I am on the taxi rank.
Fortunately I have cleaned my taxi out this afternoon, because the Word on the taxi rank is that the council are out doing on-the-spot inspections, and woe betide anybody who has got paw prints all over the seats and mud and wood chippings all over the boot.
You will not be astonished to learn that this has put Mark out of the game, though. He will not be at work until he has thoroughly mucked out his taxi, and frankly I think that is a jolly good thing. When I last looked at his taxi I did not want to get in it, and I would not be paying three pounds seventy for the privilege.
I expect the council went home ages ago really. It is Friday evening. I would have gone home by now if I had the chance, and I have only been here for a couple of hours. Still, you never know, stranger things have happened, they might appear even now.
It is now long after midnight, and unsurprisingly the council did not turn up. I am sitting on the taxi rank. As I write there is a weirdo collapsed on the bonnet of my taxi. He is ranting. I am ignoring him, which frankly is not helping very much, because he is just trying all the harder to attract my attention. He is only there because he came to the window and accused me of being a matrix. I am not sure what a matrix might be, so I declined to comment in case it was something rude, and asked if he needed a taxi, which he didn’t, so I told him to buzz off.
As I wrote those very words he has become bored with rolling about on the bonnet and given up. He has staggered away down the street, still shouting. I am glad he did not want a taxi. He is a complete muppet. I know because I took him home last week.
Still, at home our little life has quickly settled back into its usual gentle tick. The laundry is done, and everything has been put away. I meant to go to Booths for some ethical raspberries but forgot. I thought I would dash across the road to Sainsbury’s for some potentially ideologically unsound ones when I remembered, but tiresomely they had not put any fifty pence pieces in their meter, and all of their fridges had gone off, so they closed whilst they threw everything away, I wish I could get into their skip.
We were once at a school production given by a local school when all of the lights went out, and the headmistress put her head through the curtains and asked if anybody had got fifty pence for the meter, so do not be too sure that was not what happened to Sainsbury’s. These are hard times, you know.
Lucy came into the village with me this afternoon. She had some cash to pay into the Post Office, and I had some letters to post. She was worried that they might not take it because she hadn’t brought any ID, and was astonished when the lady looked at her over the counter and said: So you must be Lucy. How is the policing going, then? which made me laugh all the way home.
As a final note, you will be very pleased to hear that my sore toe is well on the road to recovery. I have hobbled around Blackpool with increasing mobility, and apart from being bright red and smelling like something Rosie might find on the beach, it is very much better. It is almost a normal size, and I have high hopes for my shoes before the winter.
I hope it goes back to a normal colour soon. It does look ridiculous. I will not be modelling stiletto sandals any time soon.
Only a few more of the drugs to go now, this is probably just as well.
Sooner or later I will run out of toe-related puns.
