I am sitting quietly on the taxi rank.
It is very quiet, but we have got Christmas funds that need swelling, and so we are sitting here hopefully.
Actually I am not really very hopeful. If we manage to make thirty quid between us over the next six hours I will be pleased and surprised.
This is all right because of the good book and cup of tea. These are the most important ingredients of a contented winter night on the taxi rank, and I have them here at my side as I write.
It is important to remember that I would not be doing anything much more thrilling if I were at home. I might just as well be here, where I can watch the world wagging past. Besides, if I am here there is always the exciting, although admittedly remote, possibility of somebody ambling up to the taxi and wishing to give me a fiver for taking them to Aphrodite’s Lodge, however they might choose to pronounce it.
Anyway, I am already up a bit. This is because I stopped off first at a local restaurant to pay a call on some of the staff. They had happened to be too-drunk-to-pay customers in my taxi last night. I did not mind about this, because of having been a taxi driver for a long time. I knew perfectly well who they were, and tonight their fate caught up with them.
The restaurant, which was rather a smart one, had several customers in when I arrived, and the staff members concerned did not look very pleased to see me. In fact, ‘horrified’ might have been a better description.
They dived into the till the second they saw me strolling in through the door. I had cash in my hand and was being hastily ushered out again before I even had chance to say: “Oi.”
It is important to have a good memory for these things.
Preparations for Christmas are coming on apace. I spent a sticky afternoon finishing the much-belated grape surprise advent chocolates.
I had got some pretty boxes left over from mug purchases. I have been saving these for ages. I had to buy some new mugs a while ago. This was because I threw the old ones at Mark during a bleakly miserable afternoon once, when he did not understand how obtuse and unreasonable he was being.
He understood a little better when I had thrown the mugs.
This did not really matter so much because they had needed replacing anyway. They had been old and chipped, and the handle of mine had been rather dangerously cracked, and creaked ominously when the mug was full of coffee.
In any case I managed to miss him with every single one. I was not glad about this at the time but afterwards I thought that perhaps it had been just as well.
When I replaced them I liked the boxes so much that I kept them, and it turned out that they were just the right size for Christmas chocolates, so there is no cloud without a happy silver lining if you know where to look.
You will be pleased to hear that Mark tries harder not to ignore me when I am upset about things. This is just as well because our current mugs are still new and shiny, and it would be a terrible waste to throw them at him again.
I packed the chocolates carefully and rushed them round to the post office just in time.
I had a parcel of Army camouflage gear for Oliver at the same time. It is the school’s German Spotlight game this weekend, and it will be his last, so he is determined that it will go well.
German Spotlight, as you might remember, is the monstrously politically incorrect wartime-based game, where the staff pretend to be German soldiers and the boys pretend to be Allied prisoners of war. The boys have to escape from the school and across the grounds in the dark, whilst the staff hunt them down with dogs. The headmaster goes on the top of the tower with the spotlight, with which he does sweeping searches of the grounds, catching the unwary in its sudden brilliance.
The winners are anybody who manages to make it to the cottage on the boundary. Your name goes on a roll of honour. Oliver has won once.
Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it so very much that the headmaster was once, in the school holidays, pressured into allowing fathers to play as well. They raided the school wine cellar first and had the jolliest time, pretending to be boys and sleeping in dormitories again, and the headmaster mopped his brow and prayed that nobody would ring the News Of The World.
I am sorry not to be able to play German Spotlight, and I am even sorrier that Oliver will not be playing it for very much longer.
It is a sad little reminder that his prep school days are almost over.
