how to get behind in traffic

In other musings, (yes spend time musing was number nine on my list) I have been thinking back on past experiences in taxis. As a distinct social group, and I believe they are, I have always admired the taxi driver. I like the spicy and scented accents of English, the political diatribes the smell of dangling car fresheners. I liked the man that gave me a free ride because we lived in the same street in another city, and I like faking an interest in football. But the last two taxi rides have stressed me out completely. Is there are secret society, an unmentionable brotherhood between the taxis and the traffic planners. I now know that between the taxi rank and my friends’ fancy pad in a very inner city suburb there are 9 sets of traffic lights. I am not an obsessive counter by nature, pattern finder yes, of things numerical no, but oh oh oh how we stopped at every red light between go to whoa. In fact there were a lot more whoas and not much in the way of goes.

To be fair, the taxi driver apologetically listened to my sighs and mutterings under breath, and did not appear to be slowing down for the reds on purpose. In fact we borderline ran one, probably out of sympathy for the whining passenger in the back. Maybe he wanted rid of me.

I had to be let out a good kilometre from my destination mostly from the stress, I thought I was going to snap, though how exactly this performance would turn out I had no idea, but also because I had run out of ready cash. the first five minutes (3 sets of lights) saw me move forward two city blocks, in a quite small but perfectly formed city) and drained me by five bucks. Great another 5 kilometers to go and the wallet is feeling rather under prepared. So I eject myself prematurely from the caband storm up the hill to my friends’ house. Of course there is a hill here, though I do exaggerate it is a gentle gradient, which I stride up furiously, with a stress induced case of Tourette’s. This part of town used to be well known for its crazed wanderers, escapees from ward 11 at the nearby hospital, maybe it was ward 17, 11 might be maternity, not much success escapee-ing from there, but since the gentrification of the neighbourhood, the crazies have been shipped back to the centre of town, and have been reconceptualised as buskers. I am sure though I stirred a few fond memories of the true locals, with the spitting, the cussing, and mumbling, as i lurchd up the street carrying two bottles of wine. So yes, I guess, the taxis and the traffic planners conspired to transform into local colour.