We got up early this morning in a spirit of benevolent public-spiritedness.
You might remember the small and possibly rather less-than-enthralling saga of the council’s drain cleaning activities and the camper van which wouldn’t start. I couldn’t move it from over the top of the drain, and in the end they had to give up and wait for Mark to come home.
He fixed it all, which is what he does so very well, and they poked their squirty thing down the drain, and blasted it all out in a horrible smelly welter of dead leaves and litter and mud.
They couldn’t clean out the other drain at the other end of the square because there were cars parked over the top of it and nobody knew whose they were.
Last night we noticed that the cars had gone.
Nobly, since it was raining, we parked our taxis over the top of the drain and walked home, splashily. Then this morning we rang the council whilst we were having coffee.
We all met up at the newly exposed drain. They unrolled their blasting hoses, and we drove our taxis home, feeling that we had been very public-spirited.
Also that drain floods terribly and we have been macarooned by it before. Long-term readers might recall a dreadful post some years ago in which the camper van is pictured with water lapping in over the sills, at which point we discovered that also the window had been blown open. It was not a splendid moment.
Fortunately it was some years ago, and today the Weather Gods were merely in a mildly irritating, rather than shockingly malevolent, frame of mind. The washing blew dry beautifully before the skies opened and it was soaked again, and so was I when I dashed out to bring it in.
Mark buzzed off to mend somebody’s trailer, which he promised that he would do ages and ages ago, and has not been here ever since. I am trying not to mind this, because it needs to be done, but I am suffering an agony of anxiety about my taxi, which has started coughing and spluttering like somebody who is trying to convince their employer that they have bat-flu, and ought to be allowed a fortnight’s sick leave.
Mark thinks that it is the fuel filter and this morning Autoparts delivered a new one, but of course he was trailer-mending and so it is still not fixed, and I am at work with an embarrassingly grumpy taxi. It keeps stalling and juddering, and sometimes it just won’t start. This is embarrassing when there are customers on board, especially the drunken, jeery type.
So far it is still going, however, which is the only truly important bit, although Mark has got a tow rope in his boot in case of emergencies.
Number Two Daughter called whilst he was trailering this afternoon, to tell me all about her magnificent holiday in Rome, following which she went to Pompeii, and I am quite shockingly envious. She reminded me that when they were small, and we were terribly broke, we used to get brochures from travel agents and plan where we would go if ever we did manage to earn lots of money. I remember doing this, and although I can’t remember where we all thought we might go, I do remember that it was an awful lot of fun having the ideas and imagining all of us wandering around wearing sunglasses and sun cream and looking at ancient columns.
Number Two Daughter thought that she might like Rome, and then went on to study Classical Civilisations, which cemented the idea, and over the last few weeks she has gone.
I also remember that Number One Daughter said she would rather have a fitted kitchen. She has got one of these now, so we are all having a Happy Ever After.
It sounds as though the holiday was every bit as marvellous as we had all hoped it might turn out to be. She said that it made her so happy that she cried, and I had to try not to cry as well when she was telling me about it. There is nothing as wonderful as hearing about somebody who has just had a dream come true.
Once she had gone I sighed and daydreamed about Rome for a little while, before diving back upstairs to my computer to continue with my website-revitalising activities. I have not yet connected it to the Facebook page properly, although you can see the most recent posts there. Also I have started uploading all of my stories to these pages. They are still backstage in the wings, touching up their makeup and singing a few experimental notes, but they are there and in a few short weeks they will appear in the search bar.
I will let you know when to expect them.
