Sod's Law

The news here has been dominated by the 15 UK servicemen who were captured, detained for a few weeks and finally released and flown home from Iran yesterday. I’d like to think in cases like this that the reports we get from our own government are accurate and true. So it’s no surprise to me that it is now emerging that it wasn’t all sweetness and light over there and that the captives were kept isolated from eachother and at one point they were lined up against a wall as if they were about to be executed. It’s the sort of thing one has come to expect from most uncivilized countries where democracy is non-existent.
One thing that doing this job gives us cab drivers is the time to listen to the radio whilst working. It can be as good if not better than watching on TV and the coverage throughout the whole crisis was excellent on BBC Radio 5 Live.

You’ll all be pleased to know that I managed to scrape together the £800 needed to pay the cab garage and it was a great relief to me to get that out of the way. While I was there I asked them to check a few things. I had a couple of tyres fitted in February and in the space of seven weeks they have worn down to illegal levels. The mechanic checked the tracking and the ball joints and found them to be OK. He suggested to the owner that the problem must lie in the wishbones and that replacements would have to be ordered and fitted on my next visit. He fitted two new tyres there and then saving me a trip to Jettyres in Holloway. They also checked my speedo which has been flicking up and down instead of giving me a steady reading and it was decided that I may need a new clock or head as they called it so I have a few hours of waiting around to look forward to on my next visit which should be towards the end of next week.

Since I’ve paid the cab and the urgency has diminished I have found myself doing less and less. I only did five half shifts from Monday to Friday. Good Friday turned out to be a decent half shift as our meters were on “Rate 3” all day due to it being a Bank Holiday. Most jobs went a tenner or more and I didn’t even receive any strange comments from my passengers. I wasn’t looking to go too far north as I had to attend my nieces surprise 18th Birthday party at my sisters house in Palmers Green later on but as the Law of Sod decrees I trapped a job from the Gatwick Express all the way to the Holly Lodge Estate in Highgate and had to drive all the way back to town to carry on working. Nice views from there mind.

View from the Holly Lodge

When I arrived with my son at my sister’s house at around 9pm the party was already a few hours old and the surprise had already been sprung on my niece. As is usual at any functions hosted by any one of my family there was plenty to eat and drink. There was no music being played so I suggested linking my iPod to the active speakers of their computer. I have now loaded around 2700 songs on to it so there was plenty of choice which went down well with the older lot. After a while the younger lot got fed up with it and my iPod was replaced with my son’s one. Eminem, The Streets and lots of other stuff blasted from the speakers and effectively cleared the room of all us old fogeys.

I have no other obstacles in my way for the next three or four days so I am expecting to be able to get ahead of the game, monetarily. I’ll keep you posted.