I have just had a family from London in my taxi.
You could tell they were from London, because they made a huge virtuous fuss about putting face masks on but then did not bother about the seatbelts.
They had come to the Lake District because they did not want to be locked up for going to anywhere with sunshine, but they were clearly finding it challenging.
The weather has been seasonably ghastly all day, with chill winds and lashing rain. My washing was wetter when I brought it in than when I pegged it out, and our visiting hordes from south of Birmingham are shivering like whippets and occasionally gazing with utter incredulity at the grim iron-grey Northern sky.
I explained that their ceaselessly whingeing children would do much better with all of their carefully organised activities like canoeing and climbing, if they were fed lots of high-carbohydrate stuff like chocolate and chips when they got cold and wet.
I felt the air become frosty.
I might be only a taxi driver and not a nutritionist, but even I can spot a family whose idea of a treat is to hand their child a freshly-peeled carrot. The idea of food as a fuel had clearly never occurred to them.
The children were clearly making their parents’ lives utterly miserable.
I wished them every success.
Of course in my old job as a purely night-time taxi driver I almost never had anything to do with families. People with children in tow do not tend to fill their noses with cocaine and then drink fourteen pints and six Jaeger Bombs and finish up with cold kebab and cheesy chips outside the night club, at least, not unless they have arranged a babysitter first. Now that I have got to start working shortly after lunchtime I am rather less confident in my handling of my new client group.
I do not like them very much at all. I didn’t think very much of the late night idiots either, but at least I knew where I was with them. Late night customers are abusive, threatening, noisy, and occasionally unwell, and I have cultivated an approach to customer relations which works magnificently with this client group.
It works less well with old ladies and clucking mothers. I have become so used to meeting all proffered smiles with stony glares that it is very uncomfortable to remember that during the day I am supposed to smile back.
I must have an utterly flinty soul. I feel much happier once it has gone properly dark and I can revert to my accustomed method of interaction which involves no social niceties whatsoever. People out and about during the daytime seem to talk incessantly, and I have had to fall back on my tried and tested method of taxi-driver response, which involves pretending to be deaf.
Mark has spent the day bashing the new brake master cylinder into a shape that would fit under the bonnet of the camper van. I could not help with this. I had intended to clean the bathroom, but ran out of time before I got to it, so it is still black and greasy and depressing, must do it tomorrow.
I have been at work since three o’ clock, which frankly did not leave very much day for doing anything much at all. I got Oliver to try on the latest of the newly-arrived uniform. I have still not organised any pyjamas and he is going to have to sleep in the buff if I do not get my finger out. This is fine until it comes to fire drills.
I sewed labels in on the taxi rank until it was too dark to see any more, and then retreated with a sigh of relief to my book, which is Harry Potter, because I need some escapism.
I am going to go back to it.
Have a picture of Mark and the dog, which I didn’t take today.
