The chatty taxi driver still has a mother-in-law at home.
Hence I am writing to you in an unexpected break whilst he has dashed off to take a customer somewhere.
This is unexpected because it is very quiet at the moment, last night I managed a grand total of three customers.
I did not mind this because it was pleasant to sit in the cool of the evening, watching the world wagging past and vaguely listening to irate stories of Uber’s rascally doings whilst I nodded and smiled tranquilly.
Not only was last night peaceful, today has been a very splendid day as well.
Of course this was mostly because of the sunshine. Those of you who are grumbling about the heat can consider it a misfortunate side effect of being sufficiently wealthy to purchase a house south of Birmingham. Up here in the Lake District it is absolutely perfect.
A cool breeze accompanied our walk this morning. Not sufficiently cool to make me chilly, just cool enough to make the upwardly mobile bits pleasantly comfortable. The dogs charged about and barked for a while, and then flung themselves into the tarn to cool off, after which we all pottered home in no haste whatsoever.
Oliver and Emily were heading off to Blackpool as we arrived back. They are meeting Lucy and Jack there, and spending a few days roister-doistering together., which sounds splendid.
Also it means that I don’t have to worry about anybody else’s laundry or catering arrangements.
Hence I busied myself with my own catering arrangements.
In discussion with Oliver the other day an item called a Burrito was discussed. It was, as it happened, in the context of people taking out loans with a thing called Klarna to purchase them, but as we ridiculed those who were so misfortunately short of cash, it dawned on me that I did not know what a Burrito might be, and so I asked Oliver.
It turned out that it is basically a beef and cheese sandwich, only in a wrap.
I thought they sounded very nice, so I looked up the recipe.
Once I had got the general idea of what Burritans did, I made my own recipe, because I thought it sounded nicer.
I fried mincemeat and garlic and chillis, and then I fried onions and celery and rice. I mixed them all together, added tomatoes and lots of vegetables and about half a pound of coriander with huge dollops of smoked paprika. Then I sloshed in some stock and half a bottle of red wine that Lucy and Jack had brought back from the Indian restaurant, and which was too acidly unpleasant for any of us to risk drinking.
I had to be careful because I wanted the resulting mix to be sticky, and not runny, and it turned out perfectly.
I spread wraps with yoghurt and dolloped the mixture into the middles and grated cheese on them. Then I rolled them up into parcels and wrapped them in tin foil. There were about a dozen by the time I had finished, so I stuck most of them into the freezer.
I have had one for my taxi picnic this evening, and I can tell you that it was truly splendid.
This activity occupied a disproportionately large part of the day, and of course resulted in me turning up late for work. This doesn’t matter, of course, since there isn’t anybody to wag a finger and say What Time Do You Call This You Miscreant? and I wouldn’t care if there was, which is why I don’t have a proper job.
It has been a very happy sort of day. I have finished off some paperwork which has been nagging at me for ages, and resolved the squabbles we have been having with our telephone provider, and despite being late for work I found myself singing a cheery song as I brought the washing in.
Also something very nice happened.
I was shopping in Booths and looked longingly at the bunches of flowers, which I couldn’t afford after last night’s completely inadequate taxi performance, so I turned my face to the road and ignored them.
When I got home I was passing through the conservatory when Guffy bounced through the flower bed.
When I looked at her I saw long, long stems stretching upward, above the canopy of leaves, leading to a handful of glorious lilies, white ones and deep purple ones
The foliage is so dense in the conservatory that I had not noticed them.
I cut them, and put them in a vase with some lavender and huge ferns out of the front garden and some feverfew which grows in the road outside, a descendant of some long-ago feverfew we had in the garden before we had a shed, and which seems completely inextinguishable.
I was covered in yellow pollen by the time I had finished, but they smell utterly divine, and they are on my dressing table.
They make me smile every time I go into the bedroom.
It is wonderful to have sunshine.
