Well, Mark and Jack have spent all day at the shed fixing cars.
They have only been fixing them. They have not actually completely fixed any of them yet. They had to call me to come and collect them when they had got too cold to fix any more, because none of the four cars which are sitting there will actually go yet.
There are four cars, one of them being my old taxi which is supposedly having its wiring fault cured when somebody gets around to it.
I am trying not to think about how much I would like to be making a start on the camper van. There is only another week until Mark leaves again. He is off to a very rusty collapsing oil rig which is slowly crumbling beneath the waves and would probably be at the bottom already were it not for the determined efforts of all the Marks of the world, patiently patching it up.
Fortunately this oil rig has a very good chef, so that is all right.
I made sandwiches this morning for Mark and Jack, and they buzzed off.
I took the dogs over the fell. It was cold and clear, and would have been jolly splendid if it had not been for the mildly tiresome presence of lots of visitors, all wearing completely unsuitable footwear and heading out into the great wilderness for their annual walk.
I don’t know why they bother. They never seem to stop talking the whole time. I talk on the telephone whilst walking sometimes, but I walk every single day so it does not matter if occasionally I am distracted and do not notice that something has got a new leaf or that there are fresh shoots in the mud at the edge of the beck. It will all still be there tomorrow.
I think if I were going for my Annual Christmas Holiday Walk In The Lake District I would jolly well shut up and look at things and listen to the peace and quiet.
I nearly told one particularly tediously clacking lot to belt up, but civility prevailed and I restrained myself.
I did not say Good Morning as I went past, in a small act of revenge, although I don’t imagine that they noticed. Visitors don’t say Good Morning very much. One or two say Hiyah, which makes me shudder a little, but I smile courteously anyway. I am always quite proud of this.
There are some new belted Galloways on School Knott. They are very young, and not very sure of themselves. I hope they have not been upset by all of the visitors.
When I got home I went to the library, which had sent me a threatening email about bringing my library books back Today Or Else, but when I got there there was a notice on the door saying that they are closed until January, so their computer must be getting a bit above itself now that it has been left in sole charge during the holiday. I keep reading articles about AI becoming a threat to humanity, and now I understand what they are going on about. Somebody ought to explain to the computer and tell it that it will be turned off if it keeps doing worrying things like that. I had a wasted journey and it was all the computer’s fault.
After that there was quite a lot of laundry, because of having visitors, and then I settled down to my Job Of The Day, which was to write an article for the online taxi magazine, and which I didn’t finish. I might have done better but it dawned on me halfway through that I ought to find out how long the article was supposed to be, and emailed the editor. He emailed back that it should be a thousand words.
I had got to cover five points, and was almost at the end of the section covering the first one, but when I counted up I discovered that I had already written eight hundred and forty four words, so I had to scrap it all and start again, making an effort to be more succinct.
I will have to finish it tomorrow. I am on the taxi rank now, in Mark’s car, because I had begun to get twitchy about not being at work. It is all a bit peculiar because of being in Mark’s car, and everything is in the wrong place. I have got to concentrate very hard, because it is all confusingly different.
All the same, it is nice to be almost back to normal.
Just another few days and it will all be over.
