It is very lovely to be back at home, and I am feeling very contented.
I came down to the taxi rank this evening and lots of other taxi drivers waved at me as I chugged down the hill. I have occupied the time ever since in telling them all about our adventures.
Quite a few of them are of a musical bent, and so had got interested and interesting observations to make.
I do like being a taxi driver.
It has been a day of dashing about, and I had barely completed half of everything I had thought I might do before I had to come rushing out to work.
I have got all of our respectable clothes washed, although some of them are still pegged on the washing line, and our very smartest respectable clothes have gone to the dry cleaner. They were not really very dirty, but it will be much nicer to put them on next time if they are crisp and fresh and clean and scented with lavender. Putting on a dress that smells faintly of ancient garlicky picnic, even one with memories of champagne and sunshine, is not going to make me feel like Cinderella at the moment of magical transformation, usually around the end of Act One.
The dry cleaner does not scent them with lavender. I do that bit. Indeed, I have been growing some in the front garden for the very purpose.
I took the dogs over the fell. Oliver and Emily have taken them every day during our absence, but they charged about with such boneheaded joy, woofing at imaginary squirrels and rolling in ancient badger dung, that you could quite easily have believed that they had spent the last month shut in a cupboard with all of their paws gaffer taped together.
Guffy does not come on the fell walk with us, only the last walk of the day, when it is too dark for anybody to notice a little cat sliding through the shadows. All the same, she has kept a very watchful eye on me all day, in case I slip away again, and when I sat down to send the meter readings to the electricity board she climbed on to my knee and wrapped all four paws around my wrist, claws firmly dug in, to make sure I did not escape. There was no escaping after that point, not without some laceration, and I just had to wait until one of the dogs distracted her attention and she bounced off in pursuit.
Oliver came with me to Booths to replenish the cupboards. There are five of us at the moment, because Ritalin Boy is still here, and we seem to be eating an awfully lot. I made a list of everything that everybody likes, although it wasn’t much use because I put it in the bottom of the trolley and it had disappeared beneath an enormous teetering pile of stuff before we even got as far as the yoghurts, so we had to guess after that.
When we got back we summoned everybody to help put it away, so that nobody had the smallest excuse for being hungry because they didn’t know how to hunt down their dinner. I explained to Ritalin Boy that the purpose of crisps and bananas was to prevent his starving to death when faced with my catering deficiencies, and Oliver agreed that this had probably saved his own life in his youth.
Ritalin Boy is fifteen now – fifteen, where did that go? – and is taller than I am. He seems to subsist on the usual teenage diet of cornflakes and Doritos. I am not worried about this because of having ample evidence that it does not turn out to be fatal and that they all start going on and on about protein and fibre and health-giving nutrition in the end, even if you never managed to get them to eat a single vegetable during their entire childhoods.
He will be staying for another week. I am rather pleased about this.
It is nice to have a houseful of young people.
