It rained so hard this evening that although somebody telephoned me a little while ago I could not hear a single word because of the terrible hammering on the taxi roof.
I do not know who it was or what they wanted. I tried to telephone them back but still could not hear them and eventually gave up.
If it was you then you will have to try again when the weather improves.
It has been gloriously warm again today, up until the wet bit at the end, obviously, which has now made everywhere so cool I am beginning to regret the clout-casting. If only I had paid attention to ancient wisdom I would not have cold feet now.
It has been a bit of a trying day, not least because we did not get to bed until five, and then at ten o’clock this morning I remembered, to my horror, that I had not put the porridge to soak. This was Mark’s fault because he was trying to be helpful and washed the bowls up and put them away instead of leaving them out to be refilled. I could not go back to sleep after that, and got up to take the dogs out.
Dragging oneself out of bed at ten o’clock in the morning does not sound like a terrible hardship but I can assure you that it was.
I put some porridge to soak but in the event I did not eat it anyway, because of Mark putting horrible disgusting slimy black banana in it, the very recollection of which makes me feel slightly nauseous even now, so he had the porridge all to himself.
I do not have black bananas. It was left over from Mark’s taxi picnic last night and I think he must have had it stuck between his foot and the accelerator pedal.
I do not know what he had been doing, but we had an exciting evening.
There was a drunk mad couple on the taxi rank wanting a taxi. They were so mad and drunk that even before they started trying to explain where they were going we all said No Sorry. This riposte, after a few minutes of their abuse, became considerably more Anglo-Saxon, and brief.
I was trying to pull into a space on the taxi rank when they approached me, and I have been a taxi driver for long enough for a momentary glance to tell me which jobs are to be declined, so I did, after which the gentleman then stood in front of me so I couldn’t move. I waited, and eventually backed away to try and drive around him.
He followed me, and leaned on my bonnet. Then he flung himself on the bonnet and started howling in pretend agony.
I lost my temper and told him to clear off, which he didn’t, but then very fortunately, Kev the bouncer from across the road saw what was going on and came across to rescue me.
The chap started to shout at Kev as well, but Kev was impervious, in true arms-folded-enormous-bouncer style.
In the meantime his girlfriend had gone a few yards away to bellow rude words at another taxi driver, after which she straightened up and started bawling at some hapless young Chinese girl who was having the misfortune to walk past at the wrong moment.
She was shockingly abusive, and the girl ran away.
The chap came back to me then, and started to tug on the doors, which I had prudently locked, and stuck his head through the window to bellow in my face. I do not know what he was saying, he was so very drunk and drugged that he was completely incomprehensible, but in any case I am not enthusiastic about such intimate contact with customers, and when he refused to desist I solved the problem by starting to wind the window up.
Regrettably he backed away just in time, before I had the enormous satisfaction of pinning him by the neck.
I hadn’t quite managed to get it to wind up all the way, and before I did he managed to poke his hands through the gap and started trying to break the window outwards. It made some ominous creaking noises, but held, and misfortunately he managed to remove his fingers before the window trapped them.
When I looked at my taxi in daylight there was blood all over the window. This turned out to have been left over from a bouncer he had punched a little earlier.
I had had enough and rang the police, but it appeared I was about the fourteenth person to do that, and about a minute later a youthful copper appeared at high speed, to find his villain in the middle of the road helpfully enclosed in a large circle of irate bouncers.
He was handcuffed and dragged away. All of the bouncers joined in with that bit.
His girlfriend stayed on the taxi rank for the rest of the night, begging passers-by for money, some of whom gave her some. She reappeared at my taxi several times, shouting rude words at customers who had declined to swell her coffers, and a few hours later the police apprehended her at Tesco. I do not know what they did with her, my preferred outcome would have been for them to have chucked her off the end of the jetty, but I don’t suppose they did.
It was all very exciting, and I texted Oliver afterwards to tell him he had missed it, which was disappointing, but he will be back from school soon enough.
The summer is young yet. There will be plenty of others.
What entertaining times we do have.
