It has been rather a full day.
I have had to give my speech.
I find speech making rather alarming, especially, as in this case, at times when I am likely to be told to shut up.
This happened to me today, because despite repeated practising to make sure that I was inside the allowed time limit, obviously I still ran on for far too long. I got told to belt up, and smiled sweetly and agreed that I was indeed just coming to a conclusion, which I wasn’t.
I thought they were very patient, under the circumstances.
It was the day when the local council reviewed the taxi fare increase, and I can tell you now, in order not to create unnecessary suspense, that we have been offered the paltry sum of five percent.
If you were anxious about the outcome you might just skip through to the end to find out and miss all the rest of my carefully-considered prose. That is what I would do. Mysteries are wasted on me.
Anyway, five percent sounds like a lot, but it jolly well isn’t, because the last increase was in 2014, and the council wanted this one to last for four years. They have backed down on this a bit, because of the massive fuss I made about it, but they grumbled and muttered quite a bit and said that they would have to review their policy, although we were always free to ask for another fare increase at any time we liked.
I already know this because I have been asking for an increase now since 2018, and been comprehensively ignored.
We had a small but intense meeting of taxi drivers at Andre’s house before it all started, where we all decided what we were going to say, and then rushed off to Kendal to beard the dragon in its lair.
It was a large and formal meeting, attended by about half the number of councillors one might expect, and fewer than half the number of taxi drivers who had said that they would. This meant that instead of there being of us making speeches, in the event there were four.
We weren’t allowed to talk for any longer because of it, and it meant that an awful lot of things that should have been said simply weren’t.
This would not have made any difference anyway because council meetings do not tend to take any notice of taxi drivers, even if they are too bloody minded to shut up when they have run out of time.
I have attended too many council meetings now to be intimidated, and fired into them with my best protests. There was a smiling picture of the Queen on the wall behind the Chairwoman. I bet she would have said that we could have ten percent.
Anyway, we have decided not to let it rest at five percent, which does not even cover the charges that we have to pay for the card payment machines. It has all got to go out to public consultation, we are the public and we are going to make a huge fuss.
I do not use a card payment machine, by the way, although I have got one somewhere. I think they are another sort of bank robbery, given that the bank takes anything up to five percent of the cash and then sits on the rest for a week or two, until they feel like sharing it with the person who earned it in the first place.
I have got to draft an online petition tonight, and once it is on the mighty Internet you can all jolly well sign it even if you don’t live in the Lake District. You can tell them that you go there for your holidays and that you think taxi drivers are splendid chaps who are seriously underfunded.
I have got my university class tonight, so it will probably be after that. Actually, it might be tomorrow.
I am feeling seriously in need of a drink.
LATER NOTE: In other news, I went to my university class. I liked this very much. One of the other students is also applying for the MSt so I will have a little friend if I get a place, which I am beginning to think probably I won’t. I have got to write a crime novel tomorrow.
Mark invented a windmill whilst I was doing it. He has had it in bits in the shed for the last couple of years, and tonight he finally dismantled it and fixed it. He says that he will put it up in the garden and added that it will double up as a handy pole for anchoring the washing line. He has a further idea for magnets and cones around the pole, of which I understood not a word, but if it works then the flapping of the washing will generate electricity as well.
I don’t know if this will work but the windmill certainly does, he showed me. He is going to wire it up to an immersion heater and then we will be able to have a bath whenever there is a hurricane.
Finally I have had the drink I wanted. It was a superb concoction called Figgy Pudding Gin, and was a Christmas present from my cousin. It was not much like figgy puddings, which was probably for the best since I don’t like them because of the tiny gritty bits in figs. However it was very nice indeed, a sort of lethal syrupy arrangement that made us want to be careful about exhaling.
It was a perfect finish to the day.
