Intermittent update

Mazda2,
originally uploaded by skyring.

The difficult part about being a cabbie is the vast amount of time it consumes. Once I take out the sixty hours or so, and make room for sleep, there's really not a lot left over. I catch up with my friends on LJ or do something else online and I'm outta time.

I'm also outta room on my hard disk. The Macbook Air only has 80 gigs, and loading up more photographs isn't something I can do for a little while. I'm moving them across to a pocket drive, but that's another fourteen hours yet.

So no pix for the moment.

DD and I picked up the car on Tuesday. A Mazda 2 in silver, it replaces the rattly old Magna, which has been a fine family car for thirteen years, but is getting to the end of its useful life. We agreed to trade it in for five hundred dollars, but on reflection decided that the long registration was worth at least that much, and we'd keep it going until it dropped. This way we have four cars and four drivers.

The car is a little sweetie. Three doors and a small footprint. The rep ran us through a checklist, pointed out the free tank of petrol, the free floormats and handed us the free picnic blanket and the keys. For the first time in my life, I've bought a car without bothering to read through the owner's manual. All the controls are clearly marked and their functions are obvious. There are no features that I don't know about. Possibly the only really new thing is the auxiliary input to the sound system, allowing an iPod or similar to play.

I didn't get to drive it home. DD muscled me aside. In fact, in the five days we've had it, I've only managed to get the controls once, when I moved it a short distance in the driveway. This may change when the petrol tank empties.

Our other cars: the big Falcon, the rattly Magna and the yellow Getz, I drove one after the other on three successive nights, filling the tank each time. Hmmmm.

Misty the kitten is a sweetie. She and Coomie the terrier are gradually becoming comfortable with each other, touching noses and being civilised around the food bowls. Not quite curling up together in the afternoon sun, but getting there. In November we'll have her long term companion - a Bombay kitten - and a lot of fun.

Playful and noisy, Misty can be a handful, but all is forgiven when you look at her beauty. She should be a snow panther, with that soft white fur. Or a harp seal with the big green eyes.

Friday was the monster rally for taxidrivers. The government is releasing twenty-five more taxi plates in an attempt to get more taxis on the streets. In theory, this should cut delays, which can be horrendous at peak times. In practice, the problem isn't taxis per se, it's taxidrivers, and if there are twenty five more cabbies on the streets, that thins out the income stream for the existing cabbies, especially at off-peak times when every cabbie is hurting for work.

The way to fix the peak hour problems is to use the existing cabs more efficiently. If a plane arrives on Monday morning with a dozen staffers all heading for Parliament House, it's no good the dozen passengers queueing up and taking one cab each - a couple of maxi taxis would clear them quickly away. But there's no mechanism in place to organise that.

Anyway, enough of cabs - the idea is to vote out the current government, who have reached an elite level of arrogance and incompetence and shouldn't be trusted with another four years. Or at least give the balance of power back to the independents and minors, which is how it usually is here.

Seeing I was so close to Commonwealth Park, I dropped in on the spring flower festival of Floriade. Not usually my cup of tea, but it certainly is spectacular. A beautiful clear warm day and the show was being well and truly enjoyed.

And then to get my hair cut. Twenty dollars buys a lot of happiness, every time I glance in the mirror and see a neat trim, rather than the shaggy look I've been developing. And eyebrow(s) that don't look like a shrubbery.

Best to get the haircut done before going overseas. Only a few days away now!

Two things, cabbie

A couple, waiting on the nightrank. Most cabbies were long abed on this bleak Thursday morning somewhere around one in the morning, so these passengers were glad to find a warm cab and a smiling driver. They settled happily into the back seat and we headed off.

I had Dire Straits playing on the iPhone.

“Oooh, that’s so cool!” she chirped. A common reaction to seeing a music video playing in my taxi.

“Ahh, this is one of those iCabs”, I replied, making up a word and a business model on the moment.

“Awesome!”

She was in a chatty mood and we had a pleasant drive of it, speeding west along Barry Drive, empty at this hour, six busy lanes twice a day. She wanted to travel, and I guess I overwhelmed her a bit when I named the thirteen countries I’d visited just this year. Maybe she saw me as a fount of wisdom and general knowledge, a general characteristic of taxidrivers of a certain age.

“Tell me, Mister Taxidriver,” she said, “what would you say are the two most important things in life?”

I considered for a moment.

“The smile of a beautiful woman,” I responded, flashing a glance into the back seat.

She laughed. “And...”

“...And the first cry of a newborn baby.”

I guess that I’m just a hopeless romantic. Truth is that I’ve been sighing with happiness for an internet friend of mine. A year or so ago this young lady - a very beautiful, clever, artistic and funny young lady we’ll call Audrey - was very down. Her long-time boyfriend had left her, she was living in rickety rental accommodation in one of the dodgier areas of South London, her shaky job was barely paying expenses, and about all she had was the love of family and friends. Which only went so far towards putting bread on the table.

About the same time, Roy, another of my internet friends, an Irish professional man, was likewise low. He had broken up with his wife, he had moved out of the family home and was living by himself in a flat, he only got to see his three children every second week, and to cap it all off, when I ran into him at a community gathering in Charleston, his mother had just died. We kept Roy drunk for a day until a flight home to Dublin could be arranged, poured him onto the plane and followed up with emails.

You can see where this is heading, I guess. Maybe it was a matter of email love, or maybe they liked each other’s blogs, but Audrey and Roy got together. Roy was spending every second weekend flying to London to be with Audrey. They met each other’s families, they hit it off, they fell in love.

Audrey vacated her London home, helped Roy find a quaint farmhouse outside Dublin, they moved in together, she began working in his office, and I guess work mixed with pleasure, because their blogs turned from depression to elation, smiles appeared in photographs, and in due course Audrey announced that she was pregnant.

I saw the happy couple in London at another gathering. Audrey glowed with happiness. There was no shortage of smiles for her. Roy beamed with pleasure and pride.

And a day ago, the waiting was over. Roy’s blog exploded with happiness, and here was a picture of mother and freshly-hatched daughter, smiles all round.

I do love a romantic story. Sometimes real life is as good as a film or a novel. Better.

“A smile and a cry. Those are good ones”, my lady passenger said. “I picked travel and food!”

“Nothing wrong with those either,” I replied. I live for travel, and my waistline is a little too tubby to deny a fondness for food.

I pulled up at a nightclub, and looked into the back seat as they paid me and got out. She flashed me a smile, and I was happy.

And now I’m going to go badger my own children about offspring. It’s been far too long since I felt a pudgy little hand in mine, skipping together along the street to buy sweets. They’ve grown too old and dignified for such nonsense.