I have had another early start.
Amber Taxis in Ambleside are fully occupied with school runs in the mornings, but this detail does not seem to have stopped them agreeing to take people to the railway station before anybody has had breakfast. I rolled my eyes but agreed, because I have run a taxi company, and know all about the horror of having accidentally accepted a job which is completely impossible to cover. It is a very upsetting problem, and it is always a colossal relief when another taxi driver takes pity on you and agrees to rescue you from your own mess.
Hence, once again I subjected myself to the early morning alarm horror. I also have an ulterior motive for this benevolence, because my taxi is in need of four new tyres, and I am saving up. Monday is the projected date for the purchase, because by then I will have saved up sufficiently to call in to Kendal and purchase some tea on my way home.
It was sunny, so once I had got home I hung out the washing and took the dogs off over the fell before making a start on the day’s adventures.
The first adventure was a bit idle and self-indulgent, because I went to the Library. All of the old librarians have retired, and there are some bright young new ones in there. They seem to me to be practically teenagers, but I suppose they are in their thirties, my perspective about people’s ages is becoming a bit distorted now that I am almost sixty, and practically everybody looks too young to be allowed to go out by themselves. I noticed one of them secretly making a cup of coffee for an old chap who was trying to work out what you are supposed to do with a computer, which I thought was possibly the best possible use of public funding that could ever be thought of, hurrah for libraries.
When I got home I spent some more time squishing curtains into vacuum bags, and then got on with my Job Of The Day, which was the painting of the front of the house.
You might recall that we have decided to paint all of the woodwork on the front of the house, and hired a youthful painting chap for the purpose, who has turned out to be a lemon. Worse, he is the second lemon. The first one said it was too difficult and disappeared after a week. This wretched lemon was supposed to be finishing it this week, after weeks and weeks of dawdling about and dashing off to visit his probation officer, and he has not turned up again today, despite numerous untruthful promises. Therefore in the end I have decided that I will have to finish it off by myself.
This is a bit of a challenge, because it all involves clinging on to ladders. I am not very brave about ladders. They take you a very long way off the ground, and then wobble from side to side excitingly.
It has all been a huge challenge, because all of the old paint needed to be stripped off, after which it needed several coats, the first being a primer, followed by a grey undercoat, followed by another undercoat, and finally there will be the actual paint.
Today I applied the last of the undercoat. Actually, first I cleared up the colossal mess of left-behind tools, bits of sandpaper and dried out paintbrushes that were the detritus of Mark and the wretched painter not having been properly supervised. This took nearly an hour, and some scowling and grumbling.
The last bit to be painted was the bit around the door. There is a little roof above the door, to enable you to hunt for your key without getting wet. It means that the postman can stay dry whilst you gossip, and parcels can be unceremoniously dumped by Evri without their even needing to bother ringing the doorbell.
The underneath of the roof and the ornate timber supports needed painting.
This took a lot of faffing about, mostly trying to minimise the peril from the ladders, which I can jolly well tell you was considerable. I balanced and wagged and clung on and tried to hang on to the paint and the ladder and the brush without having quite enough hands. Then I got glutinous grey undercoat paint in my hair and all over my trousers and all over my hands, which are now striped like an elderly zebra, because it turned out not to wash off.
It might not have helped because I am not too sure how the ladder, which comes in two parts, fastens together, and I think I might not have got it right.
It was done in the end. I descended with some relief, and I am pleased to tell you that I am still intact and undamaged.
I am going to paint the front door in magenta and green, and with any luck I will be able to make a start tomorrow.
I don’t need a ladder for the door.
Thank goodness for that.
