Mark has gone.
I am trying not to be relieved, and I am not really, because I miss him when he is not here, especially now that the fire is lit and I have got to bring in my own firewood. All the same, his going is always a bit like a driving test or a court date, you do not look forward to it in the least, but it is a relief when it is over and done with and you can
He went this afternoon, after the sort of difficult day where there is no time really to do anything apart from organise a departure. We took the aspirational taxi over to the garage and left it there in readiness for the next hoop through which the council has decreed it must now jump before it is permitted to enter into its faithful service to the Windermere travelling public.
It has had a MOT and a Taxi MOT already. Next week it has got to go and be inspected by a committee.
In the meantime it needs an Engineer’s Report.
Of course Mark could do this perfectly well, being an engineer, but probably sensibly, the council do not let you write reports about your own vehicle, any more than schools let you write reports about your own children. Oliver’s school made him write a report about his home life during Bat Flu, and we were immediately contacted by Welfare who were concerned by his reports that he was being inadequately fed. When we investigated, this turned out to be an absence of bacon and egg with his sausages at breakfast time, and only one choice for dinner, which – horror – sometimes did not include pudding and sometimes he had to have a biscuit instead. Reports from close family members should be treated with a very large pinch of salt, a bit like Oliver’s egg and bacon.
Hence we have been obliged to take the car to the garage.
The garage was not terribly obliging. They explained, rather grumpily, that they had not got the first idea what it was they were expected to report, and demanded an itemised list from the council.
When the list turned up it turned out to have a hundred and ten points on it.
It was an old list. I remembered its first appearance, roughly twenty five years ago, and was mildly amused to note that it had not changed.
To our horror, Mark noticed that it included the insistence that the engine should not be smaller than 1500 cc.
The new car has an engine of 1200 cc, which Mark says is perfectly adequate since the invention of turbos and the environment.
I remembered this rule being introduced. Indeed, when I first drove a taxi, the rule was that an engine must be bigger than two litres, and must be diesel.
That requirement has been quietly jettisoned over the intervening years.
I sent a panicking email off to the council, querying this requirement, and they kindly telephoned me back immediately, having failed to notice that this stipulation was still included.
We agreed to Tipp-ex it out, quietly.
I was still in a state of panic, even though Mark assured me that the car would probably pass on all hundred and ten points. If it does not then he will not be here to do anything about it.
I am weary of the hoop-jumping. I have got to insure it as a taxi even though it is not one yet, and if the council do not think it is sufficiently beautiful when they look at it in a couple of weeks, then it will never become one, which might be an expensive waste of several thousand pounds’ worth of insurance.
Indeed, I am so fed up of the whole pantomime that I could very easily leave it at the garage and simply purchase Z’s old taxi when he gets a new one next week.
In between flapping and telephoning the council I have occupied the intervening minutes by putting my story on the mighty Internet and attempting to add it to Twitter. I have never written anything on Twitter in my entire life, but when I tried to join today I discovered that my email address is permanently barred.
The same was true on a site called Reddit, which I have also never visited.
Both sites said it was because of my sharing offensive and inappropriate content, which rather charmed me. I don’t think I have ever even seen any offensively inappropriate content on the mighty Internet, unless you count YouTube’s replaying of old Les Dawson videos.
I had to write to both websites arguing for my innocence. They both said sternly that they would examine my appeal and write back to me in a couple of weeks.
In the end I became weary of that hoop-jumping as well, and came out to work.
Being at work is peaceful. Nothing is happening here.
I am going to read my book.
