Fortunately I have got two jerseys on.
I am on the taxi rank and the heater is still not working. It will only blow, very noisily, on Full, and it does not get hot. I have got a choice between icy stillness or a jet of cold air.
It is not very nice.
This is not because Mark does not love me, at least I jolly well hope it isn’t, but because he has spent the entire day fitting a new steering rack to it. It needs this, amongst other things, because it has got an MOT next week, and it is an important MOT because it will allow the council to grant it a last year of its taxi licence.
After that it will be too old, rather like me. I am not too old to drive a taxi, although I am beginning to feel a bit like it. You are never too old to drive a taxi. Taxi drivers die in the driving seat. It is ghastly if they die on their day off. We all gather round at their funeral and sympathise about the tragic waste of a good day.
It would fail its MOT without the steering rack, and so that had to happen first. Also it was a long and wearisome job, and there will not be time to do it tomorrow before we have got to start work, and so he has done it today. Tomorrow he has just got to fit a new ball joint and fix the heater.
After that we will just cross our fingers.
I have not been fixing a car. I have been in the house where it was warmer. We have still got the fire lit. It is not just a little fire offering encouragement in the grate now, it is a properly built up winter fire. The trees are fading to shades of yellows and rusty browns, and there are a lot of blackberries, so many that I have practically had my breakfast before I get back from my walk, but it is cold.
Obviously you know that already, unless you are in the South of France or at least somewhere more sun-kissed than Windermere. Actually it has been sunny, just accompanied by a chill wind which has dried the washing splendidly but does not incline anybody to loitering outside coffee shops.
Mostly I have been doing computery things. I have been filling in a form sent by the Pensions Department. This insists that Ibbetson Limited, our much revered employer, pays us a pension. Well, it is doing, except I am a little hazy about the details, and this might be obvious, especially to the eagle-eyed Inland Revenue.
We have been paying into things called SIPPs. I do not know if they will provide us with sufficient funding to support us in our rapidly-approaching old age, but I am sure they will help a bit. Basically I have just chucked some cash into them every time somebody gives us some. This has worked reasonably well, until a letter arrived from the Pensions Department the other day demanding to know the Company Pension Plan number that had been allocated to this scheme.
Obviously I have no idea, and a quick trawl across the investment company’s pages was of no help whatsoever. Also I do not know who is actually paying the pension, whether it is us personally, or Ibbetson Limited. I do not think it matters very much, because it is supposed to be tax free, but the Pensions Department wanted to know, and I was entirely puzzled to explain.
In the end I ticked some randomly-selected boxes, the way a schoolchild does when faced with a test for which they have done no preparation whatsoever, but which fortuitously turns out to be multiple choice. I have many recollections of this experience from my youth, and it is depressing to realise that I have perpetuated the pattern into my adult life. I resolved to go away and Learn About Pensions, in order to become wise and knowledgeable. Then next time somebody asks me what sort of pension I have got, I will know, instead of just blathering on about things like The Rolls Royce Shares Have Done Well But Disney Tanked, Maybe I Should Sell, which is the extent of my interest in my pension so far.
I need to become better informed.
I will become a Better Person.
Maybe tomorrow.
