I had a peculiar experience in my taxi last night.
A gentleman got in, by himself, at about one in the morning, and wanted to go to Kendal.
I told him that he didn’t need to sit in the back if he didn’t want to, that he was welcome to sit in the front, but he declined.
I prefer customers in the front. When they are in the back I can’t see what they are doing, and occasionally you get the odd nutter who thinks it is entertaining unexpectedly to put his hands over your eyes. This is, as you can imagine, a real hoot at fifty miles an hour.
He was young, and a bit unusual, and very softly spoken and polite.
This rings more alarm bells than the shouty drunk ones. Loudly abusive nuisances are easily and swiftly dealt with. I prefer it when the only sober and self-controlled person is me.
We set off anyway, and stopped at a cash machine in Windermere so I could be sure he had enough money.
There are no streetlights on the road to Kendal, and although I could hear him moving about in the back, I couldn’t see what he was doing.
He didn’t make conversation, but he didn’t sit still.
My neck was prickling with warning tingles. I tried one or two conversational openers, but he ignored them completely and stayed silent.
I put my foot down.
We reached Kendal in record time, and stopped in the centre, where there were hundreds of people milling about, or, to be more accurate, because it was late, staggering about. I told him it would be forty quid.
He jumped out before I could stop him, but instead of running off, went over to another cash machine. He got some more cash out and came back.
He gave me seventy quid.
I explained that this was far too much.
He shook his head.
“It’s so you’ll remember me,” he said, and ambled off.
He was absolutely right.
I don’t know what he had been doing in the back, but it hadn’t made a mess, so I didn’t care. I drove back to Windermere feeling very pleased indeed with my world, and grateful to strange quiet men in the back of taxis.
Our last remaining chick flies the nest tomorrow, and today has largely been spent flapping about organising her departure.
She has got to work tonight, standing around outside bars looking menacing, and so everything has had to be done today, because nobody will get up tomorrow in time to do anything at all. Tonight she will be working at Baha, which is not quite as disreputable as the Wheelhouse nightclub, and she will not finish until three.
I think this is a properly sensible time to finish work. When she works at the other bars it is all over by one, which hardly seems worth going out at all.
It is her last night of being a hired thug before she becomes a schoolgirl again. I think she is hoping for a fight. It would be good to end her holiday on a high note.
In view of her impending absence we have been making plans of our own. We have got to go to Birmingham this week to collect a drum kit, purchased on eBay for Oliver.
We bought this because it was Collection Only, and therefore cheap. At the time we were expecting to have to take Lucy to Northampton for yet another police-related activity, I forget which, the fitness or the biometrics or the medical, or something. We thought we would collect the drum kit on our way home: but in the event she changed the date and so we didn’t go.
I rang the man with the drums and asked if we could leave it a bit longer, but he is emigrating to Australia on Wednesday, and therefore we can’t.
He seems to live in a flat with his drum kit. I imagine his neighbours will be pleased about the emigrating to Australia.
Hence we will be making a special journey to Birmingham, which we are going to enliven with a detour to visit my sister, who lives somewhere around the middle of the country, somewhere in Wales, I think.
Oliver is very excited about the drum kit. This week he has had another drum lesson at school. He thinks that he enjoys playing the drums as much as he enjoys killing zombies. This is high praise indeed.
He is going to have plenty to do when the term is over. Mark went to have his hair cut today, and the barber wanted to know when Oliver would be returning to work, because, he said, they all like his company.
Oliver has not been at work at all this holidays, due to overzealous application to schoolwork, but the summer is approaching fast, and the terrible Common Entrance, at long last, will be over.
We will be a fully employed household for the entire summer, which is a wonderful thing.
Have a picture of the author and the departing chick, on their holidays.
