Today I am profoundly relieved to discover that my mother does not feel that her life has been gravely impacted by my failure to celebrate mothers everywhere by posting her a pack of sausages.
I was relieved about this, because today I did not shop in Sainsbury’s, but in Booths, where the sausages are far more ethical but forty nine pence more costly. I looked at them doubtfully but thought probably better not.
Booths did not just have sausages. Booths had a whole display of overpriced fudge in boxes with curly writing, in various pastel hues of blue and pink.
I wonder why pink should be such a popular maternal colour. There was a time when it was considered far too aggressive to be an acceptable colour for girls at all. Probably it is because it reminds us of the colour of fifty-pound notes. I have had cause to be grateful for a lot of these, over the school-fee years, as my parents have dispatched them in my direction with regularity. Indeed, they are the reason we did not need to walk to and from Gordonstoun to collect Oliver at the beginning of the holidays.
Beside the fudge were some strategically placed bottles of gin, also in a choice of pastel blue or pink, presumably for the parents of more tiresome children. I was almost tempted by the gin, but on examination it cost about fifteen pounds more than the identical gin in a boring glass bottle, so I didn’t.
Sorry, Mum.
We are getting ready for work. Tonight is going to be an especially irritating night because it is the night of the extra hour, which the government, along with lots of other governments, think gives us a longer day.
I am reminded of the words of some Red Indian (insert whatever you are supposed to call them now if you are concerned about this description) who said, very wisely: If you cut a strip off one end of a blanket and then sew it on to the other end, only the Government would think you had a bigger blanket.
I do not at all like the daylight shifting to the other end of the day, preferring the opportunity for idle drinking and other indolence that comes with early darkness. Nevertheless, this is not the difficulty we will have tonight. Tonight we will be stricken by the supremely irritating nuisance that all of the cash machines will cease to function at one o’clock, and will remain inoperative for an hour.
This is a complete and utter disaster when you are driving a taxi.
Everybody has always spent all of their money by the time they get in, and visits to cash machines happen with practically every customer.
It is going to be beyond tiresome. Bank transactions don’t work at all. We are going to have a difficult night.
I refused to take one set of customers last night. They came stomping up to the taxi rank, and looked at me. Then they said, loudly: We’re not getting in with her. She’s reading. Well, if she’s too busy to take us then she can get lost, except they didn’t say get lost.
Then they went over to the other taxi, who was Mark, and said equally loudly: We’re not getting in with him. We don’t like him. He’s got an attitude problem.
Mark does not have an attitude problem. Mark is unfailingly tolerant and kindly and polite. I have never managed to understand how he does this.
They came back to me.
I have got an attitude problem.
I looked up from my book. I looked them up and down, and said that I was closed. Then I wound my window back up.
They got very cross. They said that they would report me to Hackney Carriage, which is what it says on the side of my taxi. I failed to be concerned about this and told them that they could report me to all of my employers if they liked, but they were still walking.
They did. It was up a steep hill. They were fat.
It is what happens when you are horrible to somebody with an attitude problem.
