Mark has taken the dogs out.
He has also taken their ball. I can hear them barking with the thrilling excitement of it even from here, and they are out in the Library Gardens.
He has also fixed my car. I am pleased about this because that has been a tiresome nuisance. Something has been leaking water out, and every time I have stopped on the taxi rank I have had the tiresome ritual of opening and closing the passenger door, behind which the bonnet catch is inexplicably hidden, jumping out and opening the bonnet, dashing round to the back to get the gallon of water out, slugging half of it into the water tank, shoving the water bottle back in the boot where it rolls around irritatingly for the rest of the night, and then dashing back to shut the bonnet before leaping back into the driver’s seat.
This is frustratingly irritating even when it is not raining, and it has rained quite a lot over the last fortnight. It is especially irritating when would-be mechanic customers see me doing it and give me unnecessary and inaccurate advice about what the problem might be and what I ought to do about it. Their solution, in almost all cases, has been to get A Man to look at it.
My customer service skills are just about as bad as they possibly could be, but even I am too polite to say what I think.
Today A Man did look at it and replaced it with the spare bit purchased from the scrap yard several weeks ago, and it is now running smoothly again, and without the benefit of either a puddle underneath, or a watery trail behind me, like a sort of liquid Hansel and Gretel.
I am especially pleased because it means that the heater will work again. It has not been working properly since the water started leaking. Here is a handy piece of general knowledge, if the heater in your car stops blowing hot air, probably your car has run a bit short of water. My car was pouring water out almost as fast as I could pour it in, and the weather has turned chilly.
I have been discontented about this for weeks.
I do not need to be discontented any more. I will be able to be warm at work.
This will be a good moment.
I do not think we are going to go to work tonight. Last night was so monumentally rubbish it really won’t make much difference whether we do or not, and I am hoping that tonight we can go out to the nice Indian restaurant to eat.
I have not eaten any porridge for breakfast in anticipation, so I can eat Mango Butter Chicken With Pilau Rice with a scrupulously clear conscience.
I hope we go soon. I am absolutely ravenous now.
I have barely had time to eat anything anyway. I have had a shock today.
You might remember that I sent all of the taxi paperwork off to the council a couple of weeks ago in order to get a new plate for my taxi.
The new plate had not materialised, and so yesterday I sent a polite email reminding them.
They telephoned me this morning saying that they had not had any paperwork, and that my taxi licence would expire today. My taxi is too old to be newly-licensed, and so if I did not fix the problem Instantly, I would no longer have a taxi, not tomorrow or ever again.
The council does not jest about this sort of thing. They mean it.
I was up at the top of the fell at the time.
I was horrified.
I collected the dogs and we jog-trotted all the way back, gasping and puffing and practically sobbing with the horror of it.
When I got home I tore off my boots and dashed upstairs to the computer.
I found the email I had sent to them and copied it, along with the dozens of necessary attached documents. I sent it again.
Then I called them.
It still hadn’t arrived.
I sent it to their old address. Then I sent it to their new address. Then I sent it to their other new address. Then I sent each document individually to all of their addresses.
Eventually the council lady telephoned to tell me that her inbox had been stuffed to the gills with beseeching taxi applications from me, and would I kindly desist.
She called back this afternoon to say I could collect the new plate, and that I still have a taxi.
I was humiliatingly grateful.
I do not know what went wrong, but in the hot liquid relief of it being now right, I do not care.
I still have a taxi.
I could sit on the taxi rank if I wanted.
I think I would just rather go out to dinner.
