Mark is home, and of course we are on the taxi rank.
We are on our own at the moment, because taxi drivers are all collectively exhausted after a long and horrible summer filled with very drunk people and Uber drivers, and hence there are not very many of us out at work at the moment.
Abdul was so tired that he did not even come to work on Saturday night. I did not blame him in the least. Abdul’s work schedule makes my relatively idle seven-day week look like a holiday.
We have all had enough. September is here, we have submitted our collective grumbles to the council and the Government, and we are all aware that there is nothing more that can be done. Indeed, we are metaphorically standing behind Andy Burnham whilst he harangues our beloved leaders on the much discussed topic of out-of-area private hire vehicles, and shouting: I’m With You, Guv.
For those who are not abreast of current taxi politics, I will not enlighten you because it is too dull for words, but suffice to say that it is a Hot Topic in the corridors of power at the moment. Even our own local twerp has been compelled to put in a good word for us, we have written pages and pages on the topic on our own account, and the Transport Committee is going to start discussing it Any Day Now.
I can’t tell you how excited we all are.
In the meantime, it isn’t summer any more, and Uber cars have mostly sloped off, back to wherever they have come from. I don’t know where that might be, but it most certainly isn’t here.
We are all frazzled with tourists, and to everybody’s relief, apart from the constantly pressing issue of not having any cash, the evenings have become peaceful.
Whilst the weather has been good we have been congregating beside our taxis and chatting. I have generally restrained myself from leaping out of my taxi to join in these discussions, because apart from Abdul, the rest of the taxi drivers are Hungarian, and if I turn up it means that they must all courteously switch into English instead of their native, and very much easier, Hungarian.
I have lived abroad and know how difficult that is, and so I have just left them to it.
The other night this was observed, and eventually I explained, to much shaking of heads and consideration.
The answer, we concluded, was that I ought to learn Hungarian.
I liked this idea very much.
Hence I am beginning to acquire some basic Hungarian phrases. The others said, amongst much amusement, that all I really needed for customer services was to be able to say first Good Evening, and then a phrase which I should perhaps translate as Up Yours, but actually it wasn’t that.
I am now learning to speak some Hungarian phrases which will be absolutely no use anywhere other than a taxi rank, which is perfectly all right because that is the only place I am ever likely to use them.
Nowhere else am I likely to need to express my opinions about the local nightclub, for example.
I am very pleased indeed about it all the same. It is interesting, and will help to stop my brain from decaying into premature senility. Also some bits of it are peculiarly unpronounceable, all of it is incomprehensible, and it is all made up of a sort of oral gymnastic exercise at which I strongly suspect I am very unlikely to become very competent.
So far I have managed to twist my tongue around a small handful of phrases, with varying degrees of inaccuracy.
I am jolly well going to keep trying.
If they can all manage to communicate perfectly well in a foreign language I am not going to be outdone.
*You pronounce the title something like Hoij Vahj. It means How Are You. I am told that I am not yet getting the J sound right at the end. You have to start saying J and then stop halfway through.
