Tax is

I changed some light bulbs last night.

Thjis made me feel very pleased with my technical adeptness and general domestic aptitude, how clever and independent I am.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, I can tell you, because lightbulbing has climbed to dizzying new heights of requisite skill level since the olden days of bayonet fittings. I had to stand on a stool and press a little wiry bit together and the whole thing just fell out of the ceiling.

This was a bit alarming for a minute, but then I realised that it greatly facilitated screwing the new ones in, which I did, whilst all the while perilously perched on the stool, and wondered what would happen if I fell off, and how many days I would have to lie helplessly on the floor before the dogs ate me in desperation and then pooed all over the floor because they couldn’t let themselves out.

It might have been quite a few because we are not expecting an Autoparts delivery or anything.

It would not have been a terribly romantic ending, and one which I would hope not to have mentioned in my eulogy, although obviously it wouldn’t have mattered really because I wouldn’t be there to listen to it.

Fortunately you will be pleased to hear that I didn’t fall off the stool, and so the epic saga of these pages is still continuing.

It had been a tiresome night anyway, which was why I had decided to cheer myself up with some technical wizardry. My last customers were so profoundly irritating that I was still muttering to myself as I drove home. I had to make myself stop thinking about them after that, otherwise I get in a state, so I stopped and thought about doing my tax return instead.

They were two elderly middle-class women, wanting to go up towards one of the more costly parts of Windermere. I explained to them that it was cash, because of not having a card machine.

I have resisted these innovations, partly because of the lack of telephone signal with which they can function, partly because the bank takes a slice out of the money and I object to giving the bank any of my takings whatsoever, but mostly because I am a member of various campaign organisations shouting pointlessly and uselessly for freedom from Government surveillance and from the takeover of the World Economic Forum. We are wasting our time because it is coming anyway but I am going to stand against it for as long as I can.

One of them said she had cash, so we set off.

Halfway up the road the other said: Explain to me why you don’t accept cards.

I got about three words into my explanation before she interrupted with: I don’t believe you. I think it’s because you are defrauding the tax.

I was not impressed with this. I considered it to be an act of colossal rudeness to randomly accuse a complete stranger of theft and fraud on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, and after a moment’s surprise, said so.

Then I tried to explain again, but to no avail.

She had started on a complete spiel about not wishing to pay me since I was not going to give a fair share of it to the Inland Revenue.

We were already at our destination by then, otherwise I would have taken them back again.

She announced that she was not going to pay for the taxi.

I announced, equally determinedly, that she was, and told her that if she didn’t I would be calling the police.

I don’t believe you are a taxi driver at all, she said. I have never seen you before. You are a fraud and an imposter and I am going to report you to the council. Prove to me you are a real taxi driver.

I spluttered with indignation, because thirty years of driving taxis around Windermere hardly makes me a novice, even by local standards, in fact I think by now I am the longest standing taxi driver here.

I showed her my badge, pointed to the plates on the front and rear of the taxi, which rather conveniently show that my taxi number is 002, out of four hundred taxis, and then, snatching the cash out of her friend’s hand before she could shove it back in her bag, penned a receipt upon which I grandly wrote every detail I could think of, even including our registration number with Companies House.

That isn’t a real receipt, she said, beginning to sound a bit doubtful. You don’t even live here. You shouldn’t be driving taxis in our town.

I borrowed my mother-in-law’s local credentials, which are utterly impeccable, and of which everybody has heard, and announced, dramatically, that I was one of the Ibbetsons of Crook, which, in fairness, made her blanch a little, although I can’t imagine why.

I used to get a similar result with troublesome Ulverston customers if I happened to remark that I was related to Number One Son-In-Law’s family.

She had paid by then, and so my patience with the transaction had instantly expired, and I required her to get out, which she did, still huffing and puffing.

I drove home, wondering what on earth makes people behave like such complete muppets when they are old enough to know better, and then forgot all about it until I was thinking about interesting moments about which I could tell you on these pages.

Talking of tax, which I wasn’t really, I had a rather pleasant surprise this morning when we had a letter from the Norwegian Government telling us that they had taxed us too much – since regular readers might recall that we have been paying tax not just in one country, but two this year – and that if I logged into their website they would send it back one day.

Logging into their website involved a lot of faffing about, and in the end, in the way of tax offices everywhere, they promised to send me a code which would enable me to access their website, the absence of which meant I could proceed no further.

They would post this to us, they added, one day.

I do not mind this. It will turn up as a surprise in some financially desperate distant future moment.

It is a future Happy Moment on its way to us.