It is a quietly quiet evening on the taxi rank.
It is even quieter than last night, and that was jolly quiet.
Fortunately Amber Taxis called and asked me to cover a job for them, so I will not be going home with no cash at all,. But apart from that I am merely sitting here, rankling, as it were.
Just popped out for a rank, as our taxi driver employees used to say.
I do not mind this at all. I haven’t yet finished reading the shocking yarn of the wicked BBC’s calumnies over poor Princess Diana. I hope Prince William has them all beheaded when he becomes King, it worked for Henry the Eighth, nobody wanted to upset him. They jolly well ought to be more responsible, especially because the BBC will be left in almost sole charge of telling people the news if our beloved leaders have their way and Elon Musk gets banned from letting us all tell one another on Witter.
For those who don’t follow the news, ie Elspeth, it appears that poor Mr. Musk is going to be booted out of the UK, just as he has been in lots of other liberty-loving countries, like China, Turkmenistan, North Korea and Iran. Here it is not for political reasons, of course, perish the thought. It is because he has invented a computer program that imagines what people will look like if they are undressed, as long as they give him thirty quid a month.
In my experience, lots of blokes have been doing this for a very long time without really needing the assistance of a computer program. I expect that although there would be one or two weirdos who would shell out for a bit of internet support with this sort of hobby, most blokes, especially the ones whose wives look at their bank statements, are more likely to say How Much? in aggrieved tones.
I wonder if Mr. Starmer is anxious in case anybody is going to use the program to draw pictures of him without his clothes on.
I don’t think he need worry. In any case, there are dozens of other computer programs that will do that easily enough, so nobody will mind about Elon Musk.
But enough, this is not a column about politics and I don’t use Elon Musk’s computer program in any case. I am sure you will be more interested in our own little adventures, the nastiest of which is being fixed by Mark even as I speak, so I am jolly glad that I am on the taxi rank, even if it is quiet.
Something dreadful has happened.
We had noticed a nasty smell in the kitchen.
It has been getting nastier over the last couple of weeks.
Regular readers might have guessed already what I am about to tell you.
It is not a pretty story.
It was a horrid, horrid nasty smell. Worst if you sat down on the floor.
It smelled like decay. Like something dead.
I expect you know where this is going.
You would be right.
This evening, inspired by some insistent witterings from me, Mark, whose sense of smell is not brilliant since we had bat flu, did some investigations.
He crawled around the kitchen floor, unscrewing boards. This was not easy since he is a very thorough workman, and much of the kitchen floor has been glued as well as screwed into place.
I am very sorry to say that under the floor, just in front of the dishwasher, he discovered the mortal remains of an enormous rat.
We had murdered it just in time, it appears. It – she – had been building a nest. This enlightened us about the fate of Mark’s missing shoelaces, which had puzzled us briefly when they disappeared, and was then forgotten, as we vaguely blamed various visiting cats and dogs, since our own are not prone to eating shoelaces.
It had begun to decay so revoltingly that it had stuck to the floor. Even Mark’s faded sense of smell was hideously assaulted. I am very glad that I was at work.
We have had no rat problems for ages, it seems that the anti-rat noise machines work, and I think that this is probably the last post-script to the problem, at least I certainly hope so.
Mark cremated her in the stove, and chucked half a gallon of disinfectant under the floor. Then he lit an expensive White Company scented candle to drown out the lingering echoes of vile corpse-stink, can came out to work.
It will come to us all.
One day we will all be leakily, revoltingly smelly.
Probably not underneath the dishwasher, though
