Walking in blue and gold
I guess I’m a bad blogger nowadaze. It’s been four weeks since the Christchurch convention ended, and two since I broke my arm, and in almost every respect my life is not at all what I thought it would be just now. Seldom have I enjoyed a BookCrossing convention so much. It was so close [...]
Just a friend
This happens sometimes. They hop in the cab, all funked up, I put a music video on, they start singing and I singalong. I don’t have a wide range of stuff available on the iPhone, but I’ve usually got something. Pleasant as it is to cruise around this beautiful city, enjoying the bus lanes and [...]
Cast away
Today was my day for a review. Last Monday, I slipt over at the service station, breaking my fall with my outstretched wrist. The next day I had it x-rayed, confirmed as a break (though not a major one), given a sling and a temporary cast, and told to return in a week. The temporary [...]
Life in a sling
If Kerri’s right on this, there’s at least a month to go. “Bones don’t knit in a week, Pete,” she says. Likely scenario is that I’ll go back on Tuesday, get re-x-rayed, have an orthopaedic surgeon from over the pix, and then get my forearm encased in a full plaster until the middle of June. [...]
Live at the Hospital Bowl
I went to bed, relatively early, with a planned 0300 start to my shift, but a bit after midnight I was awake with the pain from my wrist. I’d hoped it would settle and I’d be able to drive, but no, this was serious. No strength in my grasp and if I held my hand [...]
Day tripper
While my day driver’s off on a five week holiday – yesterday he drove the Great Ocean Road – I’m on the day shift. At first I was doing doubles, meaning that I could drive the car whenever I wanted within the 24 hours of the day, maybe with a nap here and there, and [...]
Hitting the sweet spot
Once upon a time, tennis players knew their tools intimately. John McEnroe reckoned that rackets had a “sweet spot”, and the secret of his success lay in hitting the ball just right. He’d have extra bounce, extra control, extra spin if he could use just the right few square centimetres of racket. The taxi racket [...]
Sleeping on the job
I picked her up from the airport just after sundown. She’d had a long day travelling, and she gave out a few yawns on the way to her distant suburb. “This cab is a non-yawning zone,” I mock-growled. “I’ve got another seven hours yet before I finish at three in the morning.” But that didn’t [...]
The best coffee in the world
When I began cabbing a couple of years ago, occasionally I’d pull a day shift on a Monday, or finish off the Saturday night shift around dawn on a Sunday. I’d be tired and needing something to kick off the day, or to keep me going after fifteen hours of driving. The Manuka rank was [...]
Full of dreams to last the years
It was a quiet shift last night. I have a book with me – at the moment it’s Paul Theroux’x Ghost Train to the Eastern Star – but I rarely read in the cab, even if it’s such a rattling good railway story as this. Instead I succumbed to my romantic side and watched one [...]
