Well, we have reached October. We can safely say that we are into autumn, and it has started with a bang in the Ibbetson household.
It is half past ten at night, and I am just starting to write in here.
It has been a difficult night.
The day has not been difficult. In fact, the day has gone quite well, considering that a very lot of it was spent on the telephone to insurance companies. This does not sound like a terribly productive occupation, had it not been that by the end of it I had managed to gain several hundred pounds reduction in our taxi insurance, which I thought was rather fine.
I even had half an hour in which I hastily daubed some paint on the Advent calendars.
All was going well, until it wasn’t.
I had not been on the taxi rank for very long tonight when the telephone rang, and it was Oliver.
All of the electricity had gone off.
We discussed this at some length, and during our contemplation he managed to deduce, by the simple act of switching things on one at a time, that the problem was related to the kitchen plug sockets.
He switched all of the sockets off, and tried again, without success.
I said that I thought the problem must, therefore, be the washing machine, the plug for which was in the wall behind it, and consequently inaccessible. The whole problem was too difficult then, so I told him to phone Daddy.
About half an hour later he called back.
He was trying to get the washing machine out, and failing.
The washing machine had been carefully jammed in and a cupboard built beside it, and the whole lot could not be budged.
I stopped trying to drive a taxi, and went home.
I discovered Oliver in a mess in a darkened conservatory, trying to remove a cupboard by torchlight, so I helped him.
I cannot bear to go into details.
The cupboard had been screwed in, and the screws rusted. One remained, and it would not turn.
It took almost an hour of bashing, levering with a crowbar and hacking the screw to bits with a grinder before the cupboard finally came out, revealing an unpleasant mess of dust and insulation, spiders and mould behind it.
We investigated, dragged the washing machine aside, and eventually eliminated the washing machine as the source of the problem.
All the same, the floor was very damp.
We looked at it for a while, and then went back to solving the problem, which we didn’t.
That is to say, we discovered the source of it, but it proved beyond our midnight DIY abilities to resolve.
When we dragged the cooker forward – you might remember, although you probably don’t, that our cooker is in a hole in the floor. You can’t lift it out, merely tip it forwards, swearing and balancing it and wishing that somebody had been more enthusiastic about cleaning it.
At the back of the cooker was a large puddle with a fully wired electrical connector submerged beneath it.
It looks as though we have had a leak for a very long time.
We managed to hook the connector out, and to lift it above the puddle, where eventually it will presumably dry out, but could do nothing about the puddle itself, which appeared to have been formed by a slow but persistent drip coming from the plumbing.
Mark is home tomorrow. He can deal with the plumbing.
We plugged everything into extension leads running from the living room, which still has electricity, and gave up. I went back to work, where I spent the next hour, before we had another adventure to manage.
My taxi retired at midnight.
I took it to the shed, followed by Oliver for the purpose of a lift back home. We emptied it as thoroughly as if we had been planning to set light to it for insurance purposes, and then abandoned it, forlorn and alone apart from the camper van, and presumably wondering what on earth was happening.
Its working life is over.
It is a very odd feeling. Tonight I do not have a taxi at all, not until the new one has passed its examination tomorrow.
I always have a taxi. It is an important part of being me.
I will be very glad when tomorrow is here.
