skyring

It’s three in the morning and the suburban street is quiet. The only sounds are those small ones made by the cab as it cools down, and the sundry electronic beeps and clicks as I log off, print my end of shift summary, and unload my CDs.

The car, the limousine, the transport of delight, comes with any number of electronic gadgets, and one of them is an exterior temperature sensor. My passengers gasp as they climb in and see the dashboard.

“That can’t be right!” they exclaim, looking at the large numbers on my ‘command centre’ screen. “It must be colder than twenty degrees!”

“That’s the interior temperature,” I reply, directing their attention to a tiny number in the corner of the display, “See. It’s only three degrees outside.”

One of the joys of driving this car is that I don’t have to fiddle with dials and switches to keep the car warm without fogging up. I just set it on ‘Auto’, notch the desired temperature up or down to my preferred comfort zone, and the car does the rest.

But I’ve been noticing that exterior sensor telling me that it’s getting chillier as autumn winds down. The leaves are all but gone from the trees (mostly into my back yard), the first scarves are making an appearance, and even Handsome Hans, one of my fellow night drivers, has swapped his shorts for trousers. A good thing, too.

I gathered up my gear, moved away from the taxi and unlocked my own car for the drive home to well-earnt sleep. I just needed to clear the dew off the windows...

I whipped my handkerchief out and wiped it over the glass.

Uh-oh. This wasn’t coming off. The cloth skittered over a frosty surface of frozen dew.

“Try an old credit card,” came a voice at my ear. Jamie, the day driver, looking fresh and trim, cleanly shaven and eyes sparkling.

I thanked him for the advice, and we chatted for a while about passengers and prospects for the next shift. Still a few revellers in town, I told him.

“Yeah, I’ll take a look in there. But I probably won’t find anyone around here who wants a cab ride into the city at this time of night. Have to go in empty.”

You never know. I’m constantly amazed at what passengers want. Two o’clock in the morning on a quiet night and I’ll pull up outside a suburban house to find four merry pirates waving plastic swords at me and demanding I sail them to the nearest fast food outlet, and be smart about it, ye scurvy lubber!

Or maybe a sad soul with a collection of cardboard boxes and the address of a cheap motel, who cries all the way and leaves a crumpled up note in the back of the car.

Ye never know.

I abandon Jamie to the day’s prospects and navigate my way home. There’s a thickening of fogbanks, and I take it easy on Gungahlin Drive once the streetlights end. The last thing I want is to run into a mob of kangaroos, sudden shapes in the mist.

Winter in Canberra. Sigh. I steal a glance away from the road to fuss with the controls of my own car, trying to find a combination that will warm my toes and keep the windscreen reasonably clear. Occasional cars pass by on the other side of the road, their lights haloed by the fog, but traffic in my direction is sparse, and I wish Jamie luck in finding his first fare on a frosty day.

For me, I’m sailing home to a warm bed and a chance to cuddle my cold body up against the warm form of my drowsy wife, who will complain mildly at my embrace, and ask me how the night went.