It was the day of our meeting with the police.
We set the alarm especially early in order that we would not accidentally oversleep and humiliate ourselves, but we woke up before it went off anyway.
This was an indicator of our troubled minds, it is not natural to go to bed at five and wake up again at half past nine, at least, not for people with a serious commitment to complete idleness.
It had been a fairly untroubled night at work. When I say untroubled, actually I mean that the police decided not to concern themselves with problematic taxi ranks at nightclubs, and also that the only person who ran off without paying rang up this morning to apologise and pay up.
This may have been partly because he was a chef at a fairly prestigious hotel and I told all of his friends that wedding or no wedding, I was going to get the police to come and arrest him halfway through the first course. In the event he called me this morning and was perfectly charming once he was not too intoxicated to stand up, so I forgave him entirely, and didn’t even remind him of all the intensely personal things he had confided in me during our brief acquaintance the night before.
We had a special personal polish and brush up, in order not to look like rascals. This is not easy when you are a taxi driver, something about your face, perhaps. Anyway, we did our best and arrived at the police station in Kendal feeling uncomfortably shiny and sheathed in smartness.
There were about a dozen people at the meeting, some taxi drivers, several police officers and also the chap in charge of nightclub doormen, who was large and cropped and mildly uncomfortable in a police station.
Windermere’s Community Liaison Officer was so perfect for the job that Cumbria police could have ordered her in a packet. Certainly they have got their money’s worth.
She was slim and pretty and engaging with a tendency to blush, and gave the impression that she could have floored the head of nightclub doormen with a swift right hook had she wanted to.
Once she took charge of the meeting there was not a taxi driver in the room who would have dreamed of saying anything uncharitable which might upset her, and most of them immediately started saying nice things which they thought might make her laugh.
We had surprisingly nice coffee and chocolate biscuits and everybody relaxed, and we all agreed that nightclubs are a good place to have taxis.
After that things progressed smoothly.
The police have offered us the use of the bus stop opposite as a taxi rank. The doormen are going to persuade buses to park in the car park. We are going to have some taxi marshals, which I quickly learned is code for ‘bouncer in a high-vis jacket’ to encourage people to go and get into taxis instead of wandering about in the road fighting and getting undressed.
We are going to take fair turns and not shove in front of one another, we will have to do this because of the new arrangement where the back of the taxi queue is nearest to the nightclub. Everybody is going to tell the people in Carlisle that they either need to make proper taxi arrangements or buzz off, and we are all going to try and be friends.
This was immensely satisfactory.
When we came out we felt hugely pleased and relieved, and in the spirit of being proper making-an-effort taxi drivers, we went to get some new tyres put on Mark’s car.
After this we went home to pass on the news to all other interested parties, and then suddenly we realised that we were achingly, mind-bogglingly tired. We may have been more worried about this than we had realised.
We ate pizza and watched a film. It is months and months since we have done this, and I can tell you that it was a truly therapeutic experience.
We drank two glasses of wine as well.
We are not going to work.
We are going to bed.
Work will wait until tomorrow.
