Well another day has gone whizzing by. I have been so busy that I am beginning to wonder where I found time to look after Mark.
I stayed out late at work last night because some tiresome whippersnapper begged me just to stay around for a bit longer. He hadn’t finished work until eleven, he said, and he was just longing for a pint with his mates, would I please, please stay around until midnight? He would come to the taxi rank then, he promised.
Normally I am completely impervious to such tales of misfortune, but I was the only taxi around anywhere, as far as I could see, and I was at a good bit in my book, so I agreed reluctantly, adding that he had got until five minutes into the new day and then I would be gone. He promised, radiantly, that he would be back, and bounced off joyfully to meet his mates.
Obviously he never returned, which did not surprise me in the slightest, having been a taxi driver for a long time, and I had wasted the last hour of my day without a single customer, although I did get on very nicely with my book. I am reading True Crime drivel at the moment, which is a bad idea when it comes to taking the dogs around the Library Gardens by myself in the middle of the night, but a good idea because it gives me a break from my dissertation reading.
This latter is a collection of Viking poetry called The Edda, and it is so beset with savagery that the True Crime drivel pales by comparison. Also the Vikings seem to have pinched their dwarf-names from the Lord of the Rings, the rascals. Anyway it is not exactly light reading for the stilly watches of the night, and I was not sorry to put it down and read about American serial killers instead. They do seem to have a lot of these over there, there is a whole book-industry devoted to their activities.
In the end I went home, cross with myself for being so easily persuaded. I emptied the dogs, filled the fire and went to bed. I have taken to cleaning the bathroom after my shower at night, which is horrible last thing at night but an unadulterated pleasure when I discover its glorious shine in the morning.
When I have finished I spend some time practising standing on one leg with my eyes shut. I can only do this when I am by myself because it must look utterly ridiculous. I read somewhere, in a newspaper probably so it must be true, that people who can stand on one leg with their eyes shut for more than six seconds will live longer than those who can’t. I am always keen to stack the odds in my favour, and so I have been practising every night when I get out of the shower. So far, you will be pleased to hear, I can do twelve seconds on one foot and eight on the other, which in any case is the one I bashed up last year, so probably I could get an exemption for that one.
Today I took the dogs out over the fells again, which was a considerable improvement on yesterday because it did not start raining until after we had returned home. The builders had left me another stack of firewood, which I sawed up and stacked just before the heavens opened, but I got wet again anyway, because of sweeping the yard and dashing out to Sainsbury’s.
I should have cleaned my taxi, but I didn’t, excusing myself on the grounds that I have barely had enough customers to make it worth the bother. Instead I came in and wrote a bit more of my dissertation story. It is creeping up slowly. I am over thirty thousand words now.
It needs a lot of concentration, I can tell you. I drank three cups of tea and ate two chocolate biscuits whilst I was doing it, and when I looked up I was surprised to discover that they were gone.
Much like last night’s customer, really.
