Yesterday I had my first private customers. I got an email: “Our friend went on a cruise, and you were the guide for her excursion on La Palma. She says you’re great. We’re coming on Nov 10th, please can you tell us which excursion you’ll be doing because we want to be on it.” Obviously this did my ego no harm at all, but I can’t control which bus I do, and I usually don’t know until the same morning. After a lot of emails to and fro, they hired me and a taxi for the day. So I got as much money as usual, but I only had to keep two people happy. We overran on time, but nobody minded.
Eventually the taxi driver dropped us in town, because they wanted to see a particular shop which I had to go to anyway – they’d just mended my necklace. And then we walked back towards the port together. We parted at the stop for the shuttle bus, everybody happy with everybody and me somewhat richer, and I went to my car nearby.
No car keys in my handbag. And then I remembered putting the car keys into my jacket pocket. And then I remembered putting the jacket in the back of the taxi. Spit!
So I needed to phone the taxi driver. And then I remembered putting my mobile phone in the other pocket of the jacket. OK, so there’s still a few payphones around. But the taxi driver’s number was a) on my mobile which I didn’t have, b) on his business card which I didn’t have so it had to be in the jacket too, and c) probably on another business card in my little album of business cards at home.
I contemplated my chances of getting either of the people at home to find this album, and then the card within the album, before I ran out of change for a pay phone. My heart sank.
OK, so the best people to help me get in contact with the taxi driver would be other tax drivers. I took the shuttle bus to the cruise ship (and my customers were very surprised to see me get on board the bus!) but there were no taxis there. So I too the shuttle bus back to town and went to the nearest taxi rank.
My luck changed. The first driver I approached said, “Santi? Yeah, he’s my mate. I’ll phone him for you.” So he established that Santi had gone home out of town to eat and sleep, and his partner would be bringing the taxi back to the taxi rank in half an hour. Result! I wasn’t a bit surprised that the “half hour” was 40 minutes, just very relieved to get my jacket back, and more relieved to have the phone and car keys again.
I had several glasses of wine when I got home.
