Even while I'm on the Taxi app 'Free Now' All Gold status and on Top Priority status till midnight all I had after starting Thursday night at 9.30pm was Forty notes by 12.15am ( 2 'Free Now' taxi jobs + a No-show Fiver Scrub fee). I'm parked up outside the closed Voodoo nightclub on Oliver Plunkett street in a totally empty Covid town having a smoke out on the deserted street and contemplating bogging off home. Up walks this half-drunk Indian lad asking where to go to get a bottle of Jameson whiskey, after some drunken debate he shows me Forty bucks and I tell him that I will bring him home to Sundays Well and sell him a bottle of Jameson from my boot fer 60 notes, and then he is on about getting more money at home and going fer a spin fer 100 Euro because he is celebrating his friends birthday, so we get to Sundays Well, he leaves his back-pack and head phones and the 40 Euro cash in the cab and goes in to his home.
Ten minutes later himself and the Birthday friend come out asking to go fer a long spin, I agree to Midleton and back fer 30 out, 30 back and 50 fer the Jameson which I would allow them to drink on the way, he pays me 150 with 3 Fifty Euro notes and I give him back his original Forty notes that he had left in the cab, which kinda seemed like 110, but it wasn't, it was 150 because the 40 I gave him back in change was actually his own money. The Birthday friend was getting a tad argumentative so I spelt it all out fer them telling them that I don't want any problems when this journey is over and they both kinda reluctantly agreed. I even threw them in a FREE 2L bottle of 7-up.
So we are nearly at Midleton which is dual carriageway all the way and the boys ask to go on further so I tell them we can carry on to Castlemartyr but it will cost you another 20 there and 20 back which I knew they had because I had given it to them in change and they agree paying another 40 notes, now 190 paid up in advance. Then me 'not so' small fella rings me on the phone looking fer a lift home from the Lough in Togher and I tell him that I'll collect him in about 40 minutes.
The Two lads in the back start drunkenly giving me a tad of grief over the price and then going back to their own conversation in some yaki-da language, and then starting on me again, not too aggressive but not welcome all the same, as we are coming back in to the city I ring me small fella very quietly telling him; "Be on the Togher road by the Lough in 5 minutes, be on your own, I have Two customers in the cab, say nothing, we play it all by ear".
I take the Togher exit back in to the city and collect me not so small fella off the road along the way, telling the Two Indian lads nothing about the pick-up until me small fella is sat in the front seat of the cab. The Two Indian lads seem a tad unimpressed with this big strapping lad joining the party. Kalem does exactly as instructed saying nothing and we drop the Two Indian lads back at their home in Sundays Well. I think without me small fella on board evening the chances as Two against Two things might have finished very differently that night.
I drop me small fella back to South Douglas and he is well pleased with the Free lift home and the 20 Euro reward in cash. The Taxi app hops 'South Douglas to Ringaskiddy', Two young sailor lads, First lad to the Navel base in Haulbowline and I cash him in fer 32, Second lad on to Glanmire I cash him in fer 58. The Taxi app hops again 'Glanmire to Glyntown (Glanmire)' and they ask would I mind if One of them went back in to town ? As I cash him in on McCurtain street fer 24, another fella knocks at the cab window asking to go to Sallybrook, the fare is 19 and he gives me 22.
On a short 6.5 hour Thursday night Covid Taxi shift, I made 40 notes fer the First half and 275 fer the Second half !
