This morning started with the happy, if startling discovery, that HMP Slade had put another hundred quid into our bank.
I have no idea at all why this is. I have had a letter telling me that it is an Alpha EES Adjustment, less PAYE. This is totally incomprehensible to me, in no language at all do I think that the prison service owes me anything. Indeed, I am astonished that they remember me at all. They have faded from my thoughts fairly thoroughly, unless something crops up to remind me, like Lucy’s bleep test, or looking at a menu on which everything is deep fried in batter.
Not that I mind in the least, it is a rather miraculous, straight-from-the-money-Gods compensation for having to miss Friday night at work.
As you know, I did work last night, despite being plague ridden. This was something of an challenge.
I managed all right, though, on the whole. A policeman pulled over next to me at one point during the night, and was sharp and sarcastic about tiresome taxis not pulling out into the road in front of police cars. This surprised me because in my foggy state of consciousness I had no idea at all that I had done anything untoward, and I was not quite sure what he was talking about.
The people I was picking up had been standing in the road watching, and kindly reassured me that I hadn’t done anything of the sort. He was just being grumpy, they thought. Embarrassingly, since I had been in a plague-ridden haze I hadn’t seen him at all, and hence I had not got the first idea whether I had committed a Road Traffic Misjudgment, or whether he was just having a night full of tiresome idiots and wanted to be cross, but since none of us were killed I suppose it was all right really. I drove very carefully after that.
Also somebody paid with a pretend twenty pound note. I was cross with myself about this, under normal circumstances I am far too sharp for this sort of thing, but I missed it. I know who did it, it was a woman about my age going to Kendal. She was really nice all the way, which usually puts me on my guard, because people do this when they are trying to stop you watching carefully. Obviously I wasn’t watching carefully at all, and she must have known this.
I hope she catches the flu.
Anyway, I spent today asleep again, waking up to be irritated by the change in the clocks. The Government does this so that we have got more daytime in which to work, so that we become more productive and better at competing with the Germans, and it works. It is very hard to sit down with a glass of wine and A Game Of Thrones when it is still daylight outside. Even if you have done every single thing that you are possibly supposed to do, when it is still light at nine o’clock at night you still know that there are windows to be cleaned and flower beds to be weeded. I like winter. You can ignore all of this stuff with a completely clear conscience.
Also I have to go to work in the daylight which means that people can see if I haven’t cleaned the taxi, which generally I haven’t.
The picture is Mark and Oliver. I promised Oliver I would be fit to come for a run with him this morning, which turned out to be hopelessly over-optimistic. I went round the Library Gardens with Mark and the dogs, and practically had to be carried back up the garden path, which was when I returned to bed. Mark offered to go with him in my place, and so the two of them dashed off up the fell together, after which Mark cut firewood and Oliver set to emptying his jar of sweets. He has polished off another two today.
I went to sleep, and stayed that way until Roger Poopy came back from the run up the fell. He came to sit next to the bed and barked until I noticed him.
How pleased I was.
