I am never going to go to Heaven.
I have not dusted a single thing today again.
The hoover has not moved.
I am going to have to do something hasty about it before I go to work, because I have been sawing firewood, and everywhere I move a small cloud of sawdust billows out of my dungarees and settles on the carpet. I brushed all of my clothes off before I came inside, but I do not think it helped very much.
I was in bed last night by eleven o’clock and slept like a hibernating bear. I was enjoying this so much that even when I woke up all by myself at eight this morning, I still did not want to move, and lay for ages with my eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, in case my Inner Policeman noticed and made me get up and get on with the day.
Of course you cannot fool your Inner Policeman for ever, and in the end I had to give in and drag myself into life, although this was a very lot less horrible after a good sleep, and I felt suffused with an unfamiliar enthusiasm for the day’s chores.
I think the problem is that I may be beginning to be too old to work until three or four o’clock in the morning. I do not seem able to put my life back on a sensible timetable afterwards any more. I remember in my youth all of the old taxi drivers used to shake their heads sagely at the thought of staying out until the nightclub finished. They buzzed off, like imminent pumpkins, at midnight, whilst we, the young and enthusiastic, stared after them in pocket-filling incredulity.
I have now become one of that austere and time-battered breed.
I have been a taxi driver for almost thirty years. I have at last reached the stage where almost nobody has been doing it for longer than me. As my father observantly commented on yesterday’s diary entry, it is very nice to have a job where one can come and go exactly as one pleases. Indeed, the reluctance to forgo that freedom has made me completely unemployable, although I would add the caveat that one’s idleness must be tempered by the state of one’s bank account. The problem is that generally, no matter how much I would like to shirk at home with Netflix and a takeaway, I have usually spent all of my money by teatime, and must put my shoulder to the earning wheel anew.
Oh, the difficulties of being profligate.
It is now later. I am now on the taxi rank, because at that moment my guilt overwhelmed me. I abandoned these pages and rushed round doing a very indifferent job of dusting and hoovering which would not have won me a slot in the Ideal Homes Exhibition, but which got rid of the worst of the sawdust.
I had really been very sawdusty. When I found myself out of bed by half past eight this morning, I tugged my boots on and took the dogs over the fells. I would like to say this was enthusiasm, but it wasn’t. It was in order to get it over and done with. I have also been feeling guilty about the dogs for a couple of days, and felt that they were owed a small happiness in their humdrum little lives.
I jolly well hope they appreciated it. It was raining, hard, and blowing a gale. My hat bowled off over the fellside and I had to rush after it. Rosie rushed after it as well, but did not bring it back the way dogs do in advertisements for Pedigree Chum. She stopped beside it, sniffed it, and then trotted away to investigate something more interesting. I sighed, and splashed back to the path. The fells are as muddy as I have ever seen them. The mud is over the tops of my boots in some places, and I had to pick my way around the edges of the marshiest bits, cautiously. Roger Poopy does not like mud, and followed me, but Rosie did not appear to care, and barrelled along with seeming indifference to the difficulty of being chest-deep in a mixture of slime and cow dung.
I was most reluctant to allow her back into the house afterwards and it has been one of the contributory factors to my cleaning-related guilt.
I was not at all sorry to get home. I was trying to pretend that there was a wonderfully bracing effect to the fresh air and the exercise, but actually I was just wet. I thought, resignedly, that I might as well get the outside chores done, since I was sodden and filthy anyway, and sawed up all of the timber the builders had left.
Sawdust sticks to wet things. Especially coats, and boots, and hats.
I have attached a picture.
