It is the very middle of the night, and I am writing this in some added bonus unexpected time, because Mark has come in from work and we have already done all the usual end-of-night tasks of dog-emptying and washing of pots. I was thinking, wearily, that I was going to have to rush through this whilst he was in the shower, but then Oliver telephoned with a motoring emergency just after midnight, and instead of going to bed, Mark has dashed out to rescue him.
I don’t know if he will actually be able to rescue him. It all sounded a bit alarming. Apparently there was a clunking noise coming from the back of the car.
We are a household of clapped-out cars. A clunking noise has got to be sufficiently loud to drown out the radio before any of us is likely to take much notice of it. The ordinary sort of clunking noise rarely raises so much as an eyebrow.
Mark has got a tow rope if the clunking becomes collapsing.
In the meantime I am using the extra hour of tranquillity to write to you.
Of course I should have done this ages ago, but once again the day has fled away from me, leaving me startled in the gathering dusk, and noticing that I have not actually managed to do any of the housework.
I do not quite know where the day went. I know I had a chilly walk this morning, squinting into the bright sunshine, and only just had time to rush round to the post office and to buy photographic paper from the shop that was once WH Smith, before I had to rush off in a great hurry to do some taxi runs that everybody else was too busy to bother about.
I do not like driving a taxi during the day, There are a lot of other cars on the road, being driven slowly and carefully by cautious visitors, and it takes ages to get anywhere. The problem is compounded by it being the winter, and the council has taken the opportunity to dig up all of the roads, there are traffic lights beaming contentedly on every corner.
Mark was in his shed, trying to bash his taxi into a fit state for an MOT and an engineer’s report later on this week. It is about to slide past the ten-year age limit, which the council are going to abolish but not until next April, and they will oblige us to put it off the road unless we can persuade the chap at the garage to say that it is in exceptional condition for its age, which it isn’t.
Exceptionally clapped-out, perhaps.
All the same, we need it to keep chugging on for another year, and so Mark has been busily replacing the clapped-out bits with new bits. I have opined that it only really needs a very thorough valet service and perhaps it will be all right, but he does not seem to be very concerned about this. I do not think he notices oil smears and sawdust. This is not good news, because I am quite sure that the council will notice them.
He has just called to tell me that Oliver’s car is going to need to be repaired, and that they are going to take it down to the shed and fix it. He thinks it will probably take a couple of hours.
I am not exactly sorry to hear this, because I have still got lots of things that need to be done, and Christmas is galloping towards us like a Derby racehorse that has just spotted a suffragette.
I am going to go away and do some more Advent calendar painting.
It is only quarter past one.
The night is still young.
