It rained.
It rained and rained.
I think the Weather Gods must have decided, in an unusual burst of kindness possibly intermingled with guilt after the last Jubilee, not to rain on the Queen. I think they saved it all up until she had safely retired to bed at about half past nine, and then tipped the whole lot all at once, over the Lake District which is their usual handy dumping ground for any spare water they might have lying around.
It rained and rained and rained.
I do not like wet taxi nights. Most irritating of all are horrible smug customers who sit in the back and say: Good for you, this, isn’t it? as if I ought to be delighted that my windows are going to be impenetrably steamed up, my customers soaked and ungracious, and my taxi humid and smelly.
It was disgustingly humid and smelly by the time I had finished. There is nothing nastier, I can assure you, than the sour smell of a taxi which has been occupied by people unwashed for weeks, who have suddenly endured an unexpected drenching.
It was vile.
We had to scrub the seats this afternoon, and dry them with hairdryers. My very last customers had been engaged in a noisy and unproductive fight outside the kebab house in the pouring rain. They had bellowed, and rolled in puddles and torn at one another’s sodden clothes and hair.
I would have declined to take them, even though I was the very last taxi in town, except they were going to Ambleside and it was double time.
I extracted forty quid from them and considered it reasonable repayment for the stinking puddles they left behind them when they got out.
When we had dried the taxis, Mark sprayed them all with the Disneyland Hotel perfume. We still have a very little of this left, and it is a reminder of wonderful days of luxury and hedonism, exactly the inverse of bank holidays in a taxi.
Apart from the rain, and the seats so wet that they squelched when you pressed them, it was not too bad. Mark had some horrible customers who yelled abuse and knocked his hat off, but they disappeared without doing any lasting damage.
Most of my customers were all right. I had one chap who was horrified at the double time charge, and asked how I could ask for it with a straight face. He was not mollified when I assured him that I could not, and showed him my smirk.
One lady’s face fell, and she started sifting anxiously through her purse for any spare cash, when I told her that the fare would be exactly twice as much as she was expecting. I apologised politely, and she said, kindly: Oh, it’s not your fault, love, so I explained that it probably was really, because nobody in the whole of the Lake District has fought harder than me for taxi fares to be raised to the maximum that I think the market can stand, and the council has given in with extreme reluctance.
This left her rather nonplussed, and she got out looking after me in a puzzled sort of way, but it hardly seemed fair to blame the council, under the circumstances.
In short, the night was busy, and wet, and full of unfamiliar faces, with another one to come tonight. I am pleased about it, because it is paying our overdraft off very nicely, and because fuel to go to Oliver’s school and back costs as much as the annual purchase of a new taxi.
The rain has stopped, and my washing is almost dry. I am going to go and sit on the taxi rank and earn our way back to Gordonstoun.
Happy Bank Holiday.
