I have discovered, although not exactly been surprised, to learn that President Putin was once a taxi driver.
The man has soared in my estimation, no wonder he is able to face down the world’s super-powers. Accustomed to dealing with endless abuse every time he has pressed the Extras button, I imagine that anything the UK’s media is saying about him will roll right off his back like water from Jemima Puddleduck.
I refused a gentleman last night, in the middle of Bowness in the small hours of the morning, quite simply because I didn’t much like him. He was leaning drunkenly against the side of the taxi, arguing incoherently about why it would be a good idea for me to take him back to his house for less than a third of the price, and after a few moments I just said: Could you please stand back for a moment? and drove off.
In the end Mark picked him up, some time later, still rambling incoherently but rather more inclined to pay the fare. Half an hour standing anxiously in the cold can do that.
I should think we have got all the qualities necessary to become ruthless international assassins.
I also turned down another gentleman, again because I really didn’t much like him. This chap was trying to give me a tenner to pay the fare in advance, which I had explained was going to be £5.50. He was far to drunk to manage the basic arithmetic, and was insistent that I could just give him a fiver change and keep the rest. In the end he became very annoyed about my lack of appreciation of his generosity, so I returned his tenner and pointed out the direction in which he would need to walk. There is not an official intelligence test for being allowed to ride in a taxi, but I would support the introduction of one, and am happy to do my own informal checks in the meantime.
Teachers of mathematics, please take note. You are imparting skills which might be of life-changing importance to your pupils, or at the very least save them a couple of hours uphill walking.
I had been obliged to start the evening off in Mark’s taxi, whilst he repaired mine, which was truly horrible. There is nothing exactly wrong with Mark’s taxi, except that everything is in the wrong place and he never, ever tidies it up. The evening always has to start out with the removal of sandwich-wrappings and used rubber gloves.
It took him a couple of hours to fix mine, and we arranged an exchange on the garage, where we made the uncomfortable discovery that diesel had increased in price to £1.69. We were not exactly delighted about this, and just chucked thirty quid in each taxi, for purposes of economy, but the garage manager sent us back again to fill our tanks up to the top, because he said that it would be going up to £1.75 today. By the end of the week I imagine we will need a wheelbarrow stuffed with tenners if we want to put fuel in taxis, it is not an encouraging prospect.
I do not want to think about the way that the world is heading. Mark woke up this morning from an uncomfortable dream in which we were trying to run away in the camper van because the Government had insisted that we all carried a tracking device in our telephones, which also included a small nuclear detonator to discourage rebellious conversations.
I am not certain that if we wished to make a hasty and secretive escape that the camper van should be our first vehicle of choice, and in any case we would have to save up so much for the diesel that it would be unlikely to happen in any great rush.
What a jolly good thing that we are never likely to need to.
