Just for the uncertain, today is Wednesday. If you are not among that number, ignore this line.
How pleased I am to be able to tell you that I am on the taxi rank.
I am here, and feeling quietly contented with my world.
So much so that when Oliver, who is going to Japan next week, expressed some anxiety about leaving me forlorn and alone, I was able to reassure him, with complete honesty, that I did not mind in the least. Quite the reverse is true really. I enjoy my own company very much indeed. I am not in the least lonely when nobody else is at home, and am perfectly happy trotting along by myself with my placid little routine of daily activities, and going out to sit on the taxi rank at night, in my newly-functional taxi.
I have had a quietly unexceptional day. The sun has shone, which was handy for laundering Oliver’s sheets, and I have been teaching him how to do ironing.
When he goes to Norland he is going to need to be skilled in the domestic virtues. His uniform must be, the school warns, in the manner of a zealous prep school Matron, immaculately clean and pressed at all times. Given that he has never ironed as much as a handkerchief in his short life up until now, I felt that some tuition was in order.
Things were not helped by him being completely unable to tell the difference between the part of the shirt that he had ironed, and the part that he had not. I showed him the lovely crisp flat bit to no exclamations of ecstasy. He said, without noticeable enthusiasm, that it looked just like the rest of it.
It is not made any easier because he is left handed, and had to stand on the other side of the ironing board, which made demonstrations complicated. I have a fifty percent success rate when it comes to getting left-handers amongst my children, both the eldest and the youngest would have been in trouble with the olden-times right-handed religious police. I do not know why this is, to my knowledge there are no left handed people in the family anywhere else, and whilst peculiar, I do not quite understand why some people got so very upset about it, they don’t seem to be noticeably more wicked than the others.
It does make life quite difficult, however. I have just realised that he will not be able to use the sewing scissors we purchased in Kendal and will need a special expensive pair to be purchased on the mighty Internet. I have got to get him a sewing basket as well. It is a jolly good job that I am back at work.
Once he had finished ironing his bouncing uniform, we went downstairs to try and organise a rail pass for Tokyo. Goodness me, that was difficult. Fortunately the mighty Internet seems to know that not everybody speaks Japanese, and made a helpful, if ham-fisted, attempt at translating everything, leaving me scowling and wondering exactly what the rail passes actually do. I could not quite tell if they meant that all train journeys were paid for, or if you just get occasional discounts when the railway company thinks it has some empty seats that they would like to fill up with foreign bottoms. The rail passes are only available to foreigners, although you are reluctantly allowed to purchase one if you are a foreigner living in Tokyo, so probably they work like having a large badge which says I Am An Idiot Please Help Me Dispose Of My Money Quickly.
Since he will be arriving at Tokyo Airport at midnight, and will need to get to a guest house on the other side of the city, it is not the sort of thing that we want to mess up.
It is a massive adventure, and I am excited on his behalf, whilst being very glad that I am not required to accompany him.
I am perfectly happy sitting here on the taxi rank.
What great good fortune that is.
