Last night turned out to be rather more exciting than expected.
We had not been out for very long, and Mark had come to sit in my taxi for a cup of tea when a group of four already-rather-intoxicated tiresome idiots came swaying down the road and tried the doors to his taxi.
They did not want a taxi. They were trying to get in it.
Mark had locked it, and so they could not. They tugged and wrenched at the door handle, but of course nothing happened. A few moments later they saw us watching, laughed raucously, and staggered away.
We resolved that they would not be getting a taxi home later.
It was several hours later when next we saw them.
They were still staggering, but in the opposite direction, and considerably more unsteadily.
There was a very great deal of noise.
In fact there was a lot of yelling, and a girl, shouting for somebody to stop.
We never like to miss any excitement, an evening on the taxi rank is not so interesting that one becomes sanguine about this sort of adventure. Of course we were all intrigued, and stopped whatever we were doing to watch.
The four drunken chaps were being pursued by an extremely large and extremely angry young man.
In fact they were not being pursued, as much as being driven away. It appeared that they were retreating, as slowly as they dared, whilst he bellowed at them to go away.
As soon as he backed away, they retraced their steps back towards him, until he howled in rage and yelled at them again.
It appeared that somehow they had irritated him very much indeed. He wanted them to go away, and they were refusing, presumably for the purposes of irritating him some more.
By this time he was in the grip of a rage so terrible that anybody with any sense would have quailed in the face of it.
They did not. Indeed one, the bravest perhaps, sniggered and faced up to him, where he asked, with all the bravado of a complete idiot, what exactly the young chap intended to do about it.
A second later his nose had exploded in a small fountain of blood, and he was lying on his back in the road.
Violence is a very wrong and wicked thing to do, but readers, I cheered inwardly. With any luck such an outburst of entirely justified violence will deter him from being such a pillock for the rest of his life.
The police were duly called, the realisation of which sent all of those involved running in opposite directions, including the burst-nose one, who was being half-carried by his equally intoxicated friends.
Obviously by the time the police turned up there was nobody left except taxi drivers. I got a job, and so it was left to Mark to explain what had happened.
The police are not allowed to ignore violence just because somebody jolly well deserved it, and so they went looking for them all anyway. I do not know whether they found them, but I think they did, because the van with the cage in the back turned up, and was seen waiting by the cinema with the doors open.
The policeman told Mark that since he had been a witness to a violent incident he might need counselling, and politely offered to send him some helpful telephone numbers. Mark has been a taxi driver for a long time, and is a veteran of violent incidents. Indeed, he has quite possibly seen rather more than the policeman, who was fourteen, and so he declined, equally politely, and later we laughed about the anxious timidity of the modern world.
Despite this, however, it always surprises me to notice just how much something like that does affect you. About fifteen minutes afterwards I was sitting by myself in the taxi rank in the dark when some idiot crept up behind the taxi, grabbed my door and wrenched it open, bawling loudly as he did so, after which he fell about laughing.
Obviously I jumped, but whereas usually that sort of asinine behaviour does not trouble me in the least, instead I was absolutely furious. My heart was racing, and I bellowed abuse at him until he sloped off.
He had wanted a taxi, so it had been a fairly brainless thing to do, Fancy thinking that such behaviour would endear him to the only taxi driver on the taxi rank.
I was so angry I almost followed him and made sure no other taxi picked him up either, but reason prevailed, and I left him to make his own way, according to his fortune.
A few minutes later I did get a job, a group of three chaps of my own age, and we were just arriving at their destination when one of them thought that it might be entertaining to make some amusingly disparaging remarks about women drivers.
This sort of thing happens occasionally, and does not trouble me, because on the whole my driving is pretty good, if rather excitingly speedy. Usually I deal with such self-appointed comedians simply by accelerating and pretending to be deaf.
Last night, however, I was in no mood. I braked hard, turned around in the seat, put the light on, and explained exactly what I thought of him.
What I thought was not in the least flattering, and I could see him shrinking in his seat as I said it.
He got out and sloped off, with his friends following in embarrassment, and I went back to the taxi rank, where Mark and I decided that we had better go home.
It is a funny thing, how something as small as that can change your feelings. It is a good thing we do not really watch television. We would be nervous wrecks in less than a week.
It had gone today. I had forgotten all about it until I found the note I had left myself reminding me to write it in my diary.
Funny old world.
