I have been sewing on buttons.
This turned out to be one of those jobs that starts in a very tiny way, like a snowball thrown from the top of a Swiss ski resort.
Oliver had a button missing from his trousers, and so whilst I had my button jar in my hands I thought I would sew some more buttons on to things. There were several of these, mostly quilt covers, and after a very short while there were buttons everywhere and I had put my glasses down somewhere temporarily undiscoverable, and I was late for work.
These things are sent to try us.
I have, however, made a very happy discovery in the work-related programme.
I had not realised that the bank holiday was not being held on a Monday, as is usually the case, but on both Thursday and Friday.
I am aware that this indicates that I have not been paying attention.
I had thought that the Queen’s coronation-birthday was on Monday, so it is a jolly good job that I found out in time, how embarrassing to send a card on the wrong day.
Not that I have sent a card yet anyway. It will probably have to be the sort that says Sorry I Forgot Your Platinum Jubilee. I expect they will have some in the Post Office.
I relayed this to Mark this morning. He has not been paying attention either, and was as surprised as I was.
This has meant that we have had to have a bit of a rethink about our week, and very pleasing it is too.
We have got to have Oliver back to school on Monday, which we had thought was a Double Time Bank Holiday. We thought we would have to work all night on Sunday night to try and make up some lost Double Time, followed by charging off up to Scotland to return him in time for his exams, probably followed by going to sleep at the end of the school drive again.
What a happy discovery it has been.
Sunday night will only be single time, everybody will have gone home anyway, and the night-club will be closed. We will have extracted every last penny from Double Time on Thursday and Friday, and so we will no longer give a hoot. We can set off in a carefree and light-hearted manner whenever we get up on Sunday, or at least after we have taken the last tourists to the station.
On the slightly less encouraging side of things, we have got to take the camper van to Lancaster to put three new tyres on it, and we will have to do it before everything shuts on Wednesday afternoon. This will mean a bit of a rush.
Not to worry. We will sort it all out.
I am very pleased to tell you that the cash-generation project has got off to a flying start, and we had a busy evening yesterday. Better still, almost all of my customers were reasonably civilised, nobody was sick, and I did not see a single fight.
Despite all of this, there was a very sad moment in my evening.
I was taking a young man back to Kendal who was so very unhappy that tears rolled down his face for the whole of the journey.
I asked if he was all right, and then his woes poured out. He told me that he thought he was a useless burden on the world and that he was frightened and miserable.
I pointed out that most young men are pretty much useless burdens on the world until they have truly learned how to get a grip on life, and said that I expected that his father had been one as well. I said that it takes time to acquire useful skills, whether they be personal or practical, and that really I thought he might be expecting a bit much of himself.
I don’t know if he really heard. He was dreadfully sad. He got out and staggered away, still sobbing.
I wondered if he might be thinking about doing something ghastly and I stopped a police lady on my way back and told her, but since I hadn’t seen where he lived, and didn’t know anything about him, of course there wouldn’t be anything that they could do whatsoever. In any case it is hardly the job of the police to go round banging on unhappy people’s doors demanding to know if they have cheered up yet. There was only me, and I might or might not have helped him face his life again.
I will never know how it turned out.
I do hope he was all right.
