Bleak midwinter

It is very cold indeed. The Bleak Midwinter is upon us.

I know this because I have just been outside to clean my taxi, and it was so cold that by the time I got back indoors I have known warmer fingers on a corpse. You would not wish me to slide silently up behind you on a moonless night and touch you softly on the back of your neck.

It was a bit of a rudimentary clean, so much so that the description Rudimentary is probably unfair to rudiments. It was hasty in the extreme, partly because of the extreme cold but mostly because it was dark. However, this is all right, if I can’t see dirt then probably nobody else will notice it either.

I did, however, give it all a squirt with some expensively middle-class and very woke cleaning spray I got from Lucy. I had seen this advertised on the mighty Internet and wondered about it, it promises to fill your home with blissful floral scents, as well as being kind to the universe and re-using the same glass bottle for the rest of your life. It did not mention taxis, but I thought I would give it a go, and rather to my surprise it turned out to be telling the truth. The taxi had become a bit revolting after the dogs ate a lamb bone in the boot the other night, and it has ponged ever since. This evening a customer got in and said, rather to my surprise, It smells nice in here.

I have squirted the kitchen with it as well. I will go home to a fragrant paradise.

I managed to finish the day’s chores so quickly that I was a bit early to go to work, so I thought I would write to you first, thus freeing up valuable taxi time for spreading insalubrious gossip with the other drivers and scrolling pointlessly through the august Sunday Telegraph, discovering what the outraged middle-classes think about our beloved leaders’ latest activities. However, I had hardly written the first paragraph when my telephone rang, and proceeded to ring again every few minutes for the next hour, so I am writing from the taxi rank much as usual. Of course it is still very quiet here, so I imagine I will have plenty of time to waste later. Nobody is going anywhere much on a freezing Sunday evening in January.

Actually, I am having to fight very hard against a consuming longing to hibernate. It seems very unfair that squirrels are just allowed to slope off into their nut-stuffed holes and snooze for the winter whilst I am busily ploughing on with life. Not that I would like to sleep in a hole, stuffed with nuts or otherwise, which sounds darkly chilly and uninviting. Our house had cooled down so much when I went to Lucy’s the other day that it took me ages to warm it up again. This is because when I am not there the fire goes out, obviously.  I have been piling great heaps of logs on it ever since, roaring up the chimney with brilliant orange flames, and it has slowly warmed up, but I am feeling disinclined to go anywhere else in a great hurry. It is nice being at home, almost-hibernating, quietly.

I am sorry to say that I have failed to fix my taxi. I changed the fuse in the windscreen washer to no avail, and jacked up the back to try and fix the boot lock, also with no noticeable result. I was downcast about this, but not sufficiently so to try something else. It is all a bit chilly and unfriendly outside. Life is much nicer at the side of the fire.

I think I might have an early night.