It has been the first day of Markless pre-Christmas flat-outness. I have run around clearing up the cluttery detritus left behind by his three weeks at home, and I am feeling exhaustedly flattened at the end of it, except it isn’t the end of it, because I have still got to go to work.
It is a good job that I don’t have anything resembling a real job. It would be very unpleasant indeed to be compelled to go to some horrible warehouse or office or other dreadful place of employment, and to be obliged to spend eight hours either thinking about things or lugging things about or generally participating in some cash generating but nevertheless exhausting dullness.
One of the very happy things about driving a taxi for a living is that it never actually feels as though I have got as far as a place of work. I leave our house and never get any further than the commute.
It is a short commute, a few minutes down the hill to Bowness taxi rank, and I am feeling reasonably confident that once there I will have plenty of time for reading the newspaper and reading my book and drinking my flask of chai and chatting to the other taxi drivers.
There are not very many tourists here at the moment.
I do not mind this, although of course it has meant that I have not made very much cash for the last couple of weeks, but in any case I have a suspicion that this state of bucolic tranquillity will not last, since some newspaper recently named Bowness as the most Christmassy place in England, and therefore the best place to go to amble around drinking mulled wine and gazing at the twinkling lights reflected in the lake, purchasing stuffed Peter Rabbits to be given to joyful and adoring children on Christmas morning and feeling seasonally contented.
I am not doing any of those things, as you know, because of the flat-out mad-panic rush which envelops our household for the duration of December, but so far nobody else is ambling about either, and the Peter Rabbit Gift Shop closes early when there is nobody here. The Christmas lights are not yet up, and it is very chilly with occasional bursts of torrential rain, none of which would make a very good illustration for a Christmas card.
Oliver has also buzzed off to work. He left early because of going to the gym first, but he has been remarkably helpful all day, changing the sheets on Jack’s now-empty bed and watering and mopping the conservatory for me. This was especially noble of him because it is his birthday. He is twenty today, no longer a teenager, and he could have been entirely justified in declining to do anything other than celebrate.
He did not. He said, vaguely, that it was just a day, and started to look for the hoover.
I was most impressed. Of course he is right, except when it is my birthday I always want to feel as though everything horrible stops, and I can have one bright shining day where nothing wearisome is required of me. This never happens, but I always feel mildly cheated about it.
Whilst Oliver was changing sheets I brought in firewood and carried on with the everlasting job of sawing up more. Mark has left quite a lot which he has thoughtfully sawn up already, but it has got to last not only whilst he is off bashing oil rigs back together, but also for a week or two when he gets back, when we will be getting back from Manchester and we will need dry wood for a quick, hot fire to warm the place up. Hence I do not want our supplies to start running low.
After that there was the dusting, and of course all the faffing about with the clean sheets, which stayed on the line just for long enough to get sawdusty whilst I sawed logs up. It started to rain then, so I had to bring them all in again, making rude gestures in the direction of the Weather Gods, who had promised a fine day on my telephone, and who had clearly fibbed.
I paid the weekend’s derisory takings into the Post Office, and Nigel behind the counter reminded me that I needed to get my act together pretty sharpish if I was hoping to post the Advent calendars in time, which was not a cheery thought.
Nigel is right.
I am going to have to get my act together.
Tomorrow. I will get on with it tomorrow.
Happy birthday, Oliver. It has been a very splendid twenty years.
