What a good day we had on Boxing Day.
H was pre-booked to take a guy from a village near our town to Tetbury in Gloucestershire as he wanted to meet his family for lunch there. We asked if he minded if I came along (no he didn't) so once we dropped the customer off, H and I were able to go off and have lunch together. This was of course very pleasant for us both but also meant that H didn't have the boredom of trying to kill 3-4 hours on his own in a town in which nothing was open (it being Boxing Day).
The customer was a young man in his thirties and was extremely easy to be in company with in the cab. H quoted him a fixed price for the job which he happily accepted. But when we dropped him back home, he gave H a £30 tip saying as he did so, "Thank you both for making it such a good day out for me". We thought this was extemely nice of him to say so and along with his generous tip, we felt appreciated. What a contrast to the old dame (see last blog entry titled 'The wealthiest are the tightest...').
We had not intended to do any more work on our return home as we had done so well from the Tetbury job. But our phone would not stop ringing. So we began to take some bookings. We quickly realised that there seemed to be few-if any-other taxi's out and about. Not wishing to sound mercenery or anything, but Boxing Day is tariff 3 so we decided to milk it as the demand was there.
Just to explain for those not in the know-there are three tariffs on the meter:
Tariff 1=daytime rate.
Tariff 2=between 10pm and 7am & all day Sundays.
Tariff 3=Christmas Eve after 6pm, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve after 6pm, New Year's Day.
We could not believe how busy we were in the end. We made several journeys each to Wincanton and back (as the races were on) and amazingly we both had full cars both ways. This is a taxi driver's dream...it's not often this happens. So to drive backwards and forwards with fares on board in both directions is fantastic.
Later on I personally had a fare to another neighbouring town, then to my astonishment H radioed me to say that there was a young lady waiting there to come back to our home town. Both ways again. Jammy.
Of course people are more generous with tips at night too. A few bevies seems to loosen their grip on their wallets as well as their tongues!
So all in all a good night followed a good day but I was knackered this morning. However it was definitely worth it.
