Everybody has gone and I am all by myself.
All by myself apart from the dogs, obviously, they haven’t gone anywhere. They are, in fact, as much in my space as they can possibly manage to be, and are lying under the desk at my feet, so it is a companionable sort of solitude.
I am about to go out to work, and thought I would write to you first. This is because some of the other taxi drivers are very talkative indeed, and it can be difficult to find the time to write anything, especially when the taxi rank is quiet. That is when we all hang about together, grumbling about Uber, the customers, the council and one another, and nothing much gets written in the meantime.
It is about to go dark, but in fact I have only just got back from my fell walk with the dogs. This was very, very late, because I have occupied almost all of the day hanging about the kitchen chatting to Lucy and Jack.
I worked late last night, and did not make it into bed until after five o’clock in the morning, which meant that I did not rise early, and by the time I peered down the stairs into the kitchen there was nobody around.
Lucy and Jack had gone to play at being tourists in Windermere, and Oliver had gone to work.
He is working all day today and then setting off for Edinburgh as soon as he has finished, which will actually be in about ten minutes time in my time, here, as I am writing, but probably he will have got there ages ago and even be on the way back by the time you get round to reading this.
This is because tomorrow, being Monday, he has got his medical for the Army.
This is an exciting sort of moment, because of being the key part of his admission. The son of a friend of mine once got very, very fit all ready for joining the Army. He passed all of the initial stages, just like Oliver, and then went for his medical, where the doctor discovered that he had a tiny, tiny hole in his heart, and refused to accept him.
I do not think that Oliver has a hole in his heart, but it is still possible that he might be too thin.
He weighs 59.3 kilos. He is supposed to weigh sixty. This is supposed to be the smallest weight for somebody of his height to be allowed into the Army, otherwise they assume that you have either got a tapeworm or malnourishment and send you home to go on an inverse diet.
We have decided that this can probably be averted by eating an enormous breakfast before he goes in, and probably drinking three or four pints of water.
By this time tomorrow we will know. After that all he has got to do is become superbly fit, brilliantly well-informed about current affairs, an ace at an IQ test, and sufficiently charming and personable to impress the selection board that he is the Right Sort Of Chap.
I had just put the washing into the machine and piled firewood into the stove when Lucy and Jack came home, having visited all of the most exciting bits of Windermere, which did not take very long. We put the kettle on for a cup of coffee before they set off for home, and then sat by the fire for several hours, chatting and contemplating designs for camper vans, which is my current passion, and designs for bookshelves, which is theirs.
We had not one, but two cups of coffee. I do not often drink coffee, only as a nice thing in the mornings when Mark is at home, and two cups made me feel more energetic than I have felt for months and months. When they had finally said their farewells I felt enthusiastically bouncy, and the dogs and I dashed out of the back door and up the fells.
It was a very splendid walk. There are a lot of mists and mellow fruitfulness about at the moment, although not much maturing sun. Not much of any sort of sun, actually, the fells were silent and muffled and very, very still.
I strode around energetically and felt so virtuous that I weighed myself on Oliver’s scales when I got home.
I was exactly sixty kilos, so I could probably get in the Army if only I was as tall as Oliver, which I am not.
I am going to light a candle to the Gods of Portliness on his behalf.
I have got everything crossed for him.
