The weekly cab rent comes round so quickly and involves a trip to the new premises just off Camden Road. The new TX4 (Chinese Version) I am currently driving is going ok but it has a minor water leak somewhere which involves a weekly topup. I have had 3 sets of advertising on the cab since my Paris post. The second lot was a new Vivienne Westwood perfume called Naughty Alice and they gave me a great big bag of samples to hand out to passengers. I managed to hand out a few samples but most people wern't interested so the rest went to friends and family. It did attract quite a lot of attention and I was photographed by passers by at least four or five times a day. The lastest ads were put on yesterday and they are for a clothing store called The Kooples who have a few branches around town.
On the work front I have been flitting between days and nights again. I drop Jane at work every morning at 8am then sit on the rank at Acacia Road until I get a job, which sometimes can be half an hour wait.
The other morning a lady came up to me with a bit of paper and asks for St Chads Place in the Kings Cross area of town. For some unknown reason I went a totally different way to to what I would normally do and got myself into a whole heap of bother. Instead of Hanover Gate, Regents Park, Euston Road etc I went over the top of the park, thru Camden Town, Bayham Street then, the worst bit, I had to sit in Midland road for ages as Goodsway and Pancras Road have been shut for a good while. Well, she moaned and moaned and I had to fob her off with excuses. When I finally did the left into Euston Road I thought the rest of the journey would be ok. To get to St Chads Place you have to go round the one way system and back into Grays Inn Road via one of the small roads off Kings Cross Road. I chose the first one, Field Street, which looked doable on the map but it looked like a dead end when I got further into it. I think at this point she must have thought I hadn't a clue what I was doing ( she wasn't wrong, I was having an off day for sure). The final insult to this hurried woman was that I told her there was an alleyway at the end of Field Street and it would take her straight into St Chads Place. She paid me, ran up the road heading for the non-existant alleyway and I reversed out of Field Street at top speed before she could turn round and slag me off.
I have been experiencing problems with my credit card machine and after months of umming and ahhhing I contacted the company who provides it and got them to send me out a power pack. Now that it works correctly nobody is asking to pay by card. I have signs up in the cab but the 10% service charge must be scaring them off. It's still cheaper than queueing at an ATM but people don't seem to see it that way.
I have a new toy to tell you all about. I recently got a new iPhone4 (that's not the toy by the way) and the pay as you go chip and service plan only gives me 500megs of data, which doesn't last long if you like to stream radio like I do. So, I signed up this week to 3 Mobile's wireless dongle and it gives me 5gb's of data and I can use it on any pc or wifi enabled phone so all in all I'm quite pleased about that.
Talking of streaming radio I have been listening to Outlaw Radio with Magic Matt Alan and his Demons of Decadence. It's is a very non-politically correct radio station broadcasting from the hills of Encino California. It can get very rowdy on there and it's well worth a listen.
So that's all for now folks, hopefully I'll have something to tell you pretty soon.
Take Care.
LC.
