I am beginning to feel like Bilbo Baggins, when he put the sign on his gate that said No Admittance Except For Party Business.
Right at the moment if you are not talking about Lucy’s wedding I am very probably not paying proper attention. I am more than likely to be absorbed in contemplation of floral arches and seating plans, and will merely glance at you and nod in a distracted sort of way.
I think this must be what I am doing with Mark, because he has told me several things about his current occupation of rebuilding my taxi engine, and I do not have the first idea what any of them were.
The only one I have thoroughly grasped is that it is not yet finished.
I know that because I have been obliged to come to work in his taxi again. When I left our house, the engine in question was still dangling from a crane in our back yard. Our back yard is not very big, and I had to take a very great deal of care whilst bringing in the washing to avoid oily smears.
Oliver has been helping him. He is not helping him any more because he has gone to work and is looking menacing outside the pub across the road, so Mark is by himself.
I am a girl and hence no use at rebuilding engines, so I have had to find alternative occupation.
Of course there was the Party Business. This involved another trip round to the restaurant and some anxious shunting of tables whilst we considered, yet again, what we might be able to squeeze in.
This has been a difficult decision. I have thoughtfully situated our friends and relatives beside the other friends and relatives with whom I think they are least likely to squabble. There are one or two people who might squabble with quite a few people.
I have put me and Mark next to our friends Elspeth and John and Kevin and Kate, because I will not have to bother being polite to them, and they will not mind if I become intoxicated and tell off-colour stories. Since it is a wedding there will be a host of new relatives at the end of it and I do not want to get off on the wrong foot.
We will be sitting at the back.
In the end it has all been arranged to everybody’s satisfaction. I have got a further batch of lists to be re-typed tomorrow, but that is tomorrow’s problem.
In the end I could not shirk off in front of the computer any longer, but was summoned by my domestic responsibilities. As we know, Guffy has not died, nor has her Little Problem abated, and there was some considerable cleaning up to do.
Obviously I clear up misadventures as they happen, but every few days it is prudent to fill a bucket with bleach and boiling water, and to give the whole downstairs floor a thorough swabbing. We are not going to eat our dinners off it, but it is not pleasant to imagine the dried-up remains of any un-noticed accident seeping into the cracks between the tiles.
I swept and mopped and then mopped again. After that I mopped a bit more, because I had actually discovered some unpleasant surprises, but in the end it was done, and by then it was time to get ready for work. Mark has not come to work, of course, because of still rebuilding the engine, so I left a burrito and a sandwich in the kitchen for him and came down to the taxi rank.
He is still working on it now, and it is after midnight.
It has got to be finished by tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday, and we need both taxis.
I hope he has nearly finished.
