In actual fact I was not entirely sorry to get back to something approaching a normal routine after all the excitement of last week.
It is quiet in the house. There is no Oliver, and Lucy has buzzed off to stay with her friend in Ambleside, or Keswick, or somewhere. We are two again, plus the newly-bald dogs.
It was not easy to get up, it never is. Once we had achieved this, and Mark was fed and shoved out of the door to bring technology to Cumbria’s rural peasantry, the dogs and I went for a run up the fell.
It was not really a run. It was my best attempt, but still only half of it could have been described as a run. The other half was spent in grimly staggering and gasping for breath.
I try to run up all the steep bits.
I have got to be reasonably fit to be in the prison service. At the very least I will have to do a repeat bleeping test every year. They make you do this in order that you don’t become too fat and idle to run after escaping prisoners.
I have still not heard from them, by the way. I am waiting now for my security clearance to be completed. This is more complicated than it is when you are a taxi driver. The council only want to know if you are an undisclosed criminal. The Home Office want to know this as well, but they are also interested in whether you might believe in anything ridiculous, or are bankrupt, or have got dodgy friends.
I don’t think any of my friends are very dodgy, and I am not bankrupt, so far. My belief system could certainly be considered a bit peculiar, although mostly harmless, but I don’t think they will be able to find out about that unless they actually ask me, so it doesn’t matter, and I suppose it is just a question of waiting.
We managed the run up the fell and back in just over an hour, which I was very smug about because it is quite a bit faster than it used to be. After that I bathed the dogs, just to bring closure to their once scruffy and undesirable natures. I rang the vet to see how much it would cost to un-man Roger Poopy, but it was a hundred and sixty quid, so he has had a reprieve.
Once the dogs were satisfactorily scented with cheap strawberry shampoo, and shivering miserably again on the sofa, I cleaned.
It is ages since I have done this. I did not clean a single, solitary thing last week, because of going to Blackpool, and the dust had settled in horrible grey clumps all over the place. It must have done it whilst we were away, dust is a terrible thing. I think maybe it seeps out of the walls whilst we are asleep.
The cleaning was horrible. I fished hair out of plug holes and scrubbed black mould off window frames. I scoured and rinsed and swept and scowled. I do not at all like cleaning.
In the end it was done. I do like having a clean house, very much indeed, and felt light of heart.
I made our picnic and went to the gym before work. I have done hardly any exercise whilst we have been on holiday, and was feeling guiltily portly.
They were having some alterations done to the ladies’ changing room and we had to use the men’s. This was oddly disorientating, because it is like ours, only not quite. It was like being in the sort of dream you get when you have eaten cheese just before you go to bed.
I am on the taxi rank now, and I don’t mind telling you that I am completely exhausted. This being fit is jolly tiring, especially if you want to have a clean house as well. Mark has gone home to bed, and I don’t think I will be very long behind him.
It is never good to fall asleep when driving a taxi, even if you are a virtuous fit person with a clean house.
I shall bear that in mind.
