I am rushing to write this because it is almost midnight, and it is the very first time today I have had a spare five minutes.
I am, of course, on the taxi rank.
It has not exactly been a very busy night, but it has been warm and pleasant, which is exactly the sort of night when taxi drivers get out of their cars and chat to one another. Not doing this might mean that a person has lots of time to get a diary written, but also means that everybody thinks they are boring and rude, gossips about them with complete creative indifference to any actual facts, and means that the person then misses out on any interesting if possibly not entirely factual stories about any other absent taxi driver.
I would not wish anybody to consider me boring and rude.
Hence it is midnight and I have barely written anything, despite having had a day which was so action-packed with stuff that I was quite relieved just to be at work, where nothing would be required of me except some gossip and occasionally even some work.
I started the day with a not-terribly-thorough clean of the camper van.
You might recall, if you cast your minds back into the distant past, that it was recklessly dumped in my parents’ driveway, where it has been rusting, delicately, ever since.
We have stayed in it once or twice when it has been expedient.
During those times of expediency we did not bother cleaning it. We slept in it and then cleared off to do something more exciting.
Hence when I arrived in it this time I discovered that it had a weary, unloved air, just as if people had been sleeping in it and then not bothering to tidy up after themselves.
Those same people had showered and – whisper it – used the loo, without a thought to the unpleasantly odiferous consequences of a filled loo left in a hot camper van for several weeks.
This morning I emptied the loo and then applied liberal amounts of bleach everywhere. I rinsed the bathroom with it and sprayed the fridge and the sink. You will be pleased to hear that I used different cloths and washed my hands in between, you need not fear for my personal hygiene.
I should have swept as well, but didn’t get round to it. I have left that as a surprise for me next time.
Poor Future Me.
I had time to strip the sheets and bundle them into the car with the towels and dishcloths before we set off to the hospital, where my father is still being held captive.
Today we managed to hunt down the consultant, who was a fifteen-year-old boy who looked as though he could have done with some decent dinners and some chocolate buttons. He was argumentative at first, until we produced My Sister The Doctor on the telephone, at which point he reluctantly agreed to remove all unnecessary monitoring equipment, which was a very lot of tubes and wires, I can tell you, and permitted an exciting excursion in a wheelchair.
Before we were allowed to do this my dad was compelled to sign a disclaimer which said that the hospital was not responsible for any dire consequences of such a daring and reckless act.
He signed it, hardly rolling his eyes at all, even though the nurse spoke very loudly as if he was deaf, which he only is when he wants to be, and insisted on calling him Pet.
Then we dragged his wheelchair, which was an enormous rusting old banger of a thing, the camper van of the disability assistance world, out through the swinging doors and into the sunshine.
We had a very contented half an hour watching all of the sick people staggering outside to smoke cigarettes, before having a little retail therapy in the hospital shop, which managed to sell nothing whatsoever that I might conceivably have wished to purchase, which I have to say is something of a first, normally I can spend cash anywhere.
After that we returned him to his cell, where the excitement had been so much that he fell asleep.
I went off to Lucy’s after that, where we had a cup of tea in the garden and she told me about her boyfriend, who is a postman. I think that is a good thing. I like our postman very much, although I regret to say that such a career choice suggests that he is never going to be able to keep her in luxury and idleness, so probably he will have to develop some ambition soon.
Lucy likes luxury and idleness.
After that I came home, where I had a frantic hour unpacking everything and hurling things into the washing machine. I got the first lot pegged on the line just before I came to work.
I am going to go and peg the next lot out right now.
After that I am going to go to bed.
