I have had a terrible adventure today.
Fortunately it is over and no harm has been done, apart from that I am still shocked and troubled every time I think about it.
First things first. You will be pleased to hear that the bit arrived for Lucy’s car, Mark fixed the ball joint, and it passed its MOT. She packed the kittens into their aerated travelling cat-suitcase and departed.
Now my adventure.
Mark had just set off for home from the MOT station when the telephone rang, and it was the council. Hello, they said, it’s the council.
I was as thrilled as I always am to hear the council.
Now, they said, we know that your taxi licence is currently suspended for medical reasons at the moment, but…
They got no further.
I said that it wasn’t.
They disagreed. I squeaked and wondered if they had got the wrong person. They checked that I was me, and then assured me that no, definitely my taxi licence had been suspended because I had failed to produce a valid medical certificate.
I said that I had, when I applied for my licence, and that both the licence and the medical certificate lasted for three years, and my licence was still current for another whole year, so yah boo sucks.
They said, firmly, that my licence had been suspended because I did not have a medical certificate. I was not allowed to drive a taxi any more at all, not even to the shops for loo roll and toothpaste, because I was uncertified. Indeed, until I had produced a valid medical certificate from my GP at a cost of a hundred and five pounds and three weeks’ wait, I would not be allowed to drive again.
Frantically I insisted that I was sure I must have one somewhere.
This oh-yes-I-have-oh-no-you-don’t conversation went on for quite some time.
In any case, they added, we wrote to you two weeks ago and told you that it was suspended and if you have been driving a taxi you are doing so illegally.
I protested that they most certainly had not written to me and told me I was unexpectedly unemployed. I thought I would probably have noticed. I checked my email and my junk mail and Facebook messenger and WhatsApp and the doormat underneath the letterbox. No letter from the council was to be found in any of those places.
The lady checked and made some fudgy noises, but nevertheless, letter or not, I could no longer drive a taxi from that moment on. She sent me the letter then, helpfully, just to make sure.
This is not exactly the end of the world in January but it is still pretty devastating.
When you get your taxi medical you do not keep the forms. You send them off to the council. I had not kept a copy because of knowing perfectly well that I am in a state of robust good health, and because of knowing when they needed to be renewed. They needed to be renewed when my licence ran out, next Christmas. I said this and then made some middle-class noises about the complete unreasonableness of making somebody unexpectedly unemployed without warning or right of appeal. She shrugged with some indifference, and the tone of somebody who is very much hoping that the call will soon be over, and said that she did not make the rules but was just following orders.
I said that that was the excuse used by the guards at Auschwitz, and that this was exactly what was wrong with our country.
She said that she thought the council’s licensing department was not exactly Auschwitz, and I said that since she had just condemned both me and Mark to weeks of no income and hence starving to death then there wasn’t much difference.
She said that this was ridiculous, and in any case, Mark’s medical had not expired, and so he could still drive a taxi if he liked.
I spluttered with indignation and said that it jolly well better had have expired, since we got them both done at the same moment. We went into the consulting room together and the doctor commented on Mark’s youthful slimness and said Umm when he weighed me.
She checked and said that Mark’s still had a year to run, and, well, maybe there had been a typing error with mine.
Some quick investigation confirmed that indeed, yes, there had been a typing error, and I still had a job after all, not to worry, have a nice day.
I hung up and spent some time trying to calm my thundering heart.
I checked this evening when I got to the taxi rank. One of the very great benefits of keeping an online diary is that I can tell exactly what I was doing on absolutely any given day since 2015.
I discovered that I went for my taxi medical with Mark on 5th December 2020, which unless my counting is worse than I think, is not yet three full years ago.
I have written to the council and sent them a link to the relevant page, by way of evidence and with a tone of injured innocence and virtue, but my blood is still chilled at the thought.
I could have been made instantly unemployed, with no right of appeal whatsoever. I could have been a Welfare State statistic. I would not even have been able to be sitting here now.
That would have been a tragedy, because it is only ten o’clock and I have made nearly fifteen quid already.
What good fortune that I still have a taxi licence.
