I have spent the whole day doing woody things.
I don’t mean walking in the woods, although of course I did that this morning, on my way up the fells. I mean firewoody things.
The builders left us a huge stack of firewood the other day, and I tried to be grateful but absolutely couldn’t be because we have already got sufficient firewood to last us for at least the next ten years. Fortunately we are a two-fire family these days, so today we set about cutting it into usable bits for Lucy’s fire.
You will note that I was not alone in this venture. Oliver’s nice girlfriend has gone home, and he has been being helpful all day, even joining me on the dog walk this morning. This was lovely even though his legs are considerably longer than mine and I was very out of puff.
He is having a small life-crisis, the sort familiar to all teenagers, of considering where he is going and what he is doing with his life, and I listened with interest, feeling very relieved to be grown-up. I still have not decided what I would like to do for a living, and so have sympathy with anybody else’s personal angst on the topic. Also I was very pleased to provide a listening ear, especially since I was getting a helping hand.
This proved to be an entirely satisfactory exchange of body parts.
He knocked nails out of several satisfactorily long lengths of wood that we had decided to save for use in the camper van repair, and we shoved them in my taxi. This was not nearly as easy as you might think because they were too long even for my extremely capacious taxi, and had to be poked out of the passenger window and a dishcloth-flag hung on their end.
I taped them together with some gaffer tape and we chugged off to the camper van shed. I had an anxious eye open all the way there, having spent the last few weeks determinedly agitating for more police and taxi inspectors it would have been a complete nuisance if they had turned up today.
Fortunately we passed unobserved, and slid the wood underneath the camper van with some relief.
When we got back I was downcast to discover that the builders had deposited another, colossal pile of wood at the back of the house, which we hauled wearily inside, until there is barely space to pass through the yard. I was very pleased to recollect that Lucy and Jack are coming up this weekend, so I will show them how to keep their fingers out of the way of the scary saw, and they can cut it up and fill their car.
You can barely get to the scary saw there is so much firewood.
I had to clean out my car after that. I was going to clean it anyway really, but after I had been driving it whilst covered in sawdust with half a ton of filthy sticks balanced in the back it had become imperative.
I made myself late for work. I scrubbed it and hoovered it and even then it was only just about acceptable, especially if we had been packed to the gills with police and taxi inspectors, because grubby taxis get sent home, with a stern-faced instruction not to take any more passengers until they have produced a shiny clean taxi for inspection at the licensing office.
Fortunately they are still ignoring our strident demands for more officialdom, and so I am still allowed to collect as many passengers as I like.
I didn’t like several of them tonight, most especially a very loud woman who was trying to eat pizza, despite having been instructed not to, and complaining loudly that the meter was running too quickly because I was driving too fast, and I should slow down.
A taxi meter measures distance, so of course the faster you go, the faster the numbers clock up. They clock up more slowly if you drive like a snail but it still costs the same when you get there.
I tried to explain this but could not make myself heard over her extremely loud and poorly-conceived protests, so I put my foot to the floor and ignored her.
Her husband gave me twenty quid and apologised when they got out, so my tranquillity was restored.
I am going to bed.
It has been a long day.
