I have replaced the sheets on Lucy’s bed.
It was not because I tripped over them, although I did, several times, but because Jack is going to come and stay with us this weekend. He is going to spend some time fixing some of Elspeth’s collection of ailing vehicles, and also some time helping Mark to fix our own even worse limping parade of collapsing veterans.
I am still not yet recovered from the camper van, talking of clapped out. People keep getting in the taxi and telling me how much they miss it, and how the village is a sadder place without it. One young man told me that it had been a part of his childhood, and this evening a lady cried when she heard it had gone for ever.
Mark told me this morning that the scrap man started to cut it in half at more or less exactly the time I felt its spirit vanish. That is to say, it was probably around about that time, obviously you can’t start asking scrap metal merchants for precise details about how they disposed of the remains of your rusting truck, as if they were an undertaker with your deceased relative, they would think that you were weird. Mark had to go and give him the V5, which I had forgotten, and asked how it had gone.
He said its remains were in a bale of aluminium.
I am not thinking about it.
I called in to see the new space in the shed this afternoon, except there wasn’t a space in the shed. In true Mark style it has immediately been filled with rusting bits of car. His taxi is on the axle stands, and Oliver’s old car has got the engine hoist parked next to it, with an engine dangling from it, as if a surgeon had got halfway through the job and then buzzed off to support the Junior Doctors on their picket line for higher wages and more holidays.
Mark was sighing over his car. It is terribly dreary to be working on a hopelessly clapped-out car when the rain is endlessly pouring down and the shed is dark and the skies are drearily grey. Windermere is very wet at the moment, there are massive puddles everywhere that local news stories are calling Floods, but of course they aren’t, that is just so that everybody feels worried and buys more newspapers.
I got wet on my walk this morning. I liked it anyway, it is good to be out on the fells when everybody else is skulking in the teashops, and the dogs are not fit to be introduced to civilised society at the moment anyway, Roger Poopy is doing a good imitation of Jeffrey Epstein at a high school disco. I have to keep turning round and bellowing at them, and they are obliged to desist and come scurrying after me, looking a bit shamefaced.
Once I got back I had a small adventure planned, because I was booked to go for a haircut. I have been looking forward to this, because the chap who usually cuts my hair has not had any appointments free for ages and ages, and the last time, in despair, I gave up trying and went somewhere else.
This time I had bethought myself some weeks in advance, and booked a slot for the time I thought my hair would be starting to get irritating. As it happens I was about a week too late with this, and I have been fidgeting, shaggily, for several days, which was all right because of being able to console myself with the prospect of the appointment today.
Last night the salon telephoned.
My friend the hairdresser had had chest pains and been whisked into hospital. He had a heart attack a couple of years ago, so they were taking it seriously, and hence he could not cut my hair.
I was most disconcerted.
I thought about sending him a card that said What About My Haircut Couldn’t Your Heart Have Waited Until Next Week? but decided that although I would have found that amusing, he might not, especially if he really was really ill.
I contented myself with sending him a message on Facebook. I was quite proud of this, it did not contain even the smallest hint of tastelessness, which involved some thoughtful effort and several crossings-out and starting again.
The salon called this morning and said that they had a lady who would do my hair, so I went in anyway, and it turns out the my hairdressing friend is not dying, and all medical measures are merely precautionary, so I could have been tasteless if I had wanted.
I got my hair cut. It took ages because she kept not cutting it short enough, and I kept having to encourage her to start again and make it shorter, until in the end I think she got fed up and just gave me a skinhead-inspired style. This actually worked perfectly well, really I could do it myself with the dog clippers.
It is lovely having short hair, although my ears are a bit chilly.
I will have to hunt out a hat.
