I think perhaps I am very fortunate.
I thought that this morning, when it stopped raining for a while during my daily plod over the fells. There are an awful lot of people who would be very pleased to change places with me, and my nice house in the Lake District, perfectly adequate income, happy marriage, splendid children and only occasionally delinquent dogs.
Also I don’t much mind driving a taxi. It is indoor work with no heavy lifting, and it doesn’t matter if I can’t be bothered to turn up.
All the same, it has taken some determination to maintain that view of my existence today, because I think the Gods have got cheesed off with me about something.
It has been a tiresomely difficult day, and had it not also been Clean Sheets Day then very probably I would have put the electric blanket on and crawled back into bed.
This option being closed, I have nobly soldiered on through, although not without some grumbling.
I set off with the dogs this morning only to discover that the council, for some arcane councilly reason, have closed the alley off at the back of the house. My car is parked there, necessitating an irritating detour on my return.
It appears that everybody has been making the same detour, and somebody had driven into my mirror, knocking a lump out of it.
I collected the pieces and shoved them in the driver’s door pocket, where probably I will forget all about my virtuous intention to glue them back together, and they will eventually be crushed to fragments when I chuck other useful things like emergency chocolate and people’s lost telephones on the top of them.
I had forgotten about it even by the time I set off over the fells, it is the sort of thing that you only remember at the moment when you are getting in your car, when usually you are in a rush to go somewhere and will not have time to do anything about it. After that it will vanish away like an ice cube down the back of the sofa.
After that I went to Booths.
Booths had sold everything.
I do not know how they had managed to do this. They have got lots of shelves for keeping things, and enormous lorries arrive all the time, piled high with interesting treasure. We haven’t even had a busy weekend. If all my customers had gone into Booths and piled an enormous stack of groceries into their trolley, they wouldn’t have made a dent on the Fruit & Veg aisle, but it was empty anyway.
I mean really empty.
I am going to have to go back again tomorrow, when a lorry has been and the shelves are replenished.
I sighed, and made my way home, after which I went to the Post Office to pay in the weekend’s takings. We are a bit short of cash at the moment, Mark doesn’t get paid until Friday, and I had scraped together to bank every penny that I could, in order that he will have enough cash to buy fuel to get home.
This was when I discovered that there was yet another forged twenty pound note amongst them.
My new taxi doesn’t have very much in the way of light, not like the last one, into which somebody had installed a rather impressive row of lights. I only really mind this because it makes it difficult to read, but obviously in the dark I have failed to detect the forgery, which was slightly paler and greyer than the real ones, easily identifiable under the bright daylight in the Post Office.
I was cross with myself, this is the third one lately, and listened meekly to the lady behind the counter lecturing me about checking properly, although I don’t exactly know what I could have done even had I noticed. Somebody sufficiently villainous to pass a forged note is probably also villainous enough to get out and buzz off without paying anything if I had refused it, although I suppose at least I wouldn’t have given them any change.
In the end I put it out of my mind and got on with my Clean Sheets Day housework. I dusted and hoovered thoroughly, and was just finishing up when I noticed that the lid at the bottom of the hoover tank was swinging open.
I had been sucking the dust off the floor and simply blowing it all back again. Worse, I had been blowing it everywhere, and everything needed to be dusted all over again as well.
It was not my finest moment.
I was feeling very sorry for myself when Mark telephoned.
He is still on board the freezing cold leaky boat, braving the nine meter waves, the one without enough lifeboats. Nobody can get off because the weather is too bad for helicopters, and things are looking a bit grim.
They are running out of food, he told me cheerfully. They haven’t been able to get any supplies on board either, and the weather looks as though it is going to last for another week.
I made encouraging noises, and got myself ready for work, and thought how very fortunate I am to be me.
Life, I decided, is jolly good really.
