It has been an uneventful weekend.
Mark has been fixing the camper van and I have been making sure that our lives are neatly laundered and well-fed. We have spent a great deal of the rest of the time sitting on the taxi rank attempting to raise some cash.
This has also been more or less without incident, although I had a troubling nutter last night who wanted to go miles away into the middle of nowhere, and occupied the journey relating stories of his violent criminal offences and his mental health difficulties, for which he seemed to have been given completely ineffective treatment. The voices in his head had not gone away despite the top of his head having been sliced off to let them out. I assume the top of his head had been replaced subsequently, since I did not notice any of his brain spilling out anywhere, although it was dark and he was wearing a bobble hat so it was difficult to be certain.
Anyway I am pleased to assure you that the voices in his head did not appear to be recommending the murder and robbery of elderly taxi drivers, and so I escaped unscathed, if somewhat relieved.
Other than that the evening was occupied with the usual collection of Wot You Readin? muppets and one lady clown who came up and said: I went to the other taxi because I didn’t want to interrupt your book, but he said I had to come over here and get in with you. I don’t want to disturb you. Shall I go away and ring a taxi instead?
This level of brainless virtue is not unusual amongst our female passengers, who are often so busy trying not to be any trouble that they are a complete nuisance. I very nearly said: Yes, you’ve failed the intelligence test, go away and ring somebody else and wait an hour for them to turn up, but of course I didn’t, although I confess that my politeness capacity, never very great at the best of times, was strained to its limit.
I took one lady home who turned out not to have any money, and who was most disgruntled when I returned her to the taxi rank and booted her out. She was intoxicated, and barely a candidate for the intelligence test, because having offered me forty pence as her contribution towards a five pounds journey, she was affronted when I declined, and said: Well when I did it with the nice taxi driver the other night he said Just Get Out. At this point I turned the car around and we set off back, because clearly not having sufficient funds to pay for a taxi was becoming a bad habit that needed to be checked, a bit like obliging Rosie not to poo on the carpet.
I chucked her out at her starting point and she burst into tears and went to see if Mark would be more sympathetic. I rang him up with some amusement, in order to eavesdrop on her explanations of what a very horrid and unkind person the lady in the other taxi was. Of course Mark already knows that perfectly well, being married to me, and was entirely disinclined to be any more merciful. She walked home. I drove past her once or twice. I waved but she was too drunk to notice.
Other than that there was a gentleman who wondered if I might be interested in joining him in some carnal activity. I was gratified about this, it was the sort of proposal that used to happen regularly in my youth but which is fairly unusual these days. Obviously I felt no interest whatsoever, but it was a flattering offer, more especially so since he was offering it as well as the fare, not instead. Mark gets these all the time, young ladies offer to reveal bits of their anatomy instead of paying the financial cost of being transported to the nightclub. I suppose there must be some taxi drivers who accept, since it is a fairly frequent occurrence, it must be worth a punt, as it were.
I don’t know who they are.
I wonder how they pay their gas bills.
See you tomorrow.
