And after all that, here I am on the taxi rank once more.
I don’t mind this in the least. Not only is it Double Time, but also I like it here. It is peaceful, and I am worn out after a brilliant Christmas.
It seems to have been absolutely frantically busy, with people coming and going, logs being piled on to the fire, leaking poopies, and so much to eat and drink that I have long given up on the guilty wondering about how many calories, exactly, I have consumed in the last hour. The numbers have become too big to be counted.
I am going to have to go back to porridge and fruit an a day or two, and actually I am rather looking forward to it. It will be lovely to have no excitements about to happen, including dietary ones. Dull is quite pleasantly relaxing sometimes.
There isn’t any excitement happening here on the taxi rank. It is very quiet. I have been here for half an hour and nobody has needed a taxi yet.
Oliver is supervising the doors of the pub opposite, not that they seem to need very much supervision. He seems to be hanging about chatting to other bouncers and saying Goodnight to the handful of people that amble out occasionally. He is wearing a new pair of boots which Number One Daughter gave him for Christmas. He is very pleased with them indeed, not least because they make him look about an inch taller. He keeps standing next to Mark and grinning.
He does not measure himself next to me any more. He is already towering above me.
Everybody went home today. Number One Daughter and her poor exhausted family called by to say, with some relief, that they were on their way back to the south. They have moved house since the pantomime. That does not sound like very much, but it has been an absolutely gargantuan achievement. They have driven more than a thousand miles up and down motorways, loaded and unloaded vans, screwed furniture together, cleaned carpets and finished off painting, in between getting everything ready for Christmas. In other words, they did all of that as well as having done all of the things that have worn me to a frazzle this last few weeks, and they seem to have managed it without getting cross with all of the rest of us.
I would have been being horrible to everybody by now if I had had all of that to do.
Number One Son-In-Law has been trying to encourage me to use the AI thing that writes letters for you. I am sure it is very useful, but the letter he showed me used Inquire, instead of Enquire, as if I was an industrial tribunal or an American, and so I am not yet convinced of its competence. I am concerned that if we British people start using it and don’t thoroughly know the differences we will finish up with American as our lingua franca, and so I might still take a stand for correct British usage and stick to real writing.
Elspeth and Caitlin called round this morning to collect their car, abandoned on Christmas Eve after an excess of joyous gin-drinking. The neighbours in the back alley didn’t know it was ours, and put rude notes on it, as if it was a holiday cottage visitor, which made us laugh, because they pretended that it was blocking the garage doors, which of course it wasn’t because the garage belongs to the builders, all of whom have been in the pub since the twenty fourth.
They, Elspeth and Caitlin, not the neighbours, obviously, stayed for a cup of tea and a short Christmas debrief, which was rather a nice winding-down. They helped us eat some more Christmas cake. This turned out brilliantly in the end, by the way, it has hardly collapsed at all despite being at least seventy percent brandy. The pile of cherries on the top also worked, soak them in brandy for a couple of weeks first as well. This saved loads of faffing about with cake decoration, and it looked just like a picture from a broadsheet colour supplement, what a smugly self-satisfied feeling that was.
Also brandy flavoured cherries are really nice.
Lucy and Jack have gone home as well, after a final round of farewell cups of tea and still more cake, along with some mince pies that I had dragged out of the freezer and shoved in the oven. There was whisky on the table, but everybody seemed to feel that they had had enough of that.
That is a nice feeling. We are replete.
It is lovely not to be wishing for anything at all.
