Irritating Events

I have had a day of being very grumpy.

Partly this is because I would like more sleep, but mostly it has been because of very irritating events.

Things started to go wrong this morning. As you might remember, Mark’s taxi was due to go in for an MOT this morning. You will not be surprised to learn that he has been using it for carrying muddy dogs, firewood and gardening tools, and this was instantly apparent even to the most casual observer, still less an MOT inspector who has just had a load of earache from the council.

He was supposed to clean it, but of course didn’t, and this morning made himself late for work trying to rush about hoovering it up.

I was not in the least sympathetic. I think he should spend ten minutes less in the garden and then clean his taxi when he comes back. Tidying up is part of the job. He knows this because I say it every time he makes an enormous mess, but somehow it never seems to change anything.

In the end of course I said, extremely grudgingly, that I would finish it off and he should just take my taxi and go to work. We had something of a domestic, but he went anyway, leaving me with the mess, which took me almost two hours to dispatch.

I rang him up just to make sure he knew how cross I was. You can buy carrots for about eight pence each. I did not feel that the economic payback of his happy gardening afternoons was worth my labours.

In the end it was done, and I rushed up the fell with the dogs, who were practically cross-legged by then. We had a much-diminished walk, and then I dashed off to Kendal.

In the middle of all of this I was trying to telephone the council. The MOT garage has suddenly become very keen, probably because the council have been complaining, and want taxis to be exactly as the council thinks they should be.

They are supposed to have an identity badge in the window.

Neither of ours had, because customers think it is funny to steal them. Taxi drivers get them and then keep them safely in the glove box, ready for the unlikely event of a council inspector turning up on the taxi rank.

Ours had been long lost, not even by us but by the previous owners. We did not care about this, because the MOT man did not care, but he has become newly keen.

He failed my taxi yesterday because of its absence, and Mark’s today for the same reason.

In between I spent hours and hours in the council’s pointless telephone queueing system trying to order some new ones.

They are small pieces of cardboard, laminated by the council, for which they charge fifty quid each. I had a go at forging some yesterday, but my printer ran out of ink at an inconvenient moment, and I gave up.

Eventually the council answered their telephone and explained that the taxi licensing department does not talk to people on the phone any more. They only answer written queries.

Given that a great number of taxi drivers can neither read nor write, this must have considerably reduced their workload.

I wrote to them, and then telephoned again.

By my fifth telephone call the lady on the desk had had enough, and put me through to a lady in the licensing department who was quite clearly at home in the garden.

I was not pleased.

She agreed that they would send me some more identity badges if I gave them a hundred quid, for two bits of meaningless cardboard, and filled in some forms, which I did.

The council were supposed to ring me to collect payment, which they didn’t.

I rang them again, and again, and eventually managed to get through just before they closed, which is now at four o’ clock instead of five, presumably because of bat flu, which is very contagious after lunch.

They took the cash but said it was too late to do anything now, and they might get around to it tomorrow.

The man at the MOT garage has said I have to produce them by tomorrow.

I was very cross indeed when I had finished.

I had also spent all my money, mostly because I filled Mark’s car with fuel and we had run out of dog food, and so instead of doing anything useful I have had to come to work, which is where I am now.

I am in the Wrong Taxi. Everything is in the Wrong Place.

I am still feeling very grumpy.

I am going to go away and drink some tea.