Thursday, May 18, 2006

Where have all the idiots gone?

I did 28 jobs today. You’d think there’d be something juicy to write about but the fact of the matter is that without alcohol inside them people are just normal. I’m still on days and managing pretty well but there are just no idiots out there during the daylight hours. (Wow! That sounded like I wanted there to be idiots to write about) There’s plenty of traffic and plenty of noise. I thought London was under attack again due to the amount of sirens I heard today. There was a fire in the Marylebone area and lots of the surrounding roads were closed off but it didn’t affect me as I was working a different part of town. What I like about days is the constant stream of work that’s available all day long. Come the evening I have to pull myself away from it and head for home. It would be so easy to stay out for 3 or 4 more hours but I would probably burn myself out by doing it on a regular basis.

Most of the runs I did barely reached £5. Like the Royal Albert Hall to High Street Kensington, £3.60 or the Cumberland Hotel to Curzon Street, £4.80 or even Piccadilly to Eccleston Mews, £4.50 but if they come one after the other then the time passes quickly and the money soon mounts up.
Amongst all the short hops came one out to the City Airport. Two Dutchmen catching a flight to Amsterdam, where incidentally, my eldest son Danny is at this moment. They were on the hurry up but I soon burst their bubble when I told them it would be a long and painfully slow journey. Traffic going eastbound during the afternoon has always been notoriously slow. I think it’s simply because the bulk of people working this side of town come from the eastern suburbs and beyond. There are only two major roads heading east. They are The Highway and Commercial Road and they were both choc-a-block. It took the best part of an hour to get them to the airport and they looked really pissed off.


The Highway at a standstill both ways

London City Airport

Lately, I’ve been incurring a lot of bank charges due to late payments. I needed to find a bank to pay some money in and I had about 30 minutes to do it. I’m always leaving it too late and end up stressing my self out. Not good for my already too high blood pressure. From the City Airport I ended up in East Ham close to West Ham United’s football ground. I had to find a parking space and then try to find the bank in an unfamiliar area. The queue was out the door and I thought I would explode but I survived it and chilled out in the local McD’s with a chicken sandwich and a Coke.

The traffic coming back towards town was marginally better than the outbound traffic, but not a lot better. There were some nice views of the Millenium Dome and Canary Wharf to look at whilst stewing in the traffic.

Millenium Dome and Canary Wharf

I got stuck on the Aldgate one-way system without moving for about 15 minutes. It was absolute gridlock. A police car turned on his siren and tried to get through but even he had trouble. When he did manage to get through the whole line of traffic I was in followed him, including me. It’s a cheeky thing to do and I’m the first one to complain if others do it but on this occasion it just had to be done.

The work was still plentiful and as I said in the end I had to drag myself away from it as I didn’t want to wear myself out.
I ordered an Indian meal for the kids and me and went to collect it nearby my house.
The TV was on and the latest Big Brother was just starting, I think it’s BB7. The housemates were being introduced one by one and as usual there’s an assortment of normal and freaky people. One of them is called Pete and has Tourettes Syndrome so that should keep things interesting in the house.

3 comments:

Paradise Driver said...

Are fares from the airport restricted to just one cab company or can you queue up there for a paid ride back to town?

Truckmann said...

London taxis can queue and pick up fares at LCA and Heathrow but not the other three so-called London airports as they are actually outside the Metropolitan Police district, our area of operation.

Sam Anderson said...

It is essential to park a vehicle at a particular safe parking lot at the airport and make sure nobody is disturbed from that airport parking.
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