We have fixed my taxi.
Oliver worked it out in the end.
We did not fix it in time for work last night. Last night we managed to work out that it needed a new coil, but Autoparts was closed, and although we ordered one on Amazon, it would not appear until today.
Nothing deterred, I went to work anyway.
The car spluttered and juddered and revved and stalled, but it worked. I turned the radio up and opened the windows, which all made so much racket that nobody seemed to notice the roaring and sulking of the wounded engine. Better still, the taxi inspectors were nowhere to be seen, so all was well that ended well, because today we have repaired it.
The repair was not exactly a silky-smooth dream job, I can tell you, not unless you are prone to the sort of dreams where you are lost in some inexplicable maze of steep staircases and identically non-opening doors, which I am, occasionally, mine are usually set in an hotel and involve increasing panic as I try and work out where I have left my luggage.
We put the new coil in and ran the checks. Much to our horror, the diagnostic machine still showed a fault. We ran the checks again, and examined the wiring, but the juddering continued, the engine revving and growling bad-temperedly whilst I wrung my hands in apologetic confusion. It was not until Oliver said, cheerfully, that probably the three spark plugs were not numbered one, two three, or even three, two one, but perhaps two, three, one, that we got the coil in the right place and the problem was fixed.
It was completely inexplicable to me why even the French would do such a thing, but Oliver explained that it was because of the order in which the valves fired. This made no intelligible sense to me whatsoever, but the car was fixed, so I did not care.
I can go to work this evening with a not-scary car. Oliver thoughtfully drove his car to work last night, so that there would be a rescue on hand if I broke down anywhere, and there were a few anxious moments, but everything was all right. Tonight I can sit merrily on the taxi rank, without an anxious care in the world.
Well, apart from all of my usual anxious cares, obviously, like paying off the credit card and wondering if I am too fat.
In fact I have cleared quite a few anxious cares off the list today, because I have done a very lot of housework.
This was prompted by a telephone call with Mark’s mother whilst I was on my fell walk this morning. She said, happily, that she was in Windermere, and would be coming to visit us on their way home at the end of the afternoon.
When I got home I looked around the house and knew in my inner soul that it was not a good place to receive visitors.
The conservatory is where visitors sit, and its ambiance had not been improved by the dribbling presence of four dogs and a leaky cat.
I don’t just mean not improved. I mean it smelled.
I dragged everything out and swept and mopped and tidied up. There were several guffs under the table at the back that looked as though they might have been un-noticed there for some time.
I scrubbed them off with bleach, hard.
Once that was done I turned my attention to catering. Mark’s mother can’t digest anything with gluten in it, so my usual social offerings of tea and biscuits would not do.
I looked at the clock and thought I had just enough time to make a cake, so I did.
It was an apricot and banana cake, made with oatmeal instead of flour, to which I forgot to add the almonds, but that didn’t matter because Oliver doesn’t like nuts in cakes.
It takes a couple of hours to bake, so I bought some gluten-free biscuits in case of early-arrival emergency.
Oliver washed up, helpfully, and we shoved it in the oven. Then there was still some day left, so we dived upstairs to clean the bedrooms.
This last was not because Mark’s mother was coming, I hasten to add, she is not the sort of mother-in-law who inspects skirting boards for dust. It was because I loathe dusting and hoovering, and thought, optimistically, that if I got it all out of the way then I would not need to bother about it tomorrow with the clean sheets.
It is ages since I have dusted and hoovered anyway, because of going to Lucy’s last week, so it was the satisfying sort of cleaning where things actually look much better when you have finished.
Mark’s mother had not appeared by the time we had finished, although the cake was cooked to perfection, so I retreated to the attic to get on with my sewing, which was the thing I was really longing to do. Obviously, no sooner had I sat down at the sewing machine than the dogs launched into a loud and tiresome barking fuss, and Mark’s mother had arrived.
She stuck her head round the back door and said that she did not want a cup of tea, she was just coming to return a bag and some plastic tubs that I had dispatched her luggage in on her last visit, and that I had utterly forgotten that I owned.
She hugged us both and disappeared.
Oliver is too polite to laugh.
Not to worry.
I have got a tidy house and a cake.
