I am labouring under the weight of a terrible disappointment.
I thought that I was not going to have to go to work tonight.
Alas, the difficulty with my car, the broken-down-in-the-multi-storey difficulty, reared its ugly head once again last night whilst I was at work, and I had a night of untold tiresomeness.
Actually it is not going to be untold, because I am going to tell you all about it now.
It got me down to the taxi rank all right, and through the first few customers, but then there was a terrible moment when it would not start, and I had to ring Mark and sit about helplessly on the taxi rank, telling people that I was not going to take them anywhere.
Some of them were actually quite rude about this.
They were even ruder when Mark turned up and they realised that he was not going to take them anywhere either.
He unrolled his plug in electronic engine-doctoring machine, and wiped the fault off, which meant that I could start the engine and go to places again, much to the relief of the grumpy customers. Mark took them. I would just have told them to get lost.
It worked fine for about an hour, and then gave up again, and had to be fixed. After a while the engine began coughing and spluttering and sounding very sorry for itself, and chugging along in a wheezy sort of manner.
I decided that I would just have to put up with this, and laboured along through until the end of the night, but I was not sorry to go home. It is very irritating when know-it-all blokes get in and tell you that your engine does not sound right, and you want to get that looked at, pet, when it is an engine that you have driven for a hundred thousand miles and know exactly how its every tiny breath ought to sound. The smallest unusual clunk makes your head jerk up in alarm, because you have driven a taxi halfway to the moon, and it has become an extension of your very being.
I don’t like customers.
Anyway, this morning Mark called Autoparts and asked if they had a replacement sensor, which they haven’t. They could get one early next week, they explained, but not today, and so this afternoon Mark went out to see if he could fix it.
It was so broken that it came apart in his hands as he took it out, and some vital bits rolled away into the mud, never to be seen again.
They were not going to be discoverable. They were springs which were about a millimetre long.
He has had to reconstruct them, and it, to the best of his ability, which is the source of my disappointment, because he has managed it.The engine is running, and it looks as though I am going to have to go to work after all.
I had offered to go anyway, and drive his car so that he could have an early night, but neither of us wanted that option so I knew he would decline. He would not want another person investigating the dark secrets of his taxi, and I would not wish to be trying to earn a living in some strange and unfamiliar taxi, with everything in the wrong place and nowhere to put my cup of tea or my handkerchief.
Nothing is more horrible than a wrong taxi, I can tell you.
Anyway, we do not know if it is likely to last. I might get as far as the taxi rank for it all to collapse into a smoking heap and for Mark to have to tow me back home, but so far it is looking good, and although I will probably decide if anybody wants to go to Liverpool it will be worth a go.
Keep your fingers crossed for me. I am going to go and give it a try.
By the way, if you have had problems accessing the site please accept my apologies. The web host has been installing a security certificate. I do not know what either a web host or a security certificate is, but I am assured that they are important and necessary, and so I am pleased to tell you that they are running smoothly.
I have high hopes that my life is working efficiently again.
