There was a beautiful golden dawn this morning.
Obviously I was not getting up to see it. I was going to bed. The gold roof of the conservatory looked almost tasteful in the soft pink morning light.
It had been a busy night. Mark had had a sicker and had to rush home and frantically scrub out the back of his taxi. I had chucked somebody out for not having any money. The police had arrested half of the staff of the local takeaway restaurant, and I hit my last customer.
The girlfriend of the sicker was outside the nightclub, desperately trying to persuade any taxi to go and pick him up. Since he was lying on the pavement outside Tesco, covered in vomit, it is hard to put into words how infinitesimally small his chances of getting a taxi had become. In the end after everybody had declined, she rang his boss.
His boss, to my utter astonishment, was either so desperate to get him into work the next morning, or alternatively, such a codependent pushover, that she got out of bed and drove from Kendal to come and get him. He wasn’t even going to Kendal. He was going to Ambleside, which was a ten mile round trip in the opposite direction.
I don’t imagine he was likely to turn up for work even after such a massive selfless effort. There are some hangovers that cannot be done under supervision.
The girl that I chucked out was also hoping to go to Kendal. She got in the taxi and after being informed that it would be cash up front, demurred a bit and asked to go to a cash machine. When we got there she told me that she only had nineteen pounds in the bank. Obviously the cash machine would not hand out that sum, and so, she asserted, decisively, I would just have to take her for fifteen.
Since the fare was going to be forty five pounds, I declined, firmly, and when it turned out she had no further access to cash, requested that she leave the taxi. She got very cross about this, and told me, rather shoutily, that it was her duty to take her home, being a poor vulnerable girl by herself. She explained that she was doing the responsible thing by getting a licensed taxi, and so it was my responsibility to save her and ensure her safe return to Kendal.
I cannot tell you how supremely indifferent I was to her plight. Anybody who has stayed in a nightclub until three in the morning, spending their taxi fare on Malibu and Coke and Jaeger Bombs, is not, in my view, in need of sympathetic understanding, especially when a brisk walk might be just the thing.
I opened the door for her, helpfully, and insisted that she leave, suggesting that perhaps she ring her mother.
If ever you find yourself in that situation, punching a policeman works well. They will sort out your accommodation problems quickly and cheaply. The other thing you might try is being polite and courteous to a taxi driver. We can usually come up with a solution in an emergency.
I last saw her sitting dolefully on the pavement outside Tesco next to the unconscious sicker, so perhaps it worked out well in the end.
I do not know what the police were arresting the takeaway staff about. I do know that one of them handed a mysterious package to another one, who promptly ran off up the street, pursued by a cross policeman. You can make of that what you will. It could have been his clean underpants and a toothbrush, a sensible precaution when off on a night on the tiles.
My night ended in an outburst of violence after I took two young men back to the staff accommodation of one of the local hotels. One of them was the soul of polite loveliness, and the other was a toe rag.
He kept up a quiet chuntering to himself in the back of the taxi on the way home. I was not listening to this at all, because I am not very interested in conversations with customers, when something his friend said made me pay attention. I suddenly realised that it was a long drawn out string of obscene proposals, directed at me.
There are some images that I really do not want in my head, and the ones that were clearly passing through his head definitely qualified. We were almost there, and rather than enter into discussion with him, which is never an especially rewarding activity, I put my foot down and arrived rather quickly.
He did not stop snickering to himself and muttering whilst his friend paid the fare, and when he got out he came round to my open window.
He shoved his horrible, fat-lipped slobbery little face right next to mine and asked for a kiss. As it happened my hand was on the steering wheel, and I had backhanded him, hard on the nose, before he even saw it coming.
He staggered away, swearing, and I felt very pleased with myself. For a middle aged lady I do seem to get in to a lot of fights. I do not know if I hurt his face but I hurt my hand, so probably.
We do have some interesting times.
Have a picture of the peaceful countryside.
