I am feeling very pleased with my world.
I am sitting quietly in my taxi with a cup of my almost favourite chai. Not quite my favourite because my favourite is made from tea leaves in a teapot, and I can’t be bothered to mess about with it for the taxi. It is my close-to-favourite, and it is lovely peppery black chai. We have little china cups for our tea in the taxis, they are a lovely blue and gold, and fit perfectly in the little space intended for cups which never usually works.
I think this is important. We also have pretty boxes for the bread and cheese bit of the picnics. Mine has got roses on it, and Mark’s has got birds. Tonight they are full of sausages and olives and Wensleydale and red peppers, sprinkled with sesame oil.
I have got a good book written by a policeman, a creamy lamb-and-pine-nut mildly spicy curry in my flask and some plums in dark chocolate for later on.
The nicest thing of all is that whilst I was getting picnics ready, Mark gave the taxis a thorough clean. My taxi is fresh and hoovered and polished and full of fuel, and feels lovely. All the gritty surfaces are smooth and clean, and all the sticky has been wiped from the steering wheel, and the windows are bright and not smeary any more.
I am contented.
It is Saturday night, although still January, so we are not really expecting to be busy. This is a little worrying, because of needing to pay the mortgage, but we have had so many financial crises over the years that these days I am entirely sanguine about them, and I dare say that it will all come out all right in the end, these things usually do.
We have left the children at home. Oliver decided to stay up all night last night to play unsuitable terrifying games on his PlayStation instead of going to bed. In consequence of this lifestyle choice, Lucy discovered him flat out and soundly asleep on his bed in his dressing gown at about four o’clock this afternoon. We left some cold sausages and pizza on a plate downstairs when we went out to work in case he woke up, and left him to it.
Pleasingly, it is not raining.
One of the irritating things that people sometimes say to taxi drivers is that the rain is somehow ‘good for you lot’.
This is not true at all.
If you drive a hackney carriage, as I do, and people have got to come and find you on the street corner, there is a good chance if it is raining that they will just stay indoors. They will ring some private hire monkey and not bother dashing about in the rain searching for a taxi when obviously they will not be able to find one because they are all busy.
Anybody who does get in is soaking wet, and will steam the windows up and make a puddle on the seats. Most tiresome of all is that there is no chance for the driver to get out of his seat in between customers and stretch his legs, because of getting uncomfortably drenched and chilled and having to remain that way until the end of the shift.
Wet nights are awful.
Tonight it is not wet. Tonight is cool and clear and pleasant. It is not so cold that I have got to sit with the engine running and the heater on, nor is it damp and steamy. It is, in short, a very nice night on which to be driving a taxi.
I don’t expect to be doing very much driving a taxi.
I am going to sit here contentedly with my cup of chai and my picnic and write my book.
Happy days.
