Oliver’s girlfriend has not yet arrived.
We are expecting her to disembark from the train that arrives at half past eight in Oxenholme, so in the meantime I am loafing about on the taxi rank, where I can read my book and listen to stories about lunatics with a clear conscience, in between sewing labels on clothes, obviously.
It has even turned out to be a dry day so far, so taxi activities have improved tremendously. It is much nicer when the windows are not steamed up and all of your customers are not wet and grumpy.
I cleaned my taxi out this afternoon, so I am not grumpy either. I could quite persuade myself that I truly enjoyed driving a taxi if only it were clean all the time, only it isn’t, because generally I don’t bother. I bothered this afternoon, though, which turned into a pleasantly sociable gossip with the neighbours and also improved our finances by one pound and eleven pence.
Hence I am very much enjoying sitting in it at this moment. The sun is reflecting off the ripples on the lake beside me, and I am drinking my very favourite sort of spicy chai, by which I mean the sort that has been left to stew overnight and then boiled for a second time, to ensure its hair-curling peppery properties. Drunk without milk or sugar, I can assure you that no drink is finer.
I did actually try the alcohol-free alcohol, talking of drinks, the sort that is supposed to make you feel mildly intoxicated whilst being alcohol free. It does that, a little, without the alcoholic tingle: only it tastes revolting. Given that my pleasure in alcohol is related to the taste rather than simply the happiness of losing the plot, I am going to try it mixed with something that is loaded with sugar to see if that helps.
Obviously I have now stopped taking Sudden Death Antibiotics, and am trying to reconstitute some tolerance for alcohol, because the last lot also decisively massacred the enzyme which makes it possible to digest it. Alcohol becomes a dreadfully poisonous substance, as I can attest from previous experience.
Hence I am trying to revitalise my digestive system. I had the inspired idea of making some coffee-and-brandy chocolates. Of course each chocolate contains only a very little brandy, which hopefully will remind my digestive system what it is supposed to be doing. I have been very pleased with this idea, and have eaten about six of the chocolates already, for medical reasons.
I am also trying to fend off the absence of microbiology by eating yoghurt for breakfast every morning. Antibiotics kill the useful microbiology just as ruthlessly as they assassinate the saw-your-leg-off variety, and the mighty Internet is filled with dire warnings that every fungus imaginable will leap into the gap until your fingers and toes become as black and slimy as the damp patch just above the skirting board behind the bedding box. Yoghurt is a useful defence, also it is good to have an excuse to purchase it because at two quid a tub it is usually the sort of thing that you have got to justify by having visitors.
We have got a visitor as well, now, because it is later and Oliver’s girlfriend has arrived. Mark came out and occupied the taxi rank whilst I took Oliver to collect her. I felt mildly guilty about this but not sufficiently guilty to let Mark go with Oliver instead.
She is very nice indeed, and looks like rather like a female version of Oliver. If the two of them stood in front of one another they could comfortably fit inside a pair of my dungarees together. They are having pizza for dinner, because I have had something of a hospitality failure. I hope Lucy has taught Oliver how to cook things, otherwise they are going to have a difficult week. Also I inadvertently bought pizza with mushrooms. They seem to be of one mind on the question of the unpalatability of fungus. I suppose this is reasonable. Monkeys also refuse to eat them, and I am doing everything I can to exterminate all things fungal, not least from behind the bedding box.
I have told them they will just have to pick them all off. They will have to go in the compost bin, because even Rosie will not eat mushrooms. There was one in some leftovers she was given a couple of weeks ago, and I trod on it secreted underneath my desk some time later. This was not nice, like an unexpected slug between the toes, and my poor toes do not need any more things to complain about. I called Rosie some rude names.
I am going to go. It is now after midnight and I would like to read my book.
