I have stopped pretending not to have a sore foot at work.
This is because, rather to my surprise, it turns out I am not the only taxi driver who has got one, and if anybody official were to start grumbling and sending us home, in no time at all the occupants of Windermere and Bowness would be walking everywhere.
I limped across the taxi rank to talk to Mark last night only to realise that the taxi driver next to him had a limp to match mine, having also had a Friday afternoon calamity, in his case in the field at the back of his flat. I was somehow relieved about this, it is nice not to be the only representative of disability on the taxi rank.
You will notice that his approach to going off sick was identical to mine. Taxi drivers do not do this. When Jim had cancer he had to wear long sleeves to disguise the tubes sticking out of his arms, and see a doctor in Barrow who would not be likely to tell the council. Fortunately the problem was resolved when he died shortly afterwards, although until he did, jokes about buckets being accidentally kicked provided us all with a great deal of innocent mirth.
I have not managed to do a very great deal today as a consequence of not yet being able-footed. I managed to hobble to the post office, and was very pleased with myself, and even managed to peg out two loads of washing, because it was Clean Sheets Day. I am still treating the back yard with excessive caution. It appears that pegging out washing is more dangerous than I had previously imagined, and I do not wish for any further misfortunes, who knows what perils might be lurking at the back of the compost heap.
Mark buzzed off to work, so I was looking after myself. During my absence he has developed an enthusiasm for healthy eating, and has started taking boxes of salads to work instead of my usual offerings of sandwiches, pies and scotch eggs. I hope this wears off soon, because not only is it a colossal faff, it has meant that his biscuit consumption has more than doubled, and I am going to have to bake again in a day or two if it carries on.
In any case, he is not fat. That is just me.
Especially at both ends of my legs, alas.
In between washing I am still editing my story, which has the advantage that I do not need to hop anywhere whilst I am doing it, except to the bathroom occasionally in between cups of tea . I have reached the point where I have begun to think despairingly that perhaps it is just absolute tripe and perhaps I ought to give up and become a taxi driver. I have managed to underwrite more than a thousand words out of it now, which sounds good except that I keep thinking of new ones to stick in the gaps. I have got to write a synopsis and a covering letter next, and I can start approaching agents.
Those tasks are on my list for tomorrow. We are going to have a holiday tomorrow, in the camper van in the field at the farm. Mark is going to do things to cars and to his garden, and I am going to sit in the van and write things until my foot diminishes in size sufficiently for me to be able to get my flip-flop back on. I like the sound of this very much, because quite apart from anything I have now got two sore feet since my right foot has had to do so much overtime, picking up the slack from the shirking left foot. It is now aching in sympathy. I had never considered that standing on one leg all day might make that foot sore as well, what a revelation.
The detective in the book I am reading has only got one leg. I am now filled with admiration and sympathy. A new depth has been added to my understanding.
I am looking forward to a day in a field.
