Copper’s parent

The picture is of Lucy’s new house guest, who I think may have moved out now.

She is doing very well with all this adulting business, even at difficult times. It is not easy when you have an unexpected guest, especially one who does not need Krav Maga to be scary.

She starts her new career in the police tomorrow. I will be the parent of a copper. This is not as difficult to imagine as it once was, because the police are not grown-ups any more, and I think the average age of the entire Cumbrian force is about fourteen, even if you factor in the Commissioner.

I once remember somebody saying to me that you knew you had properly grown up when policemen stopped calling you Sonny and started calling you Sir. I know now that you have properly grown up when you are the one who is calling the policeman Sonny.

Be that as it may, Lucy will be one from tomorrow. She is very nervous. She has spent most of this week in the gym, trying to achieve a peak of physical fitness. She has been lifting weights and trundling along running machines for five hours every day, so I imagine that when she gets her uniform it will now be far too big.

This is not an experience  I am expecting to share at any time soon.

I finished making her curtains today, much to my relief. I considered all sorts of modifications, like adding ruffles and tie-backs, but in the end I ran out of time and interest and just produced plain curtains. I had a bit of a fabric-crisis, because of having been on a tight budget, so I suspect that they will only just be long enough, but only just will work perfectly well, so fingers crossed. They are heavy blackout curtains, I hope they will be all right. We will take them with us when we go to see her this week.

I was very glad that I had finished with them. My fingertips have got so many leaky pin-holes in them that even writing to you is a bit of an uncomfortable ordeal. I had to keep an emergency tissue in my pocket in order to prevent my lifeblood from smearing on to the fabric, what sacrifices we do make for our offspring.

Apart from finishing the curtains and coming to work I have not achieved very much. Mark has been busy in the building site in the garden, creating a little bridge between the house walls and the roof of the conservatory. This has got to be there because of the pipes that go down the wall. It is better not to have to saw a hole through a glass roof panel for these.

It has been a surprisingly busy night on the taxi rank, surprising, that is, until I realised that it was because Mark and I were practically the only taxis working in the village. I worked this out when one after another, most of the other drivers got in my car, in various states of happy intoxication, and requested that I take them home.

This happens after a busy night, which Saturday was. The economic structure of a taxi business works something like this: people give you money, you spend it. For most taxi drivers their takings burn a hole in their hands long before they get anywhere near their pockets.

I have this difficulty myself. I have lost the ability to do delayed gratification almost completely, the idea of going to work for a whole month before you get paid any actual money is now quite shocking. I had to answer some questions about our income with our mortgage company last year, and the lady on the phone asked how often I get paid. I said that it was roughly every fifteen minutes, but it turned out that there was no space on the form for that, so in the end she wrote down ‘weekly’, which was of course a Lie. I hope that I don’t get in trouble for it.

I did not mind that every other taxi driver was out having a beano around the village, because we are going away ourselves this week. Not only are we going to see Lucy, but we are going to meet my father in Blackpool for our annual jamboree.

We are going on Tuesday, and I am looking forward to it very much indeed.

We will have to earn the money for it on Monday night.

We will have spent everything else by then.