The worst of the nightmare is over.
Mark’s taxi has passed both its engineer’s report and its MOT with no difficulties whatsoever.
It is also looking very smart and spruce, I drove it back home after its MOT, and for the first time ever I did not shudder slightly, and squirm when I got in. It was just like getting in somebody else’s car, not one that belongs to Mark. It is valeted, tidy, fresh and clean, and I have sent all of the paperwork off to the council.
I am more relieved than I can say. If it had failed then it would have been banished from the taxi rank, and although we are not nearly as broke and desperate as once we were, we would still find life financially challenging if we did not have taxis to fill the gaps. In any case, the oil industry is just a bit of a temporary byline. We dare not imagine that it will last very long, certainly not if our beloved leaders have anything to do with it, they are certainly up for having goose for Christmas dinner, no matter how wonderfully golden the eggs. It would be prudent, we have decided, to make sure we can still be taxi drivers.
I spent the morning carefully completing the paperwork, scanning insurance documents and taxi documents, not helped along by the need to keep my fingers anxiously crossed. It has still got to face the committee, but I am not worried about that. The car will be facing them in absentia, I will be acting as its proxy, and frankly, clean as it is, any vehicle belonging to Mark is best kept right out of the way of anybody with a critical eye, just in case. He has never understood that the passenger footwell is not the correct place in which to store pork pie wrappers.
I will argue its case with all the eloquence at my disposal.
We dumped it at the MOT station last night, after a dreadful moment when the MOT man said he had changed his mind and was not going to turn up and so would do it next week instead. I squeaked with horror and used my very best pleading voice, until finally he agreed to turn up on his day off to do it.
I was very relieved indeed, not to mention rather humbly grateful.
It has been something of a day for paperwork. Apart from the taxi, I am still busily completing all of the endless form-filling required in order to become Irish, which has been quite astonishingly comprehensive. Apart from requiring details of my great grandmother Bojs, they want birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, and four photographs of me, signed by somebody important who is also prepared to declare that they have seen my passport. I have not seen it myself for a while, given our sorry lack of foreign holidays over the last few years, and I am going to have to hunt it out next week.
I am still not sure who of my acquaintance might be considered to be of sufficient importance to impress the Irish Government. There is a long list of Intelligentsia Who Might Do, including doctors, school principals, nurses and dentists. I don’t know anybody of such distinguished academic standing, certainly it appeared that Nigel at the Post Office would not do, and Lucy counts because she is a policeman, but is discounted again because she is related to me.
I am going to ask Glyn at the chemist on Monday, perhaps he will do it. He is suitably academic and has quite spectacular taste in ties, so he should be all right.
Mark sawed up firewood whilst I faffed about with paperwork, and in the end we chugged off to Kendal in the new truck. This was because we had tried and failed to get it weighed yesterday, so today had to do instead.
We parted it on the weigh bridge, and Mark got out because he is heavier than I am.
It weighs six tonnes, so we can put a ton and a half of junk into it.
I suspect we will not have much difficulty with that.
