I had a nutter in the taxi last night.
He got in at the nightclub, at two o’ clock, and got in the front seat. He didn’t seem terribly drunk,
We had barely set off when he started mumbling to himself, and after a few minutes the mumbling had become an incoherent, but mildly troubling rant.
I couldn’t make much of it out.
Odd sentences emerged here and there, and none of them were very nice. He seemed to be arguing with himself about whether or not he dared to do something.
He wanted to be dropped off on a garage forecourt a couple of miles away. The garage was closed, and at the end of a long, unlit, quiet road.
Halfway along the unlit road the rambling one-way conversation stopped. He swivelled round in his seat and sat and stared at me.
Nutters are so tiresome. They all do that.
A few moments later, in one sudden move, he dived across and made a grab for me. In actual fact I was expecting it a bit, and so the only bit of me he managed to get hold of was my arm.
“Didn’t expect that, did you?” he said triumphantly.
I stamped on the brakes and turned the light on. Then I bellowed at him so furiously I even frightened myself.
I told him that he was a dangerous irresponsible nuisance, playing childish games in a moving vehicle. I told him that I couldn’t believe he had so little regard for his own safety and the safety of other road users that he would do something to deliberately startle a person in charge of a vehicle moving at speed.
I told him to turn round in his seat and put his seatbelt on.
Then when I was satisfied that he had changed his mind about becoming a serial killer, I turned the light off and we set off again.
I had been jolly frightened, but I wasn’t going to let him think that.
When we were almost at the garage he thought he might have a final go at asserting himself, just in case.
“I am a bit concerned about your reaction to that,” he said, in what I think he hoped was a lofty tone. “I hope that you don’t imagine I had any intention…”
I interrupted him.
“Of course I didn’t,” I said witheringly. “I’m far too old to be the target of sexual assault. I think you are a brainless irresponsible idiot, and that will be fifteen quid, please.”
He paid up and sloped off.
Nutters are not that unusual on a Saturday night, especially as we get into the season. In fact they are not even the worst nuisance of the job. I had one fare at around ten o’ clock which was a family with young children. The eldest was about six, the youngest a baby, and because there were five of them I couldn’t take them all and the father shovelled the rest of them into my taxi, and then hung about waiting for another taxi to turn up.
They wanted to go to a guest house in Windermere of which I had never heard.
After twenty years driving a taxi I have heard of everywhere. It makes me uncomfortable when somebody thinks they know better.
I queried this a bit, but they were quite sure. They told me it was on one of the main roads in Windermere, so we set off.
The children in the back were tired and whinging, and the mother, who looked about nineteen, wasn’t much better.
She said they hadn’t actually been to the guest house yet. They had driven up to Windermere and gone straight to the pub. They had booked it on Booking.com and when they phoned up the chap told them they could turn up when they liked.
We drove up and down the road in the dark several times without finding the guest house.
The children started to cry. The baby wanted feeding.
After a while the taxi with the father in turned up and started driving up and down as well.
I went over to the driver and we agreed that the guest house did not exist.
The mother started to cry.
The father, who had been drinking, tried to ring the owner of the guest house, who did not answer.
The children started to sob and wonder if they would have to sleep in the car.
I said briskly that of course they wouldn’t, and that everything would be sorted out in just a few minutes if they would wait quietly and patiently and try to entertain the baby.
The father started to bluster and shout.
In the end, in about the tenth try, the owner of the guest house answered the phone, and turned out to be extremely intoxicated. He explained where it was, which turned out to be a house which had two signs on it, one of which proclaimed that it was called something different entirely, and the other of which said that it was for sale.
He told the father that nobody was in, but the door wasn’t locked, so they could just go in and help themselves to any room they liked.
The family were too relieved to argue about anything, and we unloaded them and the collection of children and child-related paraphernalia. They staggered up the steps and the door closed behind them.
The other taxi driver and I were monumentally relieved to be rid of them, and I was very glad indeed not to have my taxi-driver heartlessness put to the test.
Imagine if the guest house had not existed. There is nowhere at all open and able to take people in at that time of night, as I know from long experience. There are not many summer nights that pass without somebody finishing up miserably wandering the streets, unable to find a guest house. Some of them have booked guest houses and just forgotten what they are called and where they are. That happens rather a lot.
I usually I just ignore them. Other people’s alcoholic foolishness is not my problem. My problem is paying my mortgage.
The children were not drunk.
I do not even want to think about it.
Have a cheering picture.
