I am on the taxi rank.
I have been listening to a story on the Audible thing whilst I have been knitting, but I think I am going to have to stop. This is because it is not exactly a story but an explanation of particle physics. It is very difficult indeed to knit a cardigan and understand anti-matter all at the same time, and although I have been making a determined effort, something is going to have to give.
I shall see if there is something unchallenging about Meghan and Harry instead.
I won’t really. I think they are the most impossibly tiresome nobility the Royal Family has produced so far, and there has been some serious competition.
I have had enough of being busy anyway, and think I would like some shirking to conclude the day. Being at work in October is really good for this. The evening is almost entirely uninterrupted. When it is interrupted it is only ever by muppets going to Windermere Social Club and so I can be back in front of my knitting in moments, three pounds and ninety pence wealthier.
I have rushed around all day like Rosie when she thinks Roger Poopy is going to steal the luminous ball and hide it down the side of the sofa. He does this and then forgets. Rosie remembers but does not have enough nose to reach in and get it out.
I have been very busy.
I have made biscuits, fudge and coffee chocolate. I have made mayonnaise and cooked sausages. I have made salad for everybody’s dinners and I have taken the dogs for a walk over the fell.
Number Two Daughter came with me on the walk.
Either she is fitter than me or it is ages since I have had a properly long walk, because by the time I got up to the top I was puffing and blowing like a three year old with a birthday cake. The dogs hurtled about and barked at things, and Rosie leaped into the tarn, and it did not rain at all, so it all went pretty well. Even better, we had the car, because Number Two Daughter stayed out with her friend last night.
She met us at the bottom of the fell, and then left the car there whilst we walked, so on the way back I did not need to bother with the tiresome trudge back through the village. This is always a nuisance because the dogs think that everybody else’s gardens are public bathroom facilities, and you have to keep a very close eye on them indeed or people bang on their windows and shout rude things. I sympathise with this but it is a difficult one, because the dogs know they are not allowed to do it and so are at their surreptitious best at these moments. It is a terrible time for the phone to ring.
It rang a good deal this morning because I have had to purchase a new turbo for Mark’s car. This was difficult, not least because I do not know what a turbo actually is. Mark buzzed off to work leaving me to make hundreds of telephone calls to scrap car merchants who all said things like, well do you know if he wants the K Quality Sterling Deluxe Model with the valves and sprockets, or the Type C Formula One with the india rubber seals? What about the manifold, has it got a greased elbow joint? Well, pet, you need to know all this stuff before we can stop patronising you, and did you know we charge twice as much to people who don’t know what we’re talking about?
I hated them all, even before ten o’clock, and when I spoke to a taciturn chap who merely grunted and said that he’d get it in the post at lunchtime, and turbo-charged me three hundred quid, I practically snatched his socket set off.
Mark took my car, which made me very grumpy when I got in it for work tonight, only to discover that it had become filthy and empty of fuel, in the way of any vehicle Mark ever uses.
He is dismantling his taxi even now as I sit here on the taxi rank. The new turbo will not arrive until tomorrow at the earliest, and possibly even Friday, but we will need to be ready for it.
We need the taxi for the weekend.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
