Disrupted Beauty Sleep

I was happily in the land of nod around 1pm Wednesday when I got a call from my Mum. Her first words are always “Oh I didn’t wake you did I?” To be fair to her it’s impossible to tell if I will be awake or asleep at any given time as my lifestyle habits change from one week to the next. Since I have started posting regularly on this blog I tend to be up most of the night and get off to sleep as soon as my daughter’s gone to school around 8am. So in order to get my full beauty sleep I may still be in bed at 4pm. Anyway, my Mum rang to see if I could go up to their house as my Dad was having some sort of trouble with the computer and she was having car trouble. I got dressed and went up there straight away. On entering my Dad’s office at the top of the house I could see his computer screen and there were a million “My Computer” windows open. He told me he had tried for ages to close them but they never seemed to close. He tried restarting but they just came back. On closer inspection I deduced that his ancient 3-button mouse was causing the problem. Instead of a wheel his mouse has a middle button, which opens “My Computer” and it was stuck. I freed it up and showed him a quick way to shut all the windows (Alt + F4) and left him to continue with whatever he had to do.
My Mum’s problem was that she had been smelling petrol inside the car and the oil light was coming on intermittently. On lifting the bonnet I could see the problem with the petrol smell immediately. The entire air filter assembly, including various hoses had worked loose from the carburettor and was just hanging by a single hose as if ready to fall off at any moment. I put it back on, tightened the jubilee clip and reattached all the hoses and that was that. The oil needed topping up so I had to go and buy some, put some air and water in and the car was sound as a pound once again.

I went home via a supermarket, made us all some food and tried to grab an hours nap before going out to work. I got out the door by 8.30pm, way too late, and got half way down Maida Vale before I realised I never had my phone. I went back, couldn’t find it, someone had to ring it and it was buried under some clothes. Back out I went. I got a job in Maida Vale all the way to Golders Green and had a really interesting chat with an M.C.C. member (he had the tie on) who had just been to Lords Cricket Ground. I don’t think there was a game there so, judging by his demeanour; he was probably just propping up the bar. When we got to his house he gave me a £50 note and I couldn’t find my wallet to give him change so he had to go in and get some money. This meant I had to pass by my house yet again and get the wallet, as I needed the £5 notes I had in there.

A couple of jobs later and I found myself on the Eurostar rank at Waterloo. The couple I picked up asked to be taken to New Providence Wharf near Canary Wharf. They were quite chatty and asked about the weather, my taste in music, what I did for fun (write a blog!!) etc. The subject got on to where I go on holiday. When I said Spain they asked if I spoke the lingo and I said I did. I asked if they were Spanish and they said “Venimos del mismo pais que “La Mano de Dios”. So they were Argentinean and we got into a discussion about Maradonna. They of course said they knew him vaguely and spoke about his recent massive weight loss. I’d lost interest by then because I thought they were talking bollocks. Being on this side of town I took the opportunity to take a few snaps of London’s tallest building, No.1 Canada Square.

Back in town now and I picked up a drunk guy from the Dorchester Hotel. He immediately got on the phone for a heated discussion with someone and only paused for a second when I drove over a brand new hole in the road. I was driving around the Hyde Park Corner one-way system when the right side of the cab sank into an enormous pothole. These vehicles being top heavy, the cab tipped over a little, and I heard the guy’s head bang off the window. It sounded like it should’ve hurt him and I looked to see if he was rubbing his head but he just continued with his phone call and he never said a word when he got out.

From there I went straight to Victoria (no beggars at all today) and a gay guy came up to me to ask if I knew Chariots Gay Sauna. I said I only knew the one in the City but he didn’t want to go out that far. I did a Google search for “Taxi Stories” a couple of nights ago and found this page. So once you’ve read it you’ll see why I was able to suggest The Pleasuredome in Waterloo to him. Up until I read that page I didn’t know the place existed so the instance of him asking for somewhere I’ve only just found out about has repeated itself yet again.

Being a Wednesday night it was pretty slow out there. I had decided to start making my way home at around 1am. A last quick peek in St. James’s Street presented me with a fare going all the way to Walthamstow in North London. We had a clear run all the way there and after not speaking a word to each other the whole way she decides to pipe up with “Well done, that was super” then, seeing my satnav was on added “Did you know your way or are we on navigator?” I replied that we were on this navigator (tapping my head) and that the one stuck to my dash was just an AtoZ, which produced a titter and all of a sudden the conversation flowed albeit too late.

A nice run around the North Circular Road, then we hit a few tunnel closures, which forced all the traffic over in to the slip roads. I pulled up behind this Porsche Boxster and thought to myself “What’s the point of having a nice sporty car like that and it not being manual?”