Independence Day

I am on the taxi rank.

It is a long time since I have written those words.

It looks as though I will have plenty of opportunities to write some more words to go with them. We have been here for a couple of hours and so far nobody has wanted a taxi.

This is a depressing turn up for the books, because we would have liked to earn some money, although I must say that it is rather splendid to have the opportunity to catch up with my book. I am always too busy when I am at home for anything more than the occasional snatched five minutes whilst Mark is in the shower just before bedtime. Being at work is a brilliant way of being completely and satisfyingly idle.

Especially tonight, so far.

I will keep you updated as the evening progresses.

I had to start the day with the sequel to yesterday’s failed tip run.

Today’s worked rather better.

I went to Ambleside tip rather than Kendal, and fortunately there were not very many people there, because it took me ages. I had a car filled almost to the roof with the corpse of the dead kitchen, and of course to put things in the skip you have got to run up the steps.

In the olden days the chaps at the tip used to help you to unload your car, but in our Brave New World helping people is not allowed, so two large blokes leaned on the fence and watched me trotting up and down the steps with armfuls of kitchen. I was not terribly speedy at this activity, because of being fifty five now, and being portly and unfit as a general rule. I tottered up and down, puffing and panting, and the queue of waiting cars grew longer and longer whilst everybody fumed and loathed me.

I got into trouble as well, because in anxious haste to get finished and out of the way, I just chucked in the dustbin liner full of rotten hardboard.  The chap watched me do it, and then told me, crossly, as  came down the steps, that putting plastic bags in the wood skip was not allowed.

I said that every bit of wood I had just chucked in there had a thick plastic vinyl coating on it, so probably a plastic bag would not matter very much. The chap said that it jolly well did, and what was I going to do about it?

I thought for a moment or two whilst I put the last bits in, and eventually said: Nothing, and drove off.

When I got home we cleaned the taxis, and the Peppers cleaned their smart new motorhome, companionably, in the alley. There were a lot of slug trails and cobwebs inside my long-disused taxi, and damp wallpaper inside their motorhome. Mark’s taxi was so shockingly filthy that in the end we just borrowed a large rubber mat from the Peppers and laid it in the boot, to cover the sawdust which refused to hoover away.

It is now several hours later.

I have read a very great deal of my book, which has been sitting in the cobwebby taxi since the 17th of March. It is a bit mystifying, because I really can’t remember what it was about,  it in some ways this is quite nice, because somebody was just murdered and I did not mind.

It is very wet and the only people on the taxi rank are other taxi drivers.

I have taken some sad young people home. They went home very early, because they did not think that there was any point to a pub where you are not allowed to play darts or pool, or sing, dance or call across the pub to your friends. If you do call across the pub to your friends you will be in trouble, and you certainly are not allowed to go over and talk to them.

They went home. They said that they would have more fun in their houses with some cans of beer from Tesco, and one of them opined that he had experienced a better atmosphere at times when he had broken wind.

The evening has worn on whilst I have been writing, and although we have not had anything like a night’s work, there has been a slow trickle of customers, maybe one every hour and a half. We have earned about as much as we might on a slow night in January.

All the same, I was very pleased to find that none of the things I was worried about have happened. Everybody still pays cash, nobody has been wearing a face mask, and on the whole, taxi customers are still the way they have always been.

I knew that this was definitely true when a passing youth opened the taxi door, shouted a string of insulting obscenities, and ran off. This made me smile. It seemed that perhaps there is hope for the world returning to normal after all. Things might not have completely come to an end.

In the end I think that I am glad to be back.

Have a picture of a boy.