I am writing to you before I go out to work this evening.
I had a spare hour at the end of the day, not enough time to start doing anything useful, but too much time to spend staring absently into space and daydreaming. I thought I might go back to bed for another hour’s bonus sleep, but then contemplated the dreadfulness of trying to compose credible lines of though-provoking entertainment whilst being constantly interrupted by people with bad legs wanting to go around the corner. This always makes me irritable, and then I am not nice to customers.
By three o’clock in the morning I don’t like them very much anyway, especially the ones with the white-crusted noses.
It is Good Friday. It is bank holiday, which is double time, which is wonderful, but also it is raining, which is not.
This means that the anorak-clad hordes will be wet, grumpy and fed up of their whining children. I am fed up of their whining children already and I have not started yet. They will be wandering about behind reversing taxis, strolling into the middle of the road at unexpected moments, and generally cluttering up the place with spilled ice cream and stolen beer glasses.
I am not looking forward to my evening.
I was very tempted just to skulk off back to bed for a snooze, but really had no excuse for such a shirk, since Mark left yesterday, and in consequence, with the bed to myself last night, I slept a dreamless, exhausted sleep for more than ten hours. I would very probably not have woken up even then had he not called me to report on his safe arrival on his oil rig, and his very satisfactory cooked lunch.
I was pleased to hear from him, but felt, guiltily, as though I ought to make some inroads into the day’s adventures, and waddled sleepily out of bed.
I took the dogs out over the fells, which was not a pleasant excursion. Fortunately it was not raining then, but the dogs are still in love with one another and I had to stop every few minutes to bawl at them. They were not at all trying to follow me. They were trying to have a passionate liaison amongst the cow dung and dandelions.
They lose interest in this activity as soon as they get home. I do not understand why. It seems to me to be the absolute inverse of any sensible outburst of passion. For my own part I would not even like to contemplate a romantic encounter on a muddy fell side populated by curious Galloway cattle, no matter how enthusiastic my partner. I think I would be far more inclined to contain my longings until I got home to my comfortably undisturbed cushion in front of a warm fire.
Dogs are just weird.
When we got home I could no longer ignore the bank holiday, and set to cleaning my taxi. I have not bothered to do this for weeks, I think not since Mark came home, and it was horrid. Even I did not want to get in it, and I am not wearing my best ridiculously short dress and a pair of uncomfortable strappy high heels.
I scrubbed it until it began to smell of soap instead of other people’s sweaty feet and stale odours of vapes.
The rain started when I was halfway through, so I got wet, but it was so much better when I had done that I didn’t mind. It will be very nice to go to work tonight in a sweetly-scented taxi in which nothing, so far, is repellently sticky. This is a hopeful start to a bank holiday.
Also I have written to you, and so nothing more demanding is going to be required of me than to drive up and down the hill all evening. This is a very nice feeling. I do not have to rush back to the taxi rank to try and bash out another couple of sentences before somebody bangs on the window and wonders if I will still be there when they come back in ten minutes when their pizza is ready. I can stare into space and daydream and scroll through rubbish on the mighty Internet with a completely clear conscience.
Better still, it is Double Time.
In fact I am feeling considerably more optimistic.
It is going to be a good evening.
