Sent packing

I think we are nearly ready apart from all of the things I have forgotten.

I know there are lots of things I have forgotten because I keep remembering them in inspired flashes and telling myself I must not forget, after which they promptly disappear again, and no amount of standing in the place I first thought of them helps.

I might be getting a bit anxious.

Today has been a difficult day, because in the manner of all Sundays, it was far too short after the excitement of Saturday night, and although we didn’t get up until eleven we had not had nearly enough sleep, and were weary and staggering for ages.

Saturday night had been busy, although I am pleased to be able to tell you that there was no bloodshed, nobody punched anybody, at least not whilst they were in my taxi, and hardly any people shouted rude words at me. Some did, obviously, because this is part of being a taxi driver, but I had the enormous satisfaction of explaining to them that after that they could expect to walk, and so I did not mind because of considering myself avenged.

Most customers were the usual ones with bad legs who did not wish to walk the two hundred yards up the hill to their hotel, Mark said that he has worn out fifteen cars carrying fat idle people just around the corner. Also there was one customer about whom fortunately I had been warned, who wished to go to the Dormouse. I would have had no idea what he meant had Mark not taken him the night before and was able to explain that he was in fact going to the Dome House, and so I was not obliged to wonder, in my best Received Pronunciation, what on earth he was talking about.

I think this might have been embarrassing all round.

We have spent two whole days packing and worrying. That is to say, I have been packing and worrying. Mark has been ambling about making helpful noises. He does not seem in the least worried. He might not have enough pairs of shorts and he does not seem to care in the least. I have explained why it is important but he just laughed and said that there would probably be shorts shops in Cambridge. He is just completely reckless.

I have been organising lots of food that will be good for me to eat. I had hoped to be thin by now and able to eat normally again but there seems to be no chance of that, and I am still stuck with cottage cheese and raw carrots for a bit longer. I suppose it is just as well because my new shorts are already enormous and if I had got any thinner they would probably just fall off unless I applied some safety pins, so every cloud etc.

I like my new shorts. They are large and will be unobtrusive whatever I am doing, and there is plenty of room for the wind to blow through them, indeed, they are so large that if I tied some string around the legs they could be used as a fairly functional barrage balloon. This is how I like my clothes. CS Lewis mentioned when describing Heaven that there was no such thing as starch or flannel or elastic to be found from one end of the country to the other, and I am in absolute agreement, and would add labels, scratchy seams and polyester to the list.

There are still lots and lots of things left to be done, not least that if we are going to be away for a whole week I want to leave the house tidy and clean, how dreadful if we had burglars and they looked at all the dust, so tomorrow we are really going to get out of bed early, really truly, and make everything lovely to come home to.

After that we will be off. The camper van is very nearly packed now.

This time tomorrow I will not be on the taxi rank, for the first time in ages.

We will be gone.