Wow, long day at work...I got a cab home, eventually (about 10pm) … As usual I was out on the road, waving at it while it was still about 200m away and, as usual, the driver didn’t see me until the last minute (although he was the only car on this very straight road, and I was the only person, waving furiously. And not even the only person, the only tall white person on the road…) There was a screeching of metal-on-metal as the bits where there used to be brake pads hit the bits that used to like being pressed up against brake pads. It was a very beaten up on Diahatsu Tico – there are quite a few of them about. As seems to be the rule for taxis, the windscreen looked like a rhino had been dropped on it, every panel was dented and you could have passed an average-sized paperback though the gap between the door frame and the car when the door was “closed”. It pulled up and I stooped to ask the driver if he knew where the Royal Park hotel was and start the bargaining process for the fare. I was aghast…the driver was so cross-eyed that, by comparison, Clarence the cross-eyed lion had 20-20 vision. Still, he was a cab, there weren’t many about, so I jumped in. The Diahatsu Tico is an exceptionally small car. The driver and I ended being very close. We found that he couldn’t really get it in 4th or 5th gear at all, with me and my bag there. There was just nowhere to get my legs out the way. It wasn't helping matters that the seat had been impacted from the rear or the side somehow and had a twist on it that left me practically facing the driver. Not only that but the structural metal brace above my head and the windscreen had a nice round indent in it where, I presumed, a previous passenger had been thrown up into it.
However, with lots of tooting (to variously tell others to get out of the way, say “here I come”, just say hello to someone he knew or due to a nervous twitch) we got home fine.
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