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The girls were gorgeous. And, for a pleasant change, so were the guys.
Melbourne Cup day in Canberra, and the racecourse is the place to see and be seen, to drink and get drunk.
Outfits were chosen and bought days, weeks, months ahead, to turn heads.
I barely knew where to look when waiting for a fare. It was full on all night, a pleasant change from the usual slow Tuesday PM shift. I ferried people from the races to clubs, I ferried them home, I took a break by picking up passengers at the airport, and towards the end I was counting the dickheads.
By midnight, the drunks who had been grogging on since noon were getting very ratty indeed. I had one young lady who commandeered my cab to collect her boyfriend from where he had been playing the pokies. She was upset that he'd stolen money from her handbag, mislaid her house keys, spent the holiday with his mates instead of her, failed to inform her of what he was doing, and asked her to buy him a meal and then not shown up for it. He appeared out of the darkness, very drunk, clutching a fresh Big Mac, which he proceeded to eat in my cab, whilst proclaiming he had done nothing wrong and was the perfect boyfriend.
"Just shut up and go to sleep," she ordered, but no, he kept on shoving his foot fair in his mouth.
And, when we reached home, he made her pay for the cab ride.
I gave her a few words of comfort when I wished her goodnight, before picking the scraps of lettuce off the backseat, and turfing the hamburger container.
From then on, every time I got near a rank, I looked to see if the next passengers were carrying a sack of fast food. If they were, they didn't get to ride with me.
A little later I picked up two footballers, well in their cups, who asked me to drive through McDonalds and were miffed when I refused. One chap was totally lost, though that didn't stop him giving me directions, and couldn't remember which of the women who had given him their phone numbers he was seeing. "She's got big bazongas," he said, "but I can't remember her name."
She was waiting for him when we reached the address, leapt into the back seat with him and gave every sign of not wanting to wait until she got to his house.
Thank goodness youthful hormones can overcome common sense, eh? Otherwise the planet would belong to the horses.
Me, I'd had two of the three dickheads that would end my night early, and I didn't bother trying too hard for the third. The main rank was full of young men, full of beer and empty of pocket, but too many of them were munching slices of pizza to interest me. So I called it a two dickhead night and spent some productive time polishing my wheels instead of carting ratty drunks home.
Melbourne Cup day in Canberra, and the racecourse is the place to see and be seen, to drink and get drunk.
Outfits were chosen and bought days, weeks, months ahead, to turn heads.
I barely knew where to look when waiting for a fare. It was full on all night, a pleasant change from the usual slow Tuesday PM shift. I ferried people from the races to clubs, I ferried them home, I took a break by picking up passengers at the airport, and towards the end I was counting the dickheads.
By midnight, the drunks who had been grogging on since noon were getting very ratty indeed. I had one young lady who commandeered my cab to collect her boyfriend from where he had been playing the pokies. She was upset that he'd stolen money from her handbag, mislaid her house keys, spent the holiday with his mates instead of her, failed to inform her of what he was doing, and asked her to buy him a meal and then not shown up for it. He appeared out of the darkness, very drunk, clutching a fresh Big Mac, which he proceeded to eat in my cab, whilst proclaiming he had done nothing wrong and was the perfect boyfriend.
"Just shut up and go to sleep," she ordered, but no, he kept on shoving his foot fair in his mouth.
And, when we reached home, he made her pay for the cab ride.
I gave her a few words of comfort when I wished her goodnight, before picking the scraps of lettuce off the backseat, and turfing the hamburger container.
From then on, every time I got near a rank, I looked to see if the next passengers were carrying a sack of fast food. If they were, they didn't get to ride with me.
A little later I picked up two footballers, well in their cups, who asked me to drive through McDonalds and were miffed when I refused. One chap was totally lost, though that didn't stop him giving me directions, and couldn't remember which of the women who had given him their phone numbers he was seeing. "She's got big bazongas," he said, "but I can't remember her name."
She was waiting for him when we reached the address, leapt into the back seat with him and gave every sign of not wanting to wait until she got to his house.
Thank goodness youthful hormones can overcome common sense, eh? Otherwise the planet would belong to the horses.
Me, I'd had two of the three dickheads that would end my night early, and I didn't bother trying too hard for the third. The main rank was full of young men, full of beer and empty of pocket, but too many of them were munching slices of pizza to interest me. So I called it a two dickhead night and spent some productive time polishing my wheels instead of carting ratty drunks home.
