Oliver has gone and the world is quiet.
It is not completely quiet just yet, because of course Mark is still here. I will miss Oliver. He is a cheerful presence in the house. He has gone off to Bath to spend some time with Emily before he has his next Army interview. He will be away until February.
Oliver, if you are reading this please remember to get a haircut. You are being interviewed for the Army, not auditioning to be the drummer for Guns ‘n’ Roses.
Jack has also buzzed off now, he is on a course learning how to be a knight in shining armour, thundering to the rescue of mechanical incompetents.
Mark will be off to his oil rig on Thursday and I will be by myself.
I will not be lonely. I have got a lot to do. I am going to clear out the attic and sell some things on eBay. Some of my clothes have become too big for me. I had thought that perhaps I might have become rounder again, but when I looked on Oliver’s set of scales this morning, it appears that I have become thinner over Christmas, not fatter.
I was a bit disconcerted by this, because I have eaten a very lot of very nice things over the festive season, and drunk a very lot more. There has been wine and whisky and cocktails and chocolate, sometimes mixed together. I had expected to stand on the scales and be stricken by guilt, but instead I was a mixture of pleased and mildly alarmed. I made myself get off and then stand on the scales again, just in case they were fibbing, but they weren’t.
Mark agreed that I have eaten a very lot, but he just laughed and said that it is what happens when you run about squeaking and flapping about like an upset chicken for a few weeks.
I had a celebratory chocolate, whilst I had a clear conscience.
I am writing to you from the taxi rank, but I am not being disturbed very much. The festive season is over, and our quietest time of the year has begun. We will have hardly any customers for the next few weeks.
Of course not all of the taxis are going to sit here desperately hoping to take home the three or four drunks still remaining in Bowness. We have decided to take it in turns. Tonight is my turn, and Mark has joined me because he would not have a very exciting evening at home by himself, but after tonight we are going to stop. I am not going to come back to work until Thursday, when Mark goes away.
I am really looking forward to this. I mean, really, really. It is three whole nights off, three real nights off, not nights when there will be squeaking and flapping about to achieve. There is nothing that I need to do apart from eat things and loaf around. During the day we are going to do things to the camper van, and then in the evenings we will sit beside the Christmas tree and enjoy the last of the festive season, probably with a glass of single malt. Please do not worry if it turns out that I am so overtaken by idleness that I do not bother to write in these pages. This is easily likely to be a possibility.
I am not sorry that Mark is here as well tonight, actually. It would be a little un-nerving to be here by myself, like being a Victorian Lady Of The Night in a film about Jack The Ripper. The streets are deserted, and behind me there are some insomniac birds squabbling noisily in the graveyard. It has snowed, not very much but enough for the pavements to be white, and it is very, very cold.
I am not going to be missing very much for the rest of the week.
The taxi is warm.
Tomorrow is my first night off.
I am feeling very contented indeed.
