I am happy to be able to tell you that Oliver is having a truly magnificent time in the Far East.
I might already have told you that his hosts did not turn out to be international hyper-criminals in the end, merely gentle, thoughtful, self-effacing Koreans, who have entertained Oliver and made him so welcome that he is already planning to retire to Korea when he has made his fortune and is looking for somewhere magical and bounteous to spend his declining years.
If he makes his fortune soon enough I could spend my declining years there as well.
I like this idea. It has rained a lot in the Lake District this week.
We did not get enough sleep last night due to a muppet telephoning us at nine o’clock in the morning and requesting a taxi. I do not ever give my telephone number to taxi customers because I do not want them to ring me up, we are the least advertised business in the history of advertising. Just to drive the point home, in case anybody ever does find us, our business name is Pay More Wait Longer Taxis.
I imagine that this morning’s muppet had been given my number by another taxi driver, quite possibly one who thinks this sort of thing might be amusing. I understand that completely, it would make me laugh as well, but the muppet was so determined for a taxi that even after I had explained that we had only been in bed for a couple of hours and it was the middle of the night, he apologised, hung up, and then called again an hour later to see if we had woken up yet, which we hadn’t, and after that we were awake.
I suppose I could have gone and picked him up at that point but I wasn’t going to. I was so dopey I had to concentrate hard to get my clothes on in the right order. We had a long and customer-filled evening last night, and my joviality with tourists is beginning to wear a little thin. Indeed, I have reached the point where I am still managing courtesy, but my teeth are gritted. This is down to a combination of overcrowded roads, the tourist thrill-occupation of walking behind reversing taxis, which fulfils the role that roller coasters play in every other holiday destination, and a general lack of patience with other people’s intoxication. I read an article a short while ago which posited that the human race was beginning to get stupider, and a Saturday night spent driving a taxi certainly seems to support this theory. I do not know how some of them manage to tie their own shoelaces, no wonder slip-on shoes have become popular.
Note to readers. When you go on holiday make an effort to learn the name of your guest house. The road where it is situated is occasionally useful but generally not necessary. If you tell your taxi driver that you can’t remember what it is called but your car is parked outside, it is a white Renault, and the house has got a brown front door, although your wife thinks it might have been blue, and there are some flowers in the garden, the taxi driver will justifiably think you are an idiot and begin to wonder idly if there should be an intelligence test alongside the tourist tax.
I had just about managed to get dressed myself when I discovered a handful of messages from Number One Daughter, on their holidays in France, and accompanied with photographs and video illustrations.
The photographs were of Number One Son-In-Law leaping into the chilly depths of a river from a bridge which spanned it at the height of about sixty feet above.
It turned out that he was searching for their car keys, which they had inadvertently dropped in.
The river was so deep that the death-plunge leap was the only way to get to the bottom, so that was what he was doing.
Readers, he found them.
I have attached a screenshot. Observant readers will be able to detect the plummeting form of Number One Son-In-Law as he set off on his intrepid hunt. I do not know how many times he was obliged to repeat this leap.
For a bit of peaceful family time afterwards they went to traverse a ravine and slide down a death slide. Sorry, zip slide.
I saw those pictures as well.
They made me feel a bit queasy.
