I have been restoring my poor taxi a little.
I have not done very much to it. I have purchased a new back tyre for it. The existing one was not only going bald, it was filled with Tyre Weld, making it impossible to get any air into it.
This has been scaring me very much for a while, most especially since it became impossible to open the boot. The spare tyre is buried deep in the wheelchair-hollow in the boot, and if I were to have a flat tyre, I would be thoroughly macarooned.
This increased my interest in not having a flat bald tyre, I can promise you, and the only thing that has been deterring me from its repair is the usual seasonal absence of cash.
Last night turned out to be unexpectedly profitable, at least by January standards, however, and hence today once the dogs had been thoroughly emptied on our trip over the fells, and I had filled myself with my morning porridge, I buckled on my seatbelt and set off.
This detail is actually worthy of note because I don’t wear seatbelts if I am just in Windermere, only if I am going somewhere exciting, so that little Clunk Click has all the promise of an adventure that Jimmy Savile could ever have wished for.
This is not because I am of a reckless nature, I might have been in my extreme youth but now that I am almost sixty I like to think of myself as being a soberly responsible type of elderly presence.
It is because as taxi drivers we are exempt. You do not need to wear a seatbelt if you are expecting that you might have a passenger any time soon, which I always am, by the way, I have even been known to hoof Mark or the children out if I have been flagged by somebody who looks hopefully solvent.
This is because we are considered to be in more danger from passengers than we are from accidents. In my personal experience actually this has turned out to be true. I have been attacked far more frequently than I have bumped the taxi into anything, and on two of those occasions the attackers did indeed grope around trying to catch hold of my seatbelt and thus imprison me in my seat.
How pleased I was to be able to thwart them.
Anyway, I was not expecting any customers today, there have not been very many since Christmas and with fifteen predatory taxis already circling Windermere desperately seeking incoming railway passengers, it wasn’t at all likely that I would be flagged, so I chucked my spare seatbelt-clip, which fools the seatbelt warning into stopping its irritating dinging, into the door pocket, and set off for Morecambe, where there is a very good second-hand tyre garage.
This turned into a very cheering outing. Not only did I have nothing to do apart from hum down the motorway and listen to my story, when I got there I had a detailed and interesting gossip with the lady who fixes tyres. I like her because there are not many other women in the slightly dodgy underground world of taxis and used tyres and scrapyards. Also she has a ruthless indifference to impecunious whiners which I can wholeheartedly appreciate, having cultivated that characteristic in my own working life. I would not like to try and persuade her to give me a discount.
This felt like a small holiday in the middle of my week, and I breezed back up the motorway with four perfectly functional tyres and hardly any worries at all.
I even called in at Asda on my way back.
Once home I had to clean my taxi again. It had started to rain, but there was hardly any daylight left, so it had to be done straight away, not least because the dogs have been getting in and out of the boot via the back seats, and they are not an example of immaculate hygiene, I can tell you, especially after a trail over muddy fells in the rain.
It was a chilly wet job but tonight I am in a beautifully clean taxi so that is all right. I consider that I have made an investment in living my best life.
I don’t even need to worry about the tyres.
