I have just had the most terribly upsetting customer in the taxi.
A young man was going back to his hotel by himself after arguing with his girlfriend who had stormed off and left him.
They were trying to have a weekend break together before they quarrelled so dreadfully. They have got a three month old baby and he thinks his girlfriend has got that upset thing you have when you have had a baby, you know, he explained tiredly and sadly, that postmortem depression.
She is drinking in the afternoons and shouting all the time, and says she would rather be dead. She says that she hasn’t got any post-anything, just that her life is awful and the baby is awful and he is awful and they would all be better off without her, but of course she isn’t depressed.
She is lovely really, and the little baby is lovely, and the little family are all he has ever wanted.
He made a stupid mistake and did something very wrong and went to prison, and he knows he was wrong and now he is trying to make good.
His family are everything he has got and it is falling apart.
He doesn’t know what to do.
I told him to go to his GP and the health visitor straight away, and we talked about whether his girlfriend would hate him if he did, and I said that she didn’t hate him, she was just angry and miserable with the world, but in any case she was upset anyway, and it didn’t matter what she thought at first as much as getting her the right help.
He thanked me, and gave me £3.60 and walked off.
I won’t ever know.
After him I picked up four seventeenths of a hen party on its way to see what they could pull in the local night club. They had had a great deal to drink, and were at the shrieking stage, resembling squabbling seagulls rather more than hens.
The one in the front was almost my age, and looked mild, and sober, and anxious. It turned out that their guest house was in Sedbergh, which is miles away, and she was stuck with the raucous twenty-something hens until their bus turned up, which was not going to be for another four hours. I made encouraging noises, but it was clear to both of us that a deeply horrible evening stretched ahead of her. I felt very sympathetic but chucked her out at the nightclub anyway, learn to say no to some invitations being the moral of the story.
After that came an intoxicated Irish couple who were staying at a smart hotel which had clearly stretched their budget far too far, and who were not having a good evening, especially when I told them how much the taxi would cost. They were rude, and hectoring, so I was outstandingly polite and patronising, until I felt comfortably sure that the man was longing to punch me, and indeed he leaned back in through the door and bellowed some very rude words before he left, which made me laugh a great deal.
The people after that had an extensive collection of rude words as well. Two teenage blonde girls, who had clearly got distracted during the getting dressed process, and forgotten everything after their underwear, wanted to go miles away but had neglected to bring very much money.
In an attempt to be helpful I took them to a cash machine, but it turned out that their underwear was not equipped with pockets, and so neither of them had brought a bank card. Such was their state of confused intoxication that one of them stood next to the cash machine for several minutes, shouting her PIN at it, but it remained heartlessly unforthcoming and they remained penniless.
Unfortunately for them I was not especially inclined to drive to the next county with no reward but the pleasure of their long-legged company. Eventually I requested that they leave: which resulted first in tears and then in the aforementioned rude words, shrill and plentiful, and odd-sounding coming from such blonde perfection, and accompanied in the end by some gestures, in case I had misunderstood.
I am not sure why they thought this might make me inclined to change my mind. You won’t be surprised to hear that I didn’t. I left them ringing one of their parents and still sniffling and swearing.
I also picked up my own offspring from work. Lucy does not generally employ rude words but nevertheless is still a rubbish customer because she has plenty of cash but doesn’t pay for taxis, I am putting it on her account for when she marries Prince Harry, she can either pay it or I will make it back selling my story to the Sun.
It was her last night at work, she goes back to school tomorrow. We are packed up and ready for the long journey back to York tomorrow.
I am going to be tired.
It has been a busy night.
It is a rubbish picture but the only one I had got.
