Rat race

I am writing this in what I imagine will be the first of many snatched moments in a very busy evening.

We have got tourists.

We have got customers.

We are making a living.

It is the first time we have actually been busy since the summer of 2019. That is a very long time.

We have been so busy this evening that one of the local taxi companies asked me if I would cover some bookings for them. Obviously I said that I would, and I did, although I had forgotten just how much I hate doing booked taxi work.

You have a string of bookings at fifteen minute intervals. You drop one lot outside the pub and go dashing off for the next lot. The thing is that it only takes one idiot to still be putting her makeup on whilst her boyfriend dithers about hovering apologetically on the doorstep, and the whole lot becomes catastrophically late.

Tonight’s catastrophe was an idiot who had given his address as Smithy Lane Bowness, by which it turned out, eventually, after a very great deal of fruitless faffing about, that he meant Smithy Lane Bowland Bridge, which is twenty minutes’ drive away. I went dashing off for him at thrillingly high speeds around the little country lanes, but after a little while of course I got stuck behind a lost tourist, which slowed the whole process down so much that  had to ring Mark to go and collect the next job.

We all raced about for hours. We are still racing around. Usually I can write these pages easily during the evening, tonight I have dug out my flat computer from under the seat every time I have stopped,. It is now eleven o’clock, and still this is all I have written.

It is wonderful. I am relieved beyond words to be working again, and to see people milling about the streets.

We worked so late last night that we were barely out of bed by lunchtime. Regular readers might recall that once upon a time, in our distant past, our lives were like this. We did not leap out of bed as soon as it was daylight and rush off to build houses or install rural broadband. We used to work all night and sleep until we woke up, whenever that might have been.

It feels very odd and a bit uneasy to be doing it now.

Most especially the children are home. Life feels as though we have taken a leap backwards in time. I like this, but it is peculiar and disorientating.

It is now three o’clock in the morning, and I am at home, because of having completely run out of gaps in between customers. I am hastily finishing this whilst Mark is in the shower, so it might be a bit short.

It has been a busy night, and we are starting to see people released from their bat-flu-induced good behaviour and returning to their natural feral state.

There were a very lot of drunk people. More than that, there were a lot of violent people, which I think is probably because of a lot of saved up frustration. Also people have desperately longed for this holiday, and it has become so important to them that they have become too anxious to enjoy it.

There were several interesting fights, and one was so bad that Mark stopped at the side of the road and chucked a man out of his taxi because he was being so horrible to his girlfriend. He did not chuck the girlfriend out, but drove her back to her hotel and told her that she should not carry on a relationship with somebody as threatening and unkind as her boyfriend. He said, resignedly, that he did not suppose she would listen.

I had one of those as well, even sadder. It was a white-faced young woman carrying a tiny baby, who wanted me to take her to Preston, which is miles away. She was just starting to explain, when a large, thick-set man shouted her from across the road, and told her she was going nowhere in the taxi and to get in the car. I said kindly to her that he was probably sensible, that Preston was an expensively long way away, but she looked terrified and said that he was angry and going to hit her.

I said that I would help her, and to get in the taxi, but she shook her head and scurried away.  We will never know what happened to her, and of course it is now up to her to decide.

I am glad that we do not have horrible drunken fisticuffs when we go on our holidays, it must be so awful. I have taken home at least four couples tonight who will be feeling very upset and disappointed with their holidays when they get up tomorrow.

I hope they all make it up at breakfast time. The sun is going to shine tomorrow.

Have a picture of a family holiday in Scotland.