We are having a busy night on the taxi rank.
I mean, busy for February, of course, not busy by August standards. I mean that it is only half past eight, and already I have done four or five jobs, which is more than I did all night on Wednesday.
I have just done another one since the last paragraph.
It has been a chilly today, the ground is hard and frosty, and there is an unexpectedly savage breeze, swirling around the fells with icy gusts. I saw two skylarks having a fight high above the fell-top this morning, screaming at one another and pecking and flapping bitterly. It is a bit early for nesting and mating so goodness knows what they had fallen out about, but they were very cross with one another and squeaked and tumbled in mid-air until eventually one of them gave up and soared away.
Probably one of them had filled the other one’s back yard with filthy wet firewood.
I parked my taxi on the newly-installed white line last night and nothing happened, by the way. I hope that this state of affairs continues. The mighty Internet tells me that you are allowed to park on white lines as long as they are not there in order to show that there is no pavement. There is no pavement but you would have to be massively brainless to need a white line to make this clear, the six-foot stone wall next to it does the job pretty well, I think. It is very useful when I am trying to park, the wall, not the white line, obviously. I know I am in the right place when my mirror starts to bend backwards.
I have had a tranquil sort of day. I have a predictable little routine which starts in the morning with firewood and laundry, and finishes up with a frantic flap in the early evening whilst I dash around trying not to be late for work.
Of course nobody but me cares if I am late for work. It is a personal target rather than the sort of thing that HR managers write nasty emails about. I would have been fired long ago if it had been the other sort.
I would probably have been fired even if I had managed to turn up on time. I am completely unemployable. I had to fight very hard against an impulse to boot a customer out this evening, just because of his tiresomely unamusing jests about believing himself entitled to a discount. Had he not been accompanied by a nice elderly lady in the front seat who kept whispering Take No Notice Dear, he would have found himself walking the last couple of miles.
Really I ought to try harder to be patient.
I had achieved all of the morning’s goals and was just embarking on the afternoon project of sending invoices to oil rigs prior to carrying on with my story, when the telephone rang, and it was Elspeth.
She was passing through Windermere and liked the idea of a cup of tea and an afternoon’s gossip.
I liked that idea very much as well.
I liked it a lot more than I liked the idea of scowling at incomprehensible timesheets and doing sums.
I dumped it all without a backwards glance, and five minutes later we were sitting companionably beside a roaring fire, drinking spiced tea and exchanging stories.
We spent the rest of the afternoon doing this, and very nice it was as well.
Sometimes I think my life is very good indeed.
It is probably rather nicer than Mark’s at the moment. They are still trying to mend the crack in the leaking oil rig. He called this evening, hoping that they will sort it out tomorrow.
I hope he has more success than he has had with Oliver’s shower.
I forgot to post this last night and am doing it in haste from my bed this morning,.
Sorry.
