It is almost midnight and I have only just started on these pages.
I have been very busy.
Mark is home.
I am profoundly relieved about this.
He chugged all the way back from Aberdeen, and had only just turned the camper van engine off when my taxi screeched down the alley and he was obliged to fix a blown fuse and replace the passenger side mirror which had just fallen off.
He got out of the camper van and came to have a look.
This latter was serious. It might not sound exciting, but I can promise you that reversing along strange driveways in the middle of the night without a full complement of mirrors is not a happy adventure.
It is like being rendered oddly blind.
I had no idea what had happened to it. I was driving down the road when there was a small, musical Ting, and when I looked up there was no mirror. Mark said it was because I bash it against the wall so often, which might be true.
The fuse was urgent as well. It was for the little thing that used to be a cigarette lighter and is now a telephone charging point, and my telephone was fast going flat. This meant that I could not use my computer to write to you – because it runs off the telephone’s WiFi, nor could I telephone anybody should a more serious emergency present itself.
Mark fixed them both. Then I went back to work and he started to unpack the camper van. I felty guilty about not staying to help, but lots of people wanted taxis, so I didn’t,
I had woken up this morning to the depressing discovery that my tyre was flat again. I took it to the garage across the road to blow it up. I never ever go there, despite it being only about forty yards away from our house, because I don’t at all like the horrid chap who runs it. He comes rushing out and shouts unfriendly things at taxis who drop customers off on his forecourt, and he objected to much to the Windermere Pram Race that it had to be cancelled when he threatened to sue them for loss of business.
Today he did nothing to endear himself to me. I pulled on to the garage only to discover that there was a van parked in front of the air line, blocking it off so I couldn’t get to it. I waited for a little while and then went into the garage to ask if it was staying there or if it would be going soon. He growled and said it wasn’t going anywhere so the airline was closed.
I would hope that the stories about Hell were true if it were not for the regrettable likelihood that I would probably bump into him there.
Fortunately the kindly builder, who was busy leaving me a pile of firewood in the alley, had a cigarette lighter pump that actually worked, and blew the tyre up for me. This was when I realised that my own charging point was not working.
I dragged the wood into the yard and sawed it up. Then I drove, slowly and carefully, down the back roads to Morecambe, where the tyre man fixed all of the tyres, including the one that had no rubber left on it anywhere at all, and which made him lift his eyebrows in a too-polite-to-comment sort of way. Then he put them all back where they were supposed to be, including the spare into the boot.
I was very relieved about this.
When I got home I had some hasty dog-shearing to finish, because of having one ridiculous-looking dog and one scratching smelly one. The third, being Roger Poopy, was still shivering, newly naked, in his basket, and occasionally looking at me resentfully.
I was heartless.
They are all bald.
I finished just in time to dash across to the vet for some flea tablets. I do not think they have got fleas really, but it is what you might call a pre-emptive strike. In any case Tonka needed doing because he is leaving tomorrow and Number One Daughter is moving to a new house. It would not be nice to fill the carpets with flea eggs in their very first week.
I went to work, and now Mark is here as well.
He got back to his own taxi to discover it had a flat battery and another flat tyre.
Sometimes the Gods take ages before they get sick of a joke.
I hope they get bored with this one soon.
