It is terribly quiet.
There is nobody here.
The shockingly misfortunate weather forecast, followed by the shockingly misfortunate weather, has not helped, nor that almost everybody who might usually come here for a weekend getaway of hedonistic bad behaviour, has been placed under house arrest.
I never imagine that I would feel so irate about people from Liverpool being locked up.
I sat on the taxi rank from three in the afternoon yesterday, and by eight in the evening, was still yet to earn a tenner.
I did not mind because of the tea and the book, which is one of Ben Elton’s gloriously entertaining diatribes, in this case about the horrors of social media and leaving the EU. I have read it before, but it was ages ago, and I have forgotten what happens.
In the end, the night broke even in the absolute nick of time, and it was a fortunate chance of fate that it did.
I was still on eight quid by nine o’ clock. I was in a taxi queue which consisted of six taxis, five of which were in front of me, and was just beginning to consider how I might compose an apologetic letter to the mortgage company when somebody stopped next to my window.
It was a chap who was rather surprisingly at my eye level.
“I don’t suppose you can take a wheelchair in your taxi, can you?” he said.
As it happens I can. My taxi is one of the very few night time taxis that is properly adapted for a wheelchair, with the full works, hydraulic hoist and seatbelts and ramp and the lot.
Having said that I have never, ever used it. I do not know why wheelchair users are not inclined to drink fourteen Jaeger Bombs, vomit in the churchyard and then need to be shovelled into a taxi by their mates, but this simply does not seem to happen. I have had a wheelchair taxi for three years now, and this was the first time that anybody had expressed an interest in it.
As a result, I did not have the first idea how to use it.
I am ashamed to say that had he been a Jaeger Bomb fuelled vomiting muppet, I would probably just have said no, I couldn’t, and left it at that, but he looked a bit apologetic, and then grinned at me, so I grinned back. After that I would have taken him home if I had had to get the wheelbarrow to do it.
By a fortunate chance of fate Mark was in the taxi next to me, so I opened the boot and unloaded all of the junk out of the wheelchair space and into the boot of his car.
There was a lot. There was a bag full of library books, waiting for the day when we live in a civilised society again, the spare wheel, several lost umbrellas, some CDs which are no use because the CD player does not work, a special dog bed made out of an old quilt and a camper van cushion, so that dogs do not mind not being allowed to travel in the front, and a first aid kit which I have never ever used.
When we provided school transport, the council decree was that all drivers were obliged to carry a first aid kit. We were forbidden to use it, because of not being qualified. I think we were supposed to save it until the ambulance turned up and then offer it to the driver in case they were short of anything.
I stuffed it all into the back of Mark’s taxi, and then between Mark, who is good at mechanical things, and the wheelchair man, who knew all about it, they managed to get the ramp down and the wheelchair in, and all the clamps clamped. I hovered about apologising for being rubbish and messy and trying to take mental notes in case there is ever another time.
We picked his wife up a few minutes later, and they explained that their car had broken down.
They were going to Kendal, and I made thirty quid.
I had to try very hard not to be ridiculously thrilled at their shocking misfortune, but there is no question that their awful evening was definitely my gain. It is presumably bad enough being stuck in a wheelchair without your gearbox blowing up and the RAC telling you that you will have to wait three weeks for a breakdown truck and special disabled assistance. I would have been spitting feathers, but actually they were friendly and cheerful and resigned to their unjust fate.
It improved my night no end. I gave them my phone number in case their car doesn’t get fixed soon.
Have a picture of the Lake District.
