Daydreams

I am on the taxi rank.

It is raining a wetly uninspiring combination of icy raindrops and actual hailstones.

I have spent most of the evening so far not driving customers around, because everybody is sensibly staying indoors, but looking on my flat computer thing at holidays.

In my perfect world the evening would go something like this:

I am sitting here in my taxi when the phone rings. I think I had better have reached the part of the evening where I have finished my sandwich, because it is prosciutto and Wensleydale cheese tonight and it would be a shame to waste it.

On the phone is a person from the National Lottery company telling me I have won fifty million pounds and can go home and never sit in a taxi again. Also that the first couple of million will be advanced to my bank account tonight so that I can go on holiday tomorrow and not to worry because they will sort the rest of the details out when I get back.

After a few moments careful thought I decide not to bother with the rest of the night on the taxi rank and pop round to the car behind me and tell Mark that we can go home.

At home we tell the children to pack their computers and reading books and Oliver’s cuddly Spider-Man that he takes to bed, give the dogs to an animal charity and call a helicopter to collect us.

The helicopter takes us to London where we go to Harrods and buy a completely new wardrobe each, especially Mark whose clothes have all got welding burns and oil all over them, even the ones that he is supposed to keep tidy.

Then we book into the Ritz for a few days whilst we go to the theatres and watch everything, and eat all the nice things we can think of and drink champagne.

After that we go to Southampton where we take a first class suite, the sort with champagne provided and twin sinks in the bathroom, not the miserly rubbish sort with only one, on whatever the modern equivalent is of the Titanic, not the sinking sort obviously, and we would make sure we counted the lifeboats.

We sail off to New York, where we would mill about Central Park and drink champagne and gawp at the Statue of Liberty and do other things that you would do in New York although I am not too sure what they might be at the moment, we could always buy a guidebook on the boat. After that we would get on one of those exciting American trains which go on for miles and have got bedrooms, and go to California, where we would drink wine and champagne in the sunshine until at least April.

After that we would ring home to see if it was raining, and if it had stopped then we would go back in order to sell the house to a museum of ancient and curious houses and give the taxis to a scrapyard, and show off our suntans and new clothes and vast wealth to all our friends.

Then we would buy a big new house and an automatic log splitting machine and a swimming pool and a wheelbarrow without a flat tyre for the logs and very probably none of it would be in Windermere because all of the big houses are right next to the lake, which very obviously is a really rubbish idea at the moment.

The problem with daydreams is that even as I am daydreaming it it is getting complicated. There would be the detail of calling Number One Daughter and inviting her and her family to come with us so then the daydream has got to take into account taking a tutor for Ritalin Boy who would teach him stuff so that we didn’t get into trouble with the Surrey Local Education Authority, and also to keep him away from my blissful champagne sun lounger.

In addition to this we would have to persuade the Army to let Number One Daughter out at short notice, which even in a daydream sounds like hard work. Then there is Number Two Daughter who would probably like to come as well but who would inevitably squabble with Number One Daughter and probably want to bring her partner as well, so suddenly we would need several suites and twice the number of lifeboats on board the exclusive seagoing liner, and also Ritalin Boy would be a complete pest living on a long train for a week.

Then of course there would be an assortment of grandparents who would like a nice holiday in the sun but who might find it a bit tiresome sharing a train with Ritalin Boy so perhaps the best thing to be done for all of them would be just to send them a cheque and suggest that they get a flight and book themselves into a nearby Californian hotel and just pop across to visit us for dinners after the children had gone to bed in the evenings. This would be a nice thing to do and mean that we wouldn’t get under each other’s feet too much and also nobody would feel the need to say things like: “Surely you have had enough to drink by now, perhaps another bottle is not a good idea.”

When we got back we would have to invest the money jolly sensibly so that we could all live on it forever and ever.

It is such a shame that I haven’t ever done the lottery.

Happy New Year.