Fortunately it did not start raining until I came out to work, because I was doing some outside things.
Obviously I had the washing to peg out in the garden, and there was lots of it, because the sofa cover had come to smell so strongly of revolting muddy dog that I noticed even over the glorious scent of newly-flowering lilies in the conservatory. Also I was trying to avoid the attentions of the Weather Gods because I needed to clean my taxi.
This was necessary because I had a sicker last night. She was not sick in the actual taxi, but out of the door, despite this gesture towards civilised behaviour, I felt as though the very fabric smelled of intoxicated-person vomit, and knew it must all be cleaned.
She was an especially unpleasant sicker, youthful and repellently arrogant. I told her to get out to be sick, so that it wouldn’t splash all over the taxi, and she refused, preferring just to lean out through the open door from her seat, no matter how determinedly I insisted.
I contemplated expelling her and her friends there and then, and leaving them to walk the rest, but we were almost at their holiday lodge. In any case it was late, I wanted to go home and I thought an argument would probably take ages, so I relented. I wished I had afterwards, because when we arrived, she staggered out and said that she thought I had terrible customer service and a bad attitude, and I ought to work on having more respect for my passengers.
Fortunately she was out of punching range, otherwise I imagine I would have been in a police cell on an assault charge by now.
Anyway, the upshot of that was that my first job of the day, once the dogs had been thoroughly emptied, was to scrub all imaginary traces of her misfortune firmly out of my taxi. It needed it anyway, it has travelled several hundred miles since its recent MOT, and it was beginning to feel a bit weary and dusty.
It had been a very late night. Rather to my surprise, the nightclub had been packed to the seams with noisy revellers, because it has been fairly empty for the last few weeks, and the last hours of the night became unexpectedly busy. Mark did not call me until lunchtime today, but I was still fast asleep and could not quite work out who he was or what he wanted, after which there was no point in trying to convince him that I had been up and busily labouring at my domestic duties for simply ages.
It was a good job he did call, because idleness is such a tempting pastime that I could easily have slept the day away. Instead, I took the dogs out on what turned into a very blustery walk, and then came home for the usual Sunday tasks of taxi-scrubbing, the cooking of the week’s taxi-picnics, and the still-unfinished pile of ironing teetering in the conservatory.
This, as you will remember, is our collection of newly-laundered middle-class costumes, left over from our weeks of extravagant gaieties. It takes ages to organise a properly middle-class appearance, really I don’t know how other people manage it, especially the ones who have to do it for work every day. Between the ironing and the dry-cleaning and the shoe-polishing I can’t imagine why on earth ladies’ maids went out of fashion. Certainly I could have done with one, if only to do the gossiping in the dry cleaner’s on my behalf.
Anyway, I have still not finished the ironing, despite dashing into the conservatory to do just another few minutes, every time I am waiting for the kettle to boil or for the microwave to ding. In any case I have come across a difficulty. When I have ironed things I have had to leave them, pristine and newly-flattened, on hangers from the shelf in my office. I have asked Mark to put a new clothes rail in the attic for me, because the existing one is absolutely full of his suits and overcoats, but probably he doesn’t love me enough because the new one purchased for the task is still leaning untidily at the bottom of the children’s stairs.
He can do it when he comes home, and after that he can fix my tyre and the bathroom light switch.
He will be back for an entire half day.
I am sure he will have loads of time.
