I have just got five minutes before work so I thought I would drop you a line quickly.
Probably I will have to write the rest of the lines from the taxi rank, but I thought I would make a start.
We left Manchester this morning after eating a breakfast so colossal that we practically had to waddle out to the pavement, and stopped on the way home at a place that makes windows for camper vans and boats. This was very exciting. There are all sorts of window choices, round ones and square ones, they only needed an arched sort to be just like Playschool used to be. Mark wants to put a round one somewhere, I think just because he likes them, and I want some that will open wide to let the summer air in and be double glazed and tightly sealed when the world is filled with bitter swirling sleet.
We have not yet found exactly what we want but we are still considering it very carefully. I will keep you posted. It is a thrilling decision.
We collected the dogs from Elspeth’s house on the way back, and now I am home.
I am Home Alone. Mark has gone off to Aberdeen, Oliver is not here, and I have just had to stop writing for a minute whilst I remembered to dispatch an email to cancel the milk.
I do not drink seven pints of milk every week, not even with porridge for breakfast. Not even the green top stuff that has not been pre-washed and still might contain bits where a tiresome cow put her foot in the bucket.
That has happened to me, quite a few times. It is really irritating because you have to give the whole lot to the pigs. You cannot just try and sieve out the dried cow dung that is now floating in the milk which you had planned, optimistically, to put on your cornflakes.
You can do that if you are going to pasteurise it, of course. Just saying.
We got back this afternoon. Mark sorted his things out and packed everything into his offshore bag. This has got to be the right weight to fit into a helicopter, so it is a good job that he was packing it and not me, and I started to set my life in order.
It is the setting in order that comes after Christmas, when everything is really and truly over and the house is quiet.
I cleaned out my taxi, which was embarrassingly dirty even in the dark. I have not cleaned it since some vague time so far back in the distant misty past that I can’t remember when it was. When I had done the inside I took it down to the jet wash at the garage and scrubbed the outside as well.
It was going dark by then but even so I could still see that the water was coming out black.
I am somehow feeling almost excited to be going to work in a clean taxi. It does not make it any warmer, nor my customers better behaved, but it gives me a sense of unassailable virtue. Let the licensing officer turn up on the taxi rank and scowl all that he likes. I am beyond reproach.
I have also filled up the fireplace with logs, emptied the dogs and cleaned out the fridge. I had packed the last interesting things, like mince pies and smoked ham, into Mark’s bag to be eaten on the way to Aberdeen. Then I gave the last of the custard to the dogs and threw away the mouldy things. There were not very many of these in any case, just some elderly hummus that nobody had wanted on their toast over Christmas, and a very squishy cucumber that had become buried at the bottom of the vegetable drawer and about which I had forgotten.
That was rather revolting, actually.
The fridge is looking very empty indeed.
There are still a couple of lemons, which is all right because Jack will be visiting in a week or two and he eats them. Apart from the lemons there are five pints of milk on the bottom shelf, a tub of cottage cheese and three different sorts of plain yoghurt, because I like different yoghurts for different things, one variety just will not do. There are four apples and a bowl of soaking porridge for tomorrow morning, but that is it.
It might be a bit dull to be me for the next couple of weeks.
I am on the taxi rank now.
I am going to look at pictures of windows on the mighty internet for a while.
