocktail. We were very tempted to have one this evening instead of coming to work but we refrained.
I would like to have a holiday and am secretly hoping that Mark will rush through the car-fixing things and we can take a day off. The sun is shining and we could go off and swim for a day.
I am not holding my breath. We will have to see how it goes.
