It was lunchtime when we woke up, and I felt very idle.
Worse, it was considerably after lunchtime by the time we had finished having coffee and contemplating our lives and looking out of the window to see what the neighbours might be doing.
None of them were doing anything very interesting or we would probably have stayed there a bit longer. In any case, most of the neighbours at the moment are not real neighbours. They are people on their holidays, who are irritating because they park in all the wrong places and do not know what to do with their dustbins.
What you are supposed to do is leave your dustbin in the alley so that everybody whose own dustbin is full can use it, and not park in the convenient space at the back of our house, which all of the real neighbours avoid, because they know that it is where we like to park the taxis.
Some other muppet parked there the other day. They were not on holiday. It was some tiresome nuisance who lives in one of the staff houses further up the street. Somebody put a notice on their windscreen telling them to buzz off. It was not us, but I was very pleased.
Our house used to be a staff house. These are houses purchased by the big hotels to accommodate their kitchen porters and waiters and bar staff, and are preferably a long way away from the hotel. You do not want your sophisticated five-hundred-pounds-a-night guests noticing off-duty staff vomiting in the dustbin and having explicit liaisons over the bonnet of somebody else’s Bentley.
Our house had once been a guest house, which made it ideal staff accommodation because of the multiplicity of bathrooms. We bought it when it had reached such a state of dilapidation that even hotel kitchen porters were reluctant to stay in it. We did not mind this, because it was consequently cheap. We took the accident-sodden carpets to the tip and scraped off the peeling wallpaper. It is quite unrecognisably different these days, as an ex-staff member observed when he came to visit a few months ago.
There are quite a few staff houses on our street. Mostly, apart from the ones who supplement their shockingly low incomes by selling drugs, they are reasonably quiet neighbours, and only really distinguishable by the recycling boxes in the alley, which are overflowing with beer bottles.
I do not at all blame them for this. Being a kitchen porter on split shifts must be a fairly horrible life, even in the Lake District when the sun is shining.
It has been shining a bit today, although not very much, and there is a blustery wind which is lending a chill to the air. The leaves are starting to become rust-coloured at the edges, and Mark has spent the afternoon in the yard, sawing up firewood.
There was not enough day left for me to do very much. We had wasted most of it asleep, because of a late Saturday night driving taxis which did not finish until four in the morning.
After that there were all the usual occupations of dog-emptying and laundry to occupy me, and not really time to do anything other than get ready for work, so I came out as early as I could and sat on the otherwise autumnally-deserted taxi rank to read the first book from the University reading list, which, much to my surprise, I am enjoying.
It has turned out not to be a gloom-ridden tome about the inner lives of depressed people, which was what was worrying me. Almost everything that has ever won a Booker prize seems to have this as its central theme, which is probably why this one has not. I am now looking forward to the rest of the reading list very much, and am secretly sorry that it is not longer.
Number Two Daughter rang this morning, and was very kindly enthusiastic about the whole project, offering to purchase a couple of books from the reading list as a present.
Obviously I declined this, because I have got quite a few of the books already, and have not read them yet, but I was very touched and grateful.
Everybody seems to be being very kind. Number One Daughter has been concerned and helpful as well, and rang up the other night to explain about online libraries and referencing websites, and ways to use them all when writing essays.
This is the sort of thing that has changed out of all recognition since last I studied anything, indeed, I had no idea that such things existed, and so I was intrigued and glad of the advice.
It is all taking me a very great deal of my taxi-time to investigate, and I have been glad that it is so quiet here. I have been kept very busy indeed in between customers, and I am going to leave you in order to go away and read some more. I have got to do some preparation for the first lecture, and am feeling very self-important about it.
It is a very serious matter.
I shall go away and concentrate.
