It has been a short day, which as you know, is the inevitable consequence of a long night.
Fortunately I am pleased to say that it was no longer than it needed to be. It was a grim moment when two in the morning came around for the second time, I can tell you, but fortunately all of the nightclub staff thought so as well, and so everywhere finished exactly the same as usual, without any bonus time for optimistic drinkers, greatly to my relief.
It had been a fairly busy Saturday night. My star customers were a group of four girls from Liverpool, all of whom were dressed in what seemed to be underwear with fur coats over the top. They had all done the inexplicably horrible thing of having their lips stuffed with sausages, and it seemed to have affected their internal volume adjusters, because they made such a racket that I wished I was old enough to have a hearing aid that I could turn off.
We stopped on the garage for them to get some cash out, and every single one of them got out, pushed their thongs aside, and did a wee on the forecourt. I can’t say I was especially keen to let them back in again after that, but it didn’t seem worth the argument and I shall be giving the seats a quick scrub with disinfectant before I go this evening.
When we got to their hotel three of them got out and the fourth stayed in the taxi. She leaned over from the back seat and offered me ten pounds if I would kiss her.
Readers, I might be old, but I have my limits. I would want a jolly lot more than ten pounds before I kissed those lipstick-smeared sausages, I can tell you. I declined, as politely as I could muster, which in retrospect probably wasn’t very polite, and left them trying to work out how they might get back into their hotel.
I have no idea if they managed it or not.
Other than that the evening progressed as usual. A youth declined to pay and became very unpleasant, and his poor, blushing girlfriend picked up the tab, and I took some very nice local young gentlemen who are regular taxi-travelling rascals but who had run out of money by the time Mark collected them later on, so I have had to activate our collections process, which works along the lines of: Pay or I will turn up at your house and tell your dad.
When we crawled into bed it was six o’clock by old time. I do not know what time it was when we woke up, because half of the clocks have still not been changed, to the point where it is currently too difficult to work out what actual time it is. I have had to resort to the modern Young Person method of looking at my telephone, which Knows these things, because of its world-shaping contacts in the arcane cyber-universe, and so it can be considered a Reliable Authority.
We did the usual Sunday things and Mark watered the conservatory whilst I mopped the floor, and we almost went to Grasmere to see if we could find my lost car keys, but it started to rain, so we didn’t. Maybe later on in the week.
Other than that, the world is quiet. Rosie is successfully turning into something football-shaped, which is pleasing, and Oliver arrives home this evening for a few days. He is going to go to Lucy’s with Mark and Jack and they are going to set about installing her new woodburning stove. If anybody is in doubt about what to get her for Christmas, probably some firewood would be a good idea.
I will just be glad to get it out of the conservatory. It is going to start sinking into the floor soon.
I am off to work.
I think the disinfectant is under the sink.
