Goodness, we are having a Day.
It has been a Day, and it isn’t over yet.
I am still Having A Day even as I write.
We had a lot of things planned for today. I think I told you that we have purchased a new taxi in order to replace my clapped-out two hundred and sixty thousand mile fifteen year old current mode of transport. We have purchased a new one which we are not allowed to put on the road at the moment. This is because you are not allowed to licence a car over five years old as a taxi.
However, that rule is supposed to be changing in a few days, and then you will be able to put any car you like on as long as it is Euro Six, by which they mean, does not pump out hideous black clouds of diesel fumes all the time.
My old taxi does exactly that, but I am still compelled to use it and not the beautifully shiny new Euro Six car which has been sitting dolefully in the shed with the camper van, awaiting its turn to strut and fret its life upon the Windermere taxi stage.
Still, Mark is home now, and so it was time to unearth the new taxi, service it and get it properly disguised as a real taxi.
Today was the day for its meter installation.
The meter, for those of you who almost never think about taxis and have forgotten, is the gadget which enables you to charge a set rate per mile and double time on Bank Holidays. They have to be specially installed by a special installer, approved by the council, and ours is in Morecambe.
Hence we booked it in and spent some time yesterday starting the camper van, which had a flat battery, not to mention hideous black clouds of diesel smoke, and getting it out of the way so we could get the taxi out of the shed.
We decided that this morning we would take the taxi and leave it with the meter installer, and then carry on down to Manchester where we would collect the generator that we have just purchased on eBay for the purpose of running Mark’s big taxi-repairing equipment, being welders and other things you use to fix taxis.
The generator is so big we had to take the trailer.
Things went reasonably well to start off with, at any rate the coffee in bed was fine. We had a delayed start after that because of having to wait until the washing machine had finished so that we could peg the clean sheets on the line, because Mondays come round relentlessly.
Once we were running a bit late we went to the shed to collect the new car and the trailer.
This was fine as well.
Things stopped being fine about a mile later when the new car broke down on the dual carriageway.
I chugged to a halt, and Mark, who was following me with the trailer, stopped as well, and he leaped out and faffed about with some electrical bit called, unbelievably, the stop/start capacitor.
This is a bit which is actually designed to stop the engine whether you want it to stop or not. It does it at really annoying places like traffic lights, in order to flatten your battery as effectively as possible.
I cannot imagine the brainlessness of installing such a gadget in a car.
He fixed it and we drove on, for about another half a mile, when the same thing happened again.
And again…
And again, until eventually we decided that there was going to be no point in bothering any more and dumped the new car at the side of the road and buzzed off to collect the generator.
Whilst we drove it was my job to telephone Autoparts to explain what the bit was that we would need to fix the brainless Stop Your Car gadget, and ask them to deliver it.
They said they didn’t stock it.
Nor did EK Brakes, nor did the Peugeot dealer. Nor did the other Peugeot dealer.
Then I had to start calling scrapyards.
After a lot of scrapyards, eventually the Gods glanced down sympathetically and pointed out a hopeful-looking scrapyard, which not only had the bit, but by the most amazing, stunning, astonishing chance of fate, was about five minutes away from where we were at that very moment thundering down the motorway towards a generator.
Mark wrenched the steering wheel and we turned off.
It was the most helpful scrapyard I have ever encountered. Within half an hour they had matched the bit to the new taxi and removed one from an old car they happened to have lying about, and we were off again.
We collected the generator, which weighed so much I could practically hear the trailer whingeing when it thumped down into it. Then we drove back to Cumbria, which was where I was when I commenced writing to you.
I was sitting waiting whilst Mark installed the new bit in the broken-down car.
We were late for work by then.
The bit was installed, and we got home without further incident, to discover that Oliver has his friend from school visiting.
His friend is a rocket scientist these days. He told us some things that go wrong with rockets, of which I can assure you that I understood not a single, solitary word, and simply marvelled Really, in polite tones.
To my happiness, and perhaps to yours, we discovered that he is studying alongside an old friend, whom you might remember from ancient entries about Oliver’s prep school days.
It is Son of Oligarch, whom has grown up to be a rocket scientist, who would have thought it?
We rushed out to work.
We will put the clean sheets on when we get home.
It has been a Day.
