Indeed, as predicted, I am on the taxi rank.
In fact we both are on the taxi rank. We have both been here for quite some time now. As far as I can tell the total of our joint earnings, since we arrived here two hours ago, is four pounds twenty, so I do not think we will be booking ourselves a holiday to the Maldives, or even to Blackpool, any time soon.
It has been a long day.
It has been a very much longer day for Mark, of course, who had to get up in the middle of the night to catch his flight out of Stavanger. He did not get here until lunchtime because he had to fly to Oslo first and then on to Manchester from there.
Having realised that he would be coming back today I did not bother coming back home last night, as you know, because I thought it was unlikely that I would earn sufficient cash to cover the fuel costs, and so there did not seem to be any point.
Hence I stayed at Lucy’s house, drank too much rum and stayed up too late.
I woke up early this morning because the curtain was covering me over on the bed and hence the early-morning light was flooding in at the window.
I packed everything and hung about chatting for a while, before setting off for the airport.
The airport is expensive. All I did was park my car for ten minutes and dash into the terminal to jump up and down waving at Mark whilst he ambled absent-mindedly through the Arrivals gate, completely failing to notice me, and it cost me six quid.
He said, vaguely, that he had not been expecting me to be there, although what he was expecting I don’t know since I had sent him a message with my whereabouts not five minutes earlier.
We exchanged stories all the way up the motorway and came home to the happy discovery that we had not been burgled, flooded or burned down in our absence, and unpacked.
Regrettably we were almost burned down then because we lit the fire and then forgot all about it whilst we got on with doing everything else, and it flared up to set the soot in the chimney on fire.
Smoke billowed out of the top dreadfully, despite us closing all of the dampers down, and Mark had to stay in the front garden to stop any interfering well-wishers from calling the fire brigade.
I am sure you remember my pathological terror of the fire brigade.
I skulked about in the house, quavering and anxious, unpacking things and listening miserably for sirens.
The fire brigade force their way into your house whether you want them there or not, make a ghastly mess, smash bits off your roof and fill your kitchen with water. They have done this to us twice, despite the fact that both times the chimney fire of the time had burned itself out half an hour earlier.
They are paid by the call out and then by the hour, hence they have a vested interest in being a complete nuisance.
Fortunately, fortunately, to my massive relief, they did not turn up, and of course after about ten minutes it went out and the chimney was working normally again.
In fact it will probably be working rather better because all of the soot has now burned off. It is a very good way of getting a clean chimney.
All the same it made for a very fearful afternoon. You can’t even pretend that you haven’t had a chimney fire if they turn up, because they have got heat sensing guns, and they point them at your chimney, and if it is hot then they are allowed to force their way in and open your stove to get the air roaring up the chimney to make sure that any remaining sparks get the best possible chance, and then you are In Trouble with a very lot of mess.
They did that to us once when their detector said that the chimney was forty degrees, about the temperature of hand-washing water. They told us that it was warmer than it should be and smashed the ridge tiles off the roof to get a better look.
I am not going to talk about the fire brigade any more, because they did not turn up, and so that was all right. Everything is all right. We are unpacked and the house has not been wrecked.
I can rest easily tonight.
I am still quaking a bit when I think what a narrow escape we have had.
