I had a surprising experience last night when a rather well-dressed Chinese man got in my taxi and burst into rather noisy and distastefully viscous tears.
He had had a very great deal to drink and indeed was wearing his smart linen jacket inside out.
It is infrequent that my customers bow to me, but I am open to new experiences, and thus made what I thought to be a reasonable attempt at politeness in return.
Between noisy and gulping sobs he announced that he was Chinese, and not North Korean, and that he could not help the bomb.
After some mystified reflection I recalled that Radio 4 had been alerting the nation to some North Korean nuclear testing of which Barack Obama was expressing strong disapproval, and decided that it must be this issue which was causing him distress. Of course I assured him that he had no cause for alarm, and that I had not supposed that he was in any sense personally responsible, whatever bit of Asia he might call his home.
He sobbed some more, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his inside-out jacket.
“Ah, no,” he explained, somewhat incoherently, “North Korea very very poor mans. Is my country buying bomb for poor mans to bomb America. Is Chinese and I am very shame. We all die in poor man bomb paid by my country.”
It is difficult to think of a suitable response to such confidences, so I told him that he would probably feel better after a good night’s sleep, and that would be a tenner, please.
So there you have it, if China turns out to be subsidising the North Korean nuclear programme and planning US obliteration, remember you read it here first. How we taxi drivers do get the inside story of events as they are unfolding.
I went on to sit outside the nightclub after that, where I was stopped by a rather astonishing elderly lady who appeared to have forgotten to put her clothes on over the top of her underwear.
She had a bright spray tan, some faded tattoos and rather fewer teeth than I might have expected, and was accompanied by a grinning but extremely intoxicated youth and several of his friends, having clearly only very recently all become acquainted with one another.
They wanted to go off to somewhere in Troutbeck, which is miles away in the middle of nowhere. In fact after some brief discussion I declined to take them anywhere at all, because there were six of them and my taxi is only licensed for four passengers.
The lady refused to get out, and stayed in the front of the taxi arguing vociferously that I should not only transport them all, but also greatly reduce the price because of their status as local inhabitants. Eventually I explained that I would have to request the assistance of a police constable if she did not kindly desist and depart.
This made them rather disgruntled, and they all thought of some very unfriendly gestures and uncharitable names to bellow at me as they left and got in with Number Two Daughter in the minibus behind me.
When we got home that night we occupied a satisfactory few minutes imagining with some amusement the surprise and happiness that the party would experience on waking up all together the next morning. This was the inevitable outcome, as there is no way whatsoever of leaving Troutbeck in the middle of the night. What a joyful morning they must have had.
Sometimes you just carry our own destiny inside you, you don’t so much experience your life as create it just by being the person that you are.
I am very glad that I have turned out to be the sort of person who wakes up next to Mark every morning. I don’t think I would at all like to be waking up miles from anywhere with a nasty hangover and some unattractive rude-word employing people.
The picture is the grapes growing in the garden. There are absolutely loads of them and they are doing jolly well. If they just manage to last a bit longer and ripen I shall make them into grape jelly, which is superb, especially cut into squares and coated in salted chocolate.
I almost wrote all about grapes growing in the garden but thought that might be a bit dull. Another time.
