Award winners

We have had a lazy day.

I spent the first hour of it on the phone to my friend Elspeth, whose clever daughter has just won a scholarship to Gordonstoun and will be starting along with Oliver in September.

Caitlin is going in to the sixth form. Elspeth is very pleased about it but the scholarship does not cover all of the fees, and hence Elspeth is already starting to engage in the endless mental arithmetic that plagues all public school parents.

It goes along the lines of: “If we could perhaps win the lottery then we won’t need to remortgage the house, and then perhaps we could sell the car and manage with a bicycle, and I wonder if we really need electricity and a telephone.”

It is nice to have company.

During the call her dog came rushing in being a muddy sort of nuisance, in the way of dogs. I was on the other end of the telephone and beyond wet-dog-shaking range, and so could make encouraging remarks about the happiness of dog ownership, even if they are tiresome and smelly.

Roger Poopy, whose command of English is becoming depressingly proficient, was obviously listening keenly, because he instantly leaped on my knee and started to lick my ear, compliments don’t come his way very often, and he was going to make the most of it.

I had just trodden on a walnut shell and was not feeling very dog-friendly. I chucked him off and he retired to the children’s bedrooms in search of love and affection.

He might have persuaded Lucy. Oliver was not there, being at the barber’s shop. He has been learning how to answer the phone and take bookings, and is feeling very grown-up. I am glad about this, it seems his career is taking off already, you never know when you might need it. If it turns out that he does not want to be Prime Minister it might be handy to have a Plan B.

He arrived home for his lunch in a state of great happiness, because the barber’s shop has been given an award for being the Best Barber’s Shop In The North West.

Keef and Stee had gone off to collect the award today. Oliver was very pleased to be a small part of such a splendid event, and I thought so too. It is an ace thing to happen. They are a nice collection of young men, and a good influence on Oliver, albeit in a tattooed and pierced kind of way.

After Oliver came home we sloped off upstairs for a sleep before work. It is the last weekend before Christmas, and likely to be busy.

We are on the taxi rank now. I am feeling very pleased with myself tonight. I have added a cushion to my car seat which seems to have resolved some of my more irritating difficulties with indigestion and sore shoulders.

The driver’s seat in a taxi tends to become uncomfortably rubbish over the years. This is because whereas most people only sit in their car when they are going somewhere, taxi drivers sit in them for hours and hours for all of the rest of the time as well. The foam in the seat becomes compressed, and eventually it turns into a seat which could have actually been designed to cause backache.

My taxi is good for backache. It is a sort of car called a Doblo, built by some Italians, so perhaps it is an inbuilt revenge for us wanting to leave the EU.

Unfortunately, the heavier the taxi driver, the worse the problem. If you must buy a used car from a taxi driver, make sure he is skinny. Never mind looking at  pictures of the car on eBay. Get them to send you one of the driver.

I have put a cushion on the back of mine, and so far this evening I do not have backache at all, and am feeling very cheerful about this. It is a happy evening.

There are not many evenings to go now before it is Christmas, just tonight and tomorrow, and then it is Christmas Eve.

I am starting to feel excited all over again.