Colourful night

And then I was empty again, cruising the winter streets of the nation’s capital, just Chet Baker and I in a silver limousine, cool as you like in the late evening.

Virgin passengers

I looked in on the taxi rank. I could see that two planes had just landed, so I tailed onto the back, with about thirty cabs ahead. Unfortunately one of the planes was a Virgin flight, and the next to land (and last for the night) was another Virgin and as every cabbie knows, Virgin passengers generally ring up their rels to come collect them at the airport!

Short Shrift

Cool and misty day outside. Canberra’s winters always seemed to me, when I first moved here, to be clear and blue and sparkling. Cold, to be sure, with a frost every dawn, but rarely overcast. Nowadays, fifty-fifty. Maybe it’s indicative of my state of mind to see more clouds than sun, but I doubt it. [...]

Charles and Betsy

Friday it all came together and we swapped the patched-up Charles* for renewed Betsy. I got to drive her first shift as a reborn cab, just like I drove her first shift as a new cab last year.

A lonely hunter

The last houses disappeared and then we were on the Cotter Road and soon on Lady Denman Drive, past horse paddocks, bushland, the zoo and the dam. Not quite your howling wilderness, but neither was it a busy road. I started wondering about someone scrawling a name on a bit of paper and luring an innocent cabbie out into a deserted layby.

Rude on the roads

Someone observed the other day, “People in general are just rude.” They were talking about walking the dog down their street, smiling at other people, and receiving back nothing but blank stares. You know, I don’t think people are rude. As a taxidriver, I meet a LOT of people (one of the reasons someone who [...]

Driving on the other side

Trying to get back to the airport after a lamb burrito in Zambrero, I was approached by a couple of jaunty folk. “You free?” they asked. Avoiding the obvious riposte, I indicated that I was available. “EPIC,” they said. I agreed. Exhibition Park in Canberra. Not on the way to the airport, but a nice [...]

Foursquare follies

We’ve got a new game, my day driver and I. A game where cabbies shine.

Foursquare, funking off the iPhone’s GPS and social networking. It’s a scavenger hunt, it’s a map of your day, it’s a point-scoring exercise, it’s gathering facts and sharing info.

Wasted

I’m disgusted. I’m a night cabbie, and for the past year or two, ever since the last Commonwealth election, I’ve been driving home public servants, drunk and exhausted. I pick them up from Parliament, from government offices, from hotels. Long after midnight.

Kiva cabbie

I can help. My passengers sometimes give me tips. The businessmen and the government officials so rarely tip that it is a cause for wonder when they do. But those who pay the fare from their own pocket, those who are least able to afford a generous gesture, they are my best tippers.

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