Quiet afternoon on the taxi rank: mostly filled with the pleasant occupation of leaning on the bonnet exchanging trivia and gossip, and hardly at all filled with the less enjoyable but more lucrative activity of taking people to places.
Big topic of the day was the visit of the taxi inspectors the day before, which I had somehow managed to miss, and thus by some phenomenal stroke of good fortune I had not been subjected to the indignity of being sent home off the rank for not wearing my taxi badge. This item is still on the desk in my office where it has languished since it arrived due to the extreme unflatteringness of the picture I appear to have absent-mindedly supplied for it and at which I will now have to look every day for a year.
They had appeared on the taxi rank out of nowhere with a bang and a puff of green smoke so nobody had seen them coming, usually their presence can clear a taxi rank more quickly than an old lady who has had a little accident in her knickers. They aren’t as bad as the last one either, who served his apprenticeship at Guantanamo Bay, but even so they are ex police officers with all the lively, generous sort of humour one associates with followers of that occupation when confronted with a traffic offence. They went round taxis with serious intent, banged seats so they would have the satisfaction of seeing a cloud of dust rise and shame its irresponsible owner: and they gave Paul a stern ticking off for having a dirty back end. This was unfortunate as he has been subjected to predictable but entertaining ribaldry ever since.
In my youth I was worried about taxi inspectors. We had one small and scary chap who used to wear black leather gloves and pull them off one finger at a time and then stand there slapping them threateningly against his thigh as he stared into your eyes and sent you home for some shameful wickedness like having dirty wing mirrors or cigarette burns in the upholstery.
When I applied for my first badge many years ago I had to be interviewed by him, and he glared at me over the desk and shuffled his papers for ages, and rapped out: “So – young lady: you think you want to be a taxi driver? Let us talk about safe behaviour on the road. What is the sequence of traffic lights?” – and I was in such a state of advanced nervousness that I couldn’t remember. I went scarlet and stammered, with unbelievable stupidity: “Umm – Tufty says At The Kerb Halt.”
It was so breathtakingly rubbish that even I couldn’t believe I’d said it, even as the words tripped out of my mouth. I recall racking my brains helplessly for something – anything – mitigating, and in the end just opening and closing my mouth and wagging my head about like a toddler being fed by its mother and trying to be tiresome. He treated me to a hard stare, and a long silence, during which I considered leaping up and hurling myself from the window. Eventually he broke it with a disappointed cough, which in hindsight may have been a smothered laugh: and told me that I must re-read the highway code that very day, and every day for the rest of my natural life: and although he would generously issue me with a badge in the interests of supporting the mentally deficient to be active in the community, I would be required to answer questions on this very topic ever time we met until he was satisfied that my ignorance was rectified.
Of course he never remembered, and probably dined out for years on the story of the amusingly low IQ level of the people with whom he was obliged to work: but I suffered from a state of trembling terror for years afterwards every time I saw a small red car with a small moustachioed driver come anywhere near the taxi rank. I would have died of horror in those days if I had inadvertently gone out without my badge, even if the picture had been of an orang-utan with a disfigurement.
I’m not scared now, of course. It’s nice to have grown up.
