A fine Scottish family restaurant

Maccas. It’s a big part of a night cabbie’s life.
Oh, not in the way you might think. Sure, every now and then I might weaken and hit them for a slender latte, or even a burger if I’m low, late at night. Or, like last night, just whip in to use their toilets.
But frankly, their food isn’t good. Salt and sugar and fat and carbs, with solid protein and vitamins kept at low levels. Natural flavour is about zero – what you taste are fats and sugars.
It’s my passengers who are the fans.
Wednesday night, and I’d been waiting on the main Civic rank for the best part of an hour, slowly moving up as the very few non-cabbies left in the city heart emerged and looked for ways of getting home. At last someone got in the car ahead and I was first cab on the rank.
I turn off the light, put my book down and keep an eye out for passengers. Check the mirrors for people approaching from the rear. I’m looking out for people who are staggering drunk, or eating some messy fast food, or in other ways unsuitable to grace my pristine interior.
Sure, I know that after midnight, perfect passengers – sober, clean, charming, cashed-up – are thin on the ground, but still, I try to maintain some standards.
There was a young man working his way along the line. Not a good sign. He’d stick his head in a cab window, or open the door without sitting down, talk to the driver, and then move onto the next one.
By the time he got to me I was curious as to what his spiel might be. Maybe “Could you take me to Gordon [a half hour drive and a sixty dollar fare, this time of night] for ten dollars?” or “I’ve lost my wallet, but I can borrow the fare off my housemate.”
It usually involves a deal that’s long on distance and short of money.
I wound the window down for him. “Can you take us to McDonalds?” he slurred.
Bloody cheek. McDonalds in Civic is about two short blocks away. About three minutes saunter. Every cabbie must have told him that.
“Ah, that’s about seven dollars. It’s not far.”
He opened the door and sat down. Two young women got into the back seat.
He looked at me. “Can I wear your hat?”
“No!”
It’s a Breton sailors cap, and it covers my bald spot and I think it tops off my uniform nicely. Occasionally I’ll let a pretty girl wear it for a minute or two, but otherwise I hang onto it very carefully.
I hit the meter, for the $4.60 flagfall, and when I pulled up outside McDonalds, having scored a green light, it was $5.40.
“Just make it five bucks,” I told him.
He pulled out a card and paid from his savings account.
Yeah, I know it was a ridiculously short fare and all the other cabbies had turned him away because they were hoping for something better, but who was I to deny a gentleman taking two ladies out for dinner a ride in a chauffeured limousine?
A few nights earlier, I’d gotten a call from the Manuka rank to a nearby motel. She came out, directed me through the McDonalds drive through window for a Big Mac and two cheeseburgers, and return.
I get a lot of this. Late at night people get the munchies, and with a wad of Cabcharge cards it’s no skin off their nose or money out of their pocket to call a cab for a quick junkfood fix.
Or after midnight drunks going home will direct me via McDonalds. Sometimes I refuse, sometimes I pause the meter – “otherwise it will be the most expensive burger you ever had” – sometimes I leave it run. Depends on how I feel at the time.
Sometimes the passengers offer to buy me something. I always refuse.
But now and then, after my passengers wolf down a Big Mac and the hot fat smell of chips fills the car, I’ll go back once I’ve dropped them off and give way to my bodily cravings. There’s nothing quite like a fix of salt and fat and sugar, with a takeaway coffee to fuel me into the early morning.