Somehow we finished up with the Bowness Taxis phone for the early part of the evening, most likely because nobody else wanted to do it.
This turned into a tiresome couple of hours of trying to answer the phone and drive and talk to customers all at the same time.
One complete muppet assured me that the lady who had answered the phone had promised him a substantial discount on the fare, which I knew to be a complete fib since it had been me. He was very cross when I refused to honour the promised discount, and threatened never to use my taxi again, a prospect about which I assured him I was completely sanguine. I was late for another one, and managed to collect them just in time, about thirty seconds before the car just behind us burst into flames and closed the road for the next hour.
I do not at all like doing booked work in a taxi, and was profoundly glad when Trevor, who was supposed to be in charge of answering the telephone, finally turned up and claimed the privilege back for himself.
I was entirely frazzled by then, and collapsed back into the relative tranquillity of the taxi rank, to drink tea and watch everybody else dashing about, bellowing frantically into their telephones.
Our business model involves hanging about on the taxi rank waiting for customers to come to us. It works brilliantly, makes much the same profit, and does not lead to stress-related illnesses, because we have no responsibilities and are never, ever running late.
It is by far and away the nicest way of running a business. I have no ambition to become Addison Lee, and will end my days in unadvertised obscurity, which is just the way I like it.
Also it enables me to have the business name Pay More Wait Longer Taxis, which entertains me whenever I write it on the council forms, but which customers never need to know about.
I do like being self-employed.
You will be pleased to hear that the tiresome flies, presumably frightened away by liberal quantities of citronella and deet having been sloshed all over the bedroom, left us alone last night, and we slept and slept, for the first time for days.
We did not wake up until almost twelve o’clock.
We were so late that even Oliver was awake. Oliver is at a bit of a loose end at the moment, being still in between computers, and having now read all of his new books. He has ordered himself another one, having agonised for a day or two about the necessity of cashing in his Roblox shares.
It is a reconditioned laptop, with lots of gigabytes, and he is practically counting the minutes until it turns up. Misfortunately he is certain to hate it when it does, because it is horribly difficult to get used to any new computer, no matter how technically accomplished it might be, and inevitably it takes days and days of sticking one’s tongue out and scowling, before mastery is achieved, and it suddenly becomes the finest tool
He has filled in the gap with plenty of lollipop-earning school revision, and the conservatory has been filled with muttering about covalent bonds and the different forms of carbon. There are four, which you probably can’t list either.
We listened to him whilst we organised our lives, and then just as the rest of the world was settling down for an evening of eating and drinking and socialising, we all rushed off to work, which is where we all are at this very moment.
We will not be staying until very late. Mark is rural broadbanding in the morning, and we do not need to be sleepy again.
Not long now, and the weekend will be over.
Have a picture taken from my taxi this evening.
