The strange incident of the taxi in the night-time
And so this evening I find myself sitting in a freezing cold room at The Manor again. My mood has not much improved as the day has progressed and I am not impressed to be spending my Sunday evening here 
I just text one of my friends who has a car and thus doesn’t need to travel down until tomorrow morning, and we have made a pact together not to do the pre-course work. It only just actually occurred to me that there might be pre-course work, since no one had emailed me to request I do it. I dutifully logged into the relevant part of our intranet and downloaded it, but once I’d read a fraction of it, I decided I wasn’t going to do it. It is far too late and too cold to be calculating overhead absorption rates. Having a Maths degree, I am not very good at sums at the best of times anyway 
So yeah, I text my friend to ask if she had done the pre-course work and was suitably encouraged when she replied, “No, what’s the course actually on?” 
The point of this post is actually not to sound like a manic depressive, although I still feel like one, but to talk about taxis. I had to get a taxi from the station at High Wycombe to my present location, and I had a rather interesting experience. There were plenty of taxis in the rank when I arrived at station, and I got into one belonging to a local firm which I’ve used before. We were about halfway to our destination, totally in the middle of nowhere, when my taxi driver mumbled something incoherent and pulled over into a layby. I was a little perplexed and asked him what was going on. He mumbled something else, then before I knew what was happening he had opened the passenger door at the front and someone else was climbing into the taxi. 
I should clarify at this point that I was sitting at the back. I would actually be interested to conduct a survey of taxi ettiquette and determine whether the majority of people, when using a taxi which is not a black cab, go and sit in the front with the driver or sit by themselves in the back. I always without exception sit in the back as I am a slightly nervous user of taxis and like to be as far away from the strange man to whom I am temporarily entrusting my life as possible.
Meanwhile, I was somewhat unnerved by the situation which was unfolding in my taxi. A rather unpleasant looking man who reeked of fags and booze was now sitting in the passenger seat and demanding to be taken to the station. It hit me that darkness was falling, and I was sitting in a taxi with two strange men by the side of an isolated country lane, several miles away from human civilisation. It strikes me that a normal person would not be unnerved by this situation at all… in which case I guess I have to conclude that I am not a normal person and move on. There are reasons why I get nervous in some circumstances, and taxis are a circumstance which I don’t like.
Anyway, of course it all turned out to be fine and not a cunning plot to abduct me. I’m not convinced my taxi driver was behaving very professionally by stopping to pick up another fare whilst he already had one in his cab, but he dropped me off at my destination first before taking the other guy to the station, and if I did end up with more on the clock for the time he spent messing about with the other guy’s luggage, this was a taxi which will be reclaimable on expenses so it isn’t ultimately me who will be footing the bill. That is my attempt to look on the bright side.
On the not so bright side, I just feel upset and would like a hug. I was further upset when I got to my room and found it was already occupied by a woodlouse. Summoning all my courage together, however, I managed to successfully exterminate it and I feel this is a measure of the emotional progress I have made over the last two years. Last time I found a woodlouse in my room here, I was less well equipped to cope with it. Hmmm. I think I must sound a bit deranged At any rate, there is no one to give me a hug until I get home on Friday night, so it is lucky that I had the foresight to bring Jaffa Cakes instead. Jaffa Cakes can solve most of the world’s problems, and only contain one gram of fat per cake
Tags: high wycombe, taxis, woodlice