Fall

I am afraid that entries on these pages might be a bit sporadic over the next couple of days.

This is because I am trying to write a poem and a critical essay, read some incomprehensibly seminal literary works, and also write a best-selling novel. Hence I might find my taxi-rank writing time fairly comprehensively occupied. I can only hope that I am not troubled by too many customers.

The world has swung a little on its axis, and autumn has come to the Lake District today. I am sad to see the end of summer, but there is always a small excitement with the changing seasons, and so I am feeling quite comfortably sanguine, and only mildly regretful about all of the things we did not manage to get round to over the summer. The skies have become grey, the rain is lashing down, and the ground is speckled with the first ominous casting of leaves. The winds are beginning to swirl around us, and I had to hang my washing on the landing instead of outside in the garden this afternoon.

It was this afternoon not this morning because we got up so late after Saturday night’s usual taxi-related adventures, and it was dangling about on the landing instead of over the stove because we still do not have a stove at the moment.

The stove is still in the back yard, being pieced back together by Mark, except today it wasn’t because he is still trying to get the taxi repaired for its MOT, which is tomorrow. This is going to be a challenge because he has got to get two new tyres and a new track rod end, or possibly a ball joint, fitted to it before three o’clock. I am going to be helpful by making sure that all the seatbelts are fastened before I finish work.

He is going to try and get the stove back in and working by Thursday. I do not mind at the moment because it is not terribly cold yet, but it will not be very long.

It is the Seasonal Challenge, and of course it will be fine because it always is. This year it is difficult because of the rusty stove and the new heating system, but life would be dull without fresh hurdles to be overcome every now and again.

We had a surprise phone call from Oliver’s housemaster this afternoon, wishing to know if we had spoken to Oliver. When we said that we had not, he explained that Of Course There Was No Need To Worry, but that Oliver was in the San having fallen off his bike.

It turned out that he had been trying not to run over a brainless Year Ten who had leaped out in front of him, for purposes of personal amusement, and had come crashing to the ground. He had been wearing his leather jacket and helmet, and was consequently unharmed, but having sustained a blow to the head he had been confined to the San for observation for twenty four hours.

Apart from that he was otherwise undamaged, and was still in possession of all of his teeth and an intact skeleton. The Year Ten had some bruising to his leg and some earache from the housemaster.

He had been in the San for some time and the housemaster was surprised that he had not called to inform us.

We were rather less surprised. We telephoned him, and discovered that he had imported some other Year Twelves into the San and had started a card school in order to ward off the boredom of sickness. He was fully occupied by a hand of poker, and in any case was off sailing tomorrow and had some packing to do on his release from clinical isolation, so he would speak to us in a week or two, presumably assuming that he had not died in the meantime.

He is off to spend an entire week at sea on the Gordonstoun yacht.

I hope the weather is better there than it is here.

PS. I hope you have noticed the witty double meaning employed in the title. I spent some time considering the best headline to cover all the topics described here, and was quite pleased with myself about the result.