Last night turned out to be the most unspeakably rubbish of taxi driving nights.
Nobody wanted a taxi and I trailed home almost as broke as I had been when I went out.
Hence I was not at all looking forward to this evening, since I had not noticed a huge influx of optimistic tourists in the meantime, and was not expecting to do anything other than read my book and grumble with other taxi drivers.
This turned out to be quite astonishingly mistaken, because all of the other taxi drivers had also been disgruntled, and tonight they all stayed at home, so I was by myself. After that my first job went for miles out of town and paid quite astonishingly well.
Heathrow, here we come.
We are collecting Oliver and then on the way back we are heading up to Lucy’s house, because she is going to be working all night and on the morning of the following day she will be rushing up to Manchester for yet another police medical interview. She does not want to drive herself for this expedition, feeling entirely reasonably that twelve hours at work, followed by several hours driving, followed by an important investigation into her stamina and physical fitness, might be a rubbish idea.
Hence Mark is going to drive her car and she is going to sleep in the back of the camper van whilst I drive it up to Manchester.
We contemplated leaving her car behind but the prospect of taking the cats home on the train a few days afterwards was plainly not an appealing one, so they are all coming in the van.
The van will not be quite as overcrowded as usual because Rosie will not be with us.
Poor, trusting Rosie does not know it yet, but she is about to be the hapless victim of a rascally taxi-driver grooming gang of canine sex-traffickers.
She has come into season again, and discussions on the taxi rank led to the discovery that one of the other taxi drivers has a youthful and very masculine Yorkshire terrier.
Some investigation into the prices currently being charged for Yorkshire terrier cross puppies sealed Rosie’s fate. Hence in a couple of days she is going to be a victim of a terrible sex-for-sale kidnapping. She is going to be dragged from her safe and loving home to be dumped, alone and terrified, with the other taxi driver, out of Roger Poopy’s passionate-but-thwarted clutches, where we are all hoping that she will suffer repeated abuses at the paws of a scary stranger. Preferably about ten abuses, which will boost all of our Christmas funds very nicely indeed.
Poor Rosie.
Fortunately she can’t talk and so we will never need to concern ourselves with her inevitable trauma. She will get over it once she has got some puppies, and Roger Poopy will never know that they are not really his. He might be bright enough to spell Walk but he is just not that well-informed.
Talking of grooming I had better give her a bath before she goes. She has been in the mud at the farm.
In other news, I have been cooking again. I am almost ready for a trip to Heathrow and a weekend on the taxi rank. Today I have made oven chips. They are spicy chips with paprika and garlic and some perfectly-roasted pork, donated by the magnificent Ginge, who is the chef at the Albert where Oliver works. I have grated the pork and mixed it in with the chips.
There are loads of them. They will go perfectly in the camper van oven and feed us whilst we are away.
We can live on chips and banana cake, it will be fine.
I made another banana cake, just to make sure we don’t run out. I have made a stack of pancakes as well. We can add raspberries and whipped cream and they will make breakfasts when I can’t think of anything else.
Poor Rosie likes pancakes and chips.
What a shame she will miss them all.
