Once again I am using to write to you before I go to work.
I ought to write this on the taxi rank really, so as to occupy time at home with more useful productive matters, but it is tiresomely frustrating to be trying to craft captivating prose when idiots keep sticking their head through the window and wittering about their incapability of walking two hundred yards to their guest house which somebody thoughtless has inconveniently placed up a hill.
That was a long sentence. Breathe now.
I have had a frustrating sort of day, largely occupied with trying to sort out various difficulties, and without much in the way of useful result.
The first difficulty arose this morning, when Mark called unexpectedly early, with the news that although he will be promoted to the glorious position of Permit Authority on his next job, he will still be on the oil rig at the end of October, on the days when we are supposed to be going to Manchester to watch A Fiddler On The Roof.
I was not impressed with this. I thought the oil industry had a fairly sincere appreciation of culture, given how many times Just Stop Oil refuse to go and watch the dozens of things which they have sponsored, or worse, turn up with a tin of tomato soup.
It might be possible, Mark thought, perhaps to change the tickets. If not then he would just have to miss it.
Of course I did not in the least want to go without him, and so spent the next couple of hours running around trying to change the tickets, the hotel and everybody else’s plans, because we were supposed to be going with the children, as well as my brother and my mother.
In the end I managed to reorganise everything for Halloween, which is an absolutely tiresome nuisance, because that is always a busy night for taxis, and it is Friday night as well. My brother can’t go at all any more, which was a small disappointment. He is going to a Halloween party, and so had to decline.
It had to be Friday night, because it was the only night with any tickets left, and frankly, I was surprised that it was running at all. Of course lots of its largest audience demographic would not want to go then, given that the Jewish Shabbat starts at sunset, and I wondered how the cast have managed to get an exemption.
The whole prolonged faff took absolutely ages, and wasn’t properly resolved even in the end, because the tiresome booking system for the theatre insisted that I tried to change the tickets online whilst forgetting that I had booked them in the first place, resulting in a string of furious emails. That is to say, mine were furious. Theirs were bland and written by a machine, but I have hopes that some changes will be wrought somewhere.
After all of that I re-energised myself by making a cup of tea and occupying a very contented hour gassing on the Zoom thing to my friend Amanda, who is collecting lots of interesting material for her book, and who is considering applying to study for a PhD.
Rather to my surprise, this made me feel distinctly envious.
I might like to do a PhD after all. I had thought that I couldn’t be bothered and wasn’t interested, but once I started thinking about it, I realised that I quite liked the idea, as if my days weren’t already filled to bursting already.
I will have to think about it again.
She wanted to have the link for my Clive book on Amazon, so I sent it to her, and discovered to my great happiness that somebody had already read it, and left a five star review.
Obviously it was not a real customer, but most likely one of the children, probably Lucy, I thought, but it made the page look considerably brighter, and I went away feeling pleased with the world.
I do not know if anybody has bought it. I will not know until ninety days after fifty people have bought it, because Amazon only gives you cash three months after you have made a hundred quid. They do not bother updating you in between, and so I am not holding my breath.
It might be a nice surprise somewhere around my seventieth birthday, perhaps.
LATER NOTE: It wasn’t Lucy. If it was one of you, then thank you very much. It brightened my day.
