I am rushing to write this in a hasty five minutes before I go out to work. Any longer than that and I will be late.
There might even be a gap in the middle where I have got to dash off and resume later.
I have had the busiest of busy days. It didn’t even start when I got up. It started yesterday. There were millions of people in Bowness last night, all wanting to go miles and miles, so I made a fortune and didn’t get home until four.
By the time I had emptied the dogs and had a shower and stood on one leg for a bit it was almost six. The skies were bright and the birds were in full noisily throated song. I do not know why birds insist on getting up so early. I know about catching worms, but by the look of my compost heap there are just as many worms in it at half past two in the afternoon as there are in the middle of the night.
Anyway, the birds were up and so was I.
I did not stay up. I collapsed into bed and would have been there a lot longer if Rosie had not earnestly desired to go outside for a wee at ten o’clock this morning.
I revenged myself on them both by giving them a bath, even before we had gone out for our walk. This was not exactly counter-productive, although Rosie did dive in every muddy puddle she could find on the way up, and there were lots, but because I could no longer bear Roger Poopy’s revolting badger-poo cologne pong. He rolls in this whenever he can find it, in the fond belief that it makes him seem virile and masculine. It might work for Rosie but means he is barred from the sofa.
I dragged the cover off their sofa and stuck it in the washing machine, and then we went up the fell.
When we got back it was not raining. This is something of a novelty in the Lake District at the moment, it has rained incessantly, presumably some villain has upset the Weather Gods about something. I do not know who did this but I would like to have some sharp words with them.
Anyway, we had a temporary burst of dryness, and so I resolved to fix my Desperate Anxious Problem, which was that my car is leaking water into the engine which will, in time, blow the head gasket. I do not know what a head gasket is, I just know the words, which makes me sound technically competent, which I am not.
I have got to drive up to Gordonstoun soon, and so it needed to be resolved with some urgency.
The cure for it, as I think I have told you, was to fill the radiator with some special Leak Glue. The problem was that the radiator had got to be emptied first.
Mark assured me that this would not be a problem. All I would need to do, he said, was put the car up on the ramps and take the hose off the bottom of the radiator, and all the water would just fall out, what could possibly go wrong.
There is a long, long list of things that could go wrong, starting with not actually being able to identify the radiator.
Actually it started with hoping that I would be able to aim the car at the ramps properly and then stop driving it once I got to the top. It would not be a good idea to carry on after that point. This is not as easy as it sounds, I can tell you, and nobody was more surprised than me when, after a few anxious mishaps, the car got to the top of the carefully-sited ramps and stayed there.
I left it in gear, just in case.
Then I had to take a plastic bit off the bottom, because it was covering everything up and I couldn’t get to the hose. I couldn’t find the spanner for this. Mark had hidden them.
I dragged it off.
Then the hose.
It was fastened with a cursed invention called a Spring Clip. You have got to squeeze the two little tabs together with some pliers and the ring around the pipe comes loose.
This required somebody with hands like bunches of bananas and a weightlifter’s grip like Number One Daughter. I couldn’t find any pliers and in any case could neither squeeze the tabs together nor loosen the pipe. After half an hour, during which every possible tool for the job was scattered around me like confetti at a Hell’s Angels wedding, I was filthy, battered, and cross.
Of course I got it off in the end, at which point half a gallon of anti-freeze-filled water cascaded out and gave me an impromptu shower. I was as pleased about it as the dogs had been about their shower in the morning.
I ran the engine and faffed about until every last drop of water had squirted out of the tank, and then had to put the hose back, only this time I was lying in a puddle.
I could not get the wretched clip back on. No matter how I tried.
In the end I hung it on a hook in Mark’s workshop, where it will probably remain until the End of Time, and put a Jubilee Clip on instead. I looked at it anxiously several times afterwards to see if it was leaking, but it looked all right so maybe it works.
I refilled the water, following the instructions carefully, ran the engine and checked the temperature, and poked the newly-installed Jubilee Clip to see if it was leaking, which it wasn’t, as far as I could tell.
I put everything away and washed my hands four or five times, using the scrubbing brush, but I do not think they will ever be the same again anyway. My fingernails are black.
Then since I was on a roll I thought I would do lots of other things that I didn’t want to do, so I watered the conservatory and swept and mopped the kitchen. After that I brought the washing in and cleaned out my taxi.
This was all just in time, because at the very moment that I finished the Weather Gods got back from their day out. I do not know where they had been, probably Blackpool. Anyway, the skies opened and the rain poured down once again.
I did not mind then. I had had a Day of Great Achievement.
I have cleaned and mended my taxi. I have watered the poor wilting conservatory. I have got two clean dogs and a clean sofa, although I acknowledge that all things are relative. I have got a kitchen floor upon which I can walk barefoot in comparative comfort. I have been to work and earned some money, more now than when I started because I am now at work, have almost finished, in fact, although I don’t expect you will have noticed the join where I dashed off hurling flasks of tea into my bag. Indeed, I have done even better than that, because when I was cleaning the taxi I found three quid under the back seat.
I have also got black fingernails, so it is a good job Prince William was last week.
