It has been a day of unexpected working.
It started with Oliver, who worked all night last night and who staggered blearily down the stairs at eleven o’clock this morning, after what must have been about four hours’ sleep, and announced wearily that somebody had called in sick at work and that he was going to go in and cover.
He was going to work both shifts, one after the other, and come home tomorrow morning.
I had just come in from my dog-emptying fell walk, so I shuddered sympathetically and offered to make his sandwiches whilst he showered.
I had just about finished filling his box when my own phone rang, and it was Abdul, the taxi driver who drives the minibus. He had a booking that he couldn’t cover, he explained, and wondered if I would do it.
I instantly translated this sentence as omitting the words Be Bothered To, after couldn’t, but agreed anyway, and bid farewell to Oliver, whom I won’t see again until tomorrow afternoon due to our incompatible sleeping hours, and dashed off.
The customers had a huge pile of luggage.
This was a most unwelcome discovery, because my boot catch broke again yesterday, and the dogs have had to be shovelled in and out through the back door ever since. Of course I had not troubled myself about it otherwise. Night-time pub-leaving customers are rarely encumbered by luggage, and Mark will be back to fix it in another week or so, so I had just sighed and thought that it would be a temporary nuisance.
It was now a major nuisance. I had to fold the seats down and fling the massive suitcases bodily into the boot whilst the customers hovered, uncertainly, at the entrance to their guest house.
I had just started to load it all when somebody nudged the Weather Gods, and they noticed me.
The heavens opened with an entirely sudden, startling, and very thorough deluge.
It was as if I had hopped underneath a waterfall. Within seconds I was drenched to the skin. Even my underwear was sodden.
It does not look good to start shaking your fist at the skies and swearing in front of customers, so I contented myself with a glare and some muttered curses, but I was completely soaked.
I finished hauling the very heavy suitcases over the back seats, and the customers scurried out, under an umbrella.
Don’t you have a raincoat, one of them asked, as if everybody wears raincoats just in case when they are driving a taxi on an otherwise sunny and benevolent day.
I did not dignify such stupidity with a reply.
I had barely started the engine when the rain stopped, as suddenly as a stalling car when you have forgotten to shunt the gearstick before taking your foot off the clutch, and the sun beamed down upon us, as brightly cheery as a postman with a handful of brown envelopes.
They wanted to go to a different railway station, this one miles away, so I rang Abdul and made grumpy noises, and he obligingly doubled the agreed price and sent them a link by which they could pay it with some cyber-cash.
I hauled the whole lot out again at the station and abandoned them, sitting down gingerly on a driver’s seat made uncomfortably damp from contact with my even damper dungarees.
There was no point in going home, wet as I was, since I had to pass the entrance to Booths on the way, so I did that first, stumping around the shelves and shivering in their air conditioning.
When I got home the day was so brilliantly sunny that I pegged the washing out, and it dried without a single raindrop falling on it for the rest of the day. Indeed, the day had become so balmy that my own clothes dried considerably in the warm little breeze just whilst I was pegging it out.
I was ravenous by then, and decided to have breakfast before I even put the shopping away. It was two o’clock in the afternoon by then, and too late to start on any of the projects I had planned for the day, so in the end I went upstairs and spent the afternoon composing missives to the council in readiness for their fast-approaching Licensing Committee meeting. I have requested a slot to speak at this, because I have got a lot to say, not for the first time, and I could practically hear the licensing enforcement officer sighing and rolling his eyes even as I was writing it.
Of course I am glad of the rain really, not least because it spares me the necessity for any further hose-related misfortunes. The garden has freshened up beautifully, and the mossy arch once again a vibrant green.
Also we have still got the sunshine.
PS. Number One Daughter came thirteenth in the world championships. She is the thirteenth fittest in the world.
I am very, very impressed indeed.
As I explained to her on the phone, I doubt that I am even the thirteenth fittest on our street.
