Trim

It is the middle of the afternoon and I am on the taxi rank.

I like this. The daytime taxi rank is not the same as the night time one. This one is next to the steamer piers, and offers a rather splendid view out across the lake towards Langdale.

I am trying to earn some extra cash because I want to go shopping tomorrow.

This is the very splendid thing about this job. If you run out of money, which we do, often, you can just go out and earn some more.

I will have to stop in a little while anyway, because my taxi did not pass its MOT today and needs some more fixing.

Mark was still sticking spanners underneath it until ten o’ clock last night, because he did not start until he got home from work. I could not go out to work then, obviously, because my taxi was standing on axle stands. I could not use his taxi because it was full of all of his things for work. He parked it behind my taxi with the boot open so that he could put tools there and keep them dry, because it was raining. This is a horrid way to have to mend a taxi.

I could not help, so I sewed curtains and got dinner ready.

We went to bed as soon as we had eaten dinner. I had been up for most of the night before, and Mark was tired and cross from an excess of rural broadband and taxi repairing.

Things seemed a bit brighter this morning. Mark buzzed off and I took the dogs up the fell. It is my running day, so instead of boots I wore a special pair of plimsolls. These make my feet feel really light until they fill up with water, when they seem to behave like buckets, which was what they did this morning.

I was a bit late starting off, because I met one of our neighbours in the alley at the back of our house. This was an interesting meeting because it has turned out that he used to go out with the shouty rude  lady who you might remember was horribly abusive and then buzzed off without paying her taxi fare the other week.

He played me some messages from her on his phone.

They were truly shocking, full of threats and rude words. If she wasn’t a fairly flabby unfit sort of person I would be frightened that she was going to smash her way into his house and murder him. As it is I don’t think we need to worry about that because she seems to be drunk the whole time, and he goes to the gym a lot. I think he could probably manage to put her in an arm lock and subdue her until the police arrived, even if they had to come from Kendal.

He said that he had told the police but that they said they could not do very much because there are only three of them and they are too busy. He said that the police lady told him that if you used to go out with somebody it is not so bad to make threats towards them.

She has been ringing up his current girlfriend and his ex wife as well. I don’t know why the police have not arrested her for that, because they have not been going out with her.

I hope we get some more policemen soon. This is very rubbish.

I splashed up the hill after that. It wasn’t exactly raining, although it was very wet, and my feet and legs were soaked and splattered with little streams of mud by the time we got back.

It was a lot of exercise. I thought perhaps I might be getting thinner until I looked in the mirror.

I had rushed as much as my bursting lungs would allow, because I had to clean my taxi before its MOT.

I hoovered it and wiped it, after which I realised that I was too dirty to get in it, so I had to dash into the house to shower the mud off before I left.

I even stopped at a garage and jet washed the outside of it on my way.

I do like my taxi when it is all clean and shiny.

I walked into town whilst the garage man was inspecting the taxi, because I wanted my hair cutting.

I did not really want it cutting, because you might remember that it is only a couple of weeks since it was cut the last time.

The thing was that when I had got home I had decided that it was not as short as I would have liked it. If it gets wet when it is long at the sides, it dries into horrible corkscrew curls that make me look as though I am getting ready for a 1970s themed fancy dress party. 

I have been looking in the mirror and scowling for the last couple of weeks, so in the end I rang the hairdresser. Today he very kindly trimmed it back, and I bounced out feeling a million times better about the world, apart from the itchy bits around my  collar.

I collected the failed taxi and a new spring and came to work.

Mark is home now. He is going to saw up some firewood before he starts mending the car, so I can stay here a bit longer.

I can get on with the curtains.

Have a picture from my run.