An Introduction

1) Me. Sixty this year. A taxi driver. When I first wrote this page it said I was forty nine and a half, so I thought I had better do some updating.

2) Mark. My husband. A brilliant engineer who can mend absolutely anything. Clever and patient. Keeps us solvent by mending holes on oil rigs. Drives a taxi in his spare time because of the ongoing costs of parenthood.

3) Lucy. Number Three Daughter. Lived at home for the early years of these pages but is now twenty four and has departed the nest to Manchester, where she is a detective. She chose the police as a career because it offered the most opportunities for getting into fights, which was her favourite thing in her youth. Very pretty with gold-coloured hair and a cut-glass accent acquired at her all-girls exclusive boarding school which makes the other police officers laugh. Thinks I am scruffy and embarrassing.

4) Jack. Lucy’s live in Chap. Does mechanical things. Leaves tools all over Lucy’s kitchen. Thinks carburettors are interesting. Gets on very well with Mark.

5) Oliver. Number One Son. These pages detail his adventuring through his all-boys prep school, followed by Gordonstoun in the north of Scotland. Almost twenty now, and training to be a nanny at Norland College in Bath, while supporting himself by looking menacing on the doors of nightclubs at weekends.

6) Number One Daughter. A living slab of muscle. In the All Arms PT Corps in the Army. Cross-fit champion and enthusiast, competes in huge competitions with people built like Tyrannosaurus Rex. Thinks I am fat and idle.

7) Number One Son-In-Law. Ex Royal Marine, current climber, weight-lifter and oil-rig worker. Eats the entire time.

8) Ritalin Boy. The now-teenage human dynamo offspring of Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law.

9) Number Two Daughter. The life and soul of every party. Has been a skiing-instructor with a jet-set lifestyle for much of these pages but is currently living in Canada with Mrs. Number Two Daughter, where she is doing something technical with industrial boilers.

10)  Mrs. Number Two Daughter. Patient and very smily. She and Number Two Daughter run marathons.

11) Roger Poopy. Son of The Dog, who appears in the first few years of the Diaries, but who is now deceased. Taller than his father. A brainless idiot whom nobody wanted even when he was an adorable poopy. He doesn’t have a lead because Mark used to train sheepdogs and thinks that leads are for people who can’t control their dogs, with the result that he is an angel when Mark is here and a complete pillock the rest of the time.

12) Rosie. Small and belligerent, possibly the ugliest dog I have ever seen. Has an enormous mouth with double rows of teeth. Adores Roger Poopy, who growls at her.

13) Elspeth. My Best Friend. Clever and trying very hard to be middle-class, which she does fairly well. Runs her own outdoor pursuits business but largely sits at a desk persuading people to buy climbing courses and worrying in case she is getting fat, which she isn’t.

14) My Mother. Still going strong. In a knitting club. Thinks I am a very elderly teenager.

15) Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma. Long suffering and nice. Remembers to feed him proper meals and put him to bed at the right time and hence gets lumbered with him more than I do.

16) The Other Taxi Drivers. My colleagues, whom I like very much. All living and breathing proof of the theory that you don’t become a taxi driver until you have been sacked from everything else. A motley collection of immigrants, pirates, redundant people, borstal graduates and autists.

There are lots of others, appearing for brief periods in earlier pages, but these are the principal actors, and their grubby thumbprints cover all of these pages.