They got in on the main city rank, now re-opened at a third the original size. “Can we stop at a bottle-o first?” one asked.

“Right-oh!” I replied. “But where are we going?”

“Formule 1″

“You beauty!” I thought to myself. The Formule 1 motel is one of those cheapo deals out on the highway. $59 a night for a basic room and the dining room is a vending machine.

But it’s a nice long fare.

We went through Braddon, stopping at the Bottle-O there. That’s the trade name, and it’s a good one. Well-stocked grog shop, free parking outside, off-licence to print money, it is.

One of the two young men went inside and I hit the “Pause” button on the meter. It was going to be a good fare and people who stay at cheap motels are reaching into their own pockets to count the pennies. I look after them.

The guy in the back seat, a fairly chunky sort of fella, caught sight of the “Route 66″ keyring I have bluetacked to the dashboard. It’s one I bought at the Route 66 museum in Chandler, OK last year, and I keep it there for daydreaming purposes. That half day spent exploring the old road between Tulsa and Oklahoma City was a very happy one!

“I’m going to ride Route 66 next year with my father,” he said. “We’ll pick up the Harleys in Detroit, ride them to LA, and ship them home.”

Wow! What a trip! This chap immediately had my attention.

His mate got back in, with a six pack of Jim Beams to help the night ahead go down, and we set off on Canberra’s own Mother Road. Northbourne Avenue.

We talked Route 66 and the USA all the way. The food, the cars, the motels, the people. I mentioned that I’m planning my own father-son trip along Route 66 next year. From the other side of the generation gap. Myself, my son and my daughter.

I had lusted after a rental Mustang, but looking at the reviews it sounds like it wouldn’t be as much fun for the third person, sitting in the cramped back seat, peering out through a couple of tiny side windows. I’d be doing a lot of the driving, but some of the time it would be me in the back seat, and I wanted to enjoy the experience.

So we’ll likely hire something with a bit of size and a bit of style. A Chrysler 300C would be ideal. Lots of room for people and baggage, space for extras, a bunch of buttons to press and an image that is unmistakably All-American.

Not as much fun as a Harley, to be sure, but I’m not a Harley kind of guy. I wished my passengers the best for the trip, put my foot down and whipped off in a cloud of dust for the airport, where I watched the planes climb into the night sky and sent my thoughts with them.

Earlier that day, a package from Amazon had arrived, containing a DVD: Route 66: Producer’s Picks.

Not a lot to do with Route 66 as such, but for the feeling of driving through Sixties America in a classy car, there’s nothing to beat it. The black and white scenes, the corny live-to-camera adverts, the unforgettable theme music, the guest appearances of later stars, the thought-provoking plots, and above all the lifestyle, it’s a pleasure to watch.

I’ve got a bunch of maps and guidebooks, any number of websites, and all my dreams to keep me going until next year.

It was open road all the way, just we two on an empty motorway speeding through the bushland of the Bush Capital, Miles Davis golden in our ears. Barely a word, just a shared joy in the experience.

I dropped him off, a smile on his face the only tip I needed, and headed back in. It was a quiet night and I was hoping for one or two from the bars in Kingston, before calling it a day ’round midnight.

While I was moving into a scoring position in Kingston the phone rang.

It was not my phone.

I pulled off the road and hunted it down. Not easily findable. Felt under the seat, in the back. Got out, opened the passenger door, looked under the floor mats. Finally found it in a crevice. A 32Gig iPhone down beside the passenger seat, under my computer which I stow there. Obviously been there for a while.

I rang back the “Missed Call” number and got an ecstatic young lady who had been worrying all day about her phone. I reassured her that it would be returned, and when I found she lived in Pialligo, not far from Canberra International Airport, I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

She was glad to get it back, and though I didn’t ask for any tip or reward or even a reasonable fare to return the phone, that was good, as she didn’t offer any.

No worry. Making somebody happy is a rich reward in itself.

I looked in on the taxi rank. I could see that two planes had just landed, so I tailed onto the back, with about thirty cabs ahead. Unfortunately one of the planes was a Virgin flight, and the next to land (and last for the night) was another Virgin and as every cabbie knows, Virgin passengers generally ring up their rels to come collect them at the airport!

When the passengers had all walked out and left, I was the second cab on the rank, with no more planes due.

So I dipped out. Luck of the draw.

The thought crossed my mind that I was in a great position for the first flight of the next day, but doubtless my day driver would have words to say about that!

Last October we said goodbye to Betsy, our lovely silver Holden Statesman taxi. Almost new, she was loaded down with great features, and was a pleasure to drive.

But while I was off in America, the owner managed to write her off. One design flaw is that the A-pillars are very thick, hiding oncoming traffic at intersections. He didn’t mean to hit the other car, but he did, and hard enough to do some serious damage.

But he bought her back off the insurance company and over the past half year or so, while we’ve been driving loaner a Ford Fairlane, he’s gradually put her back together in the back of the workshop.

Yes, Charles the Fairlane that I crashed a week ago.

Friday it all came together and we swapped the patched-up Charles* for renewed Betsy. I got to drive her first shift as a reborn cab, just like I drove her first shift as a new cab last year.

What a pleasure! She’s got some wonderful functions, such as automatic windscreen wipers, front and rear parking sensors, MP3 disc player. The gas tank in the boot doesn’t rattle, so I don’t have to use the “ex-girlfriend” joke any more.

On the slight downside, there’s no seat memory – a boon for a car with three regular drivers – and the transmission makes a racket. Put your foot down, and the world can count the revs.

There’s also a new taximeter, so I’ll have to upgrade my muscle memory after three years of hitting the old set of buttons. At least this one comes with a user manual, which is a lot more than ever we got with the old one.

* Charles was repaired with bits from another Fairlane that just happened to be stuffed in the back of the workshop, and – trust me on this – there’s a fair bit of duct tape hiding some of the scars.

On Friday night I went through a red light near Parliament House on the mistaken perception that the green turn arrow was my green go light. You don’t muck about in the taxi game on the way to the airport, so I hit the gas and halfway across the intersection collected someone innocently turning right,

The various witnesses who helpfully came forward soon sorted out who was in the wrong, I got a ticket from the helpful police, and I’ll undoubtedly get a nice big bill from the owner and the insurance people. Not to mention the money I lost by not driving that shift, or since.

Nobody injured. I’d feel terrible if I’d hurt somebody. Just damage to two very nice silver cars and a lot of inconvenience for all concerned.

And I can just feel the vibes from my fellow cabbies. “Thank heaven it wasn’t me, this time!”

Evenings are like that. Most of the afternoon rush is from the big offices and hotels to the airport, and once out there cabbies tend to stick around and have a chat with their mates when they see the work in town drying up.

I’d just taken a short fare from Woden to a nearby suburb, and as the hospital zone was showing only one cab logged in, with a half dozen jobs in the past hour, I parked in the taxi rank at the entrance. If I didn’t get a radio call from the surrounding residences, I might get a patient or a doctor fed up with the chronic lack of hospital parking.

Instead, nothing happened for half an hour and I checked my emails on the laptop. People would come out the hospital entrance and head towards me and then walk past to one of the other buildings, so I was always looking up and being disappointed.

Finally, the door opened and a man got in, sitting down beside me and growling.

Yeah. Growling, and if it wasn’t growling, it was snarling, his face contorted into a mask of anger. Honestly, I almost opened my own door to run away in panic.

However, I listened carefully, hoping to get some useful information out of the grunts and snorts.

I’m good that way. People tell me where to go, I take them there, and then they give me money. It’s a pleasant system, and it helps reduce stress at traffic lights and in traffic jams. I glance down at the meter, happily ticking away, and life is sunny.

No instructions were forthcoming. The man gave up, dug around in his pocket and fished out a torn piece of paper with a name printed on it.

I read the name. He looked hopeful. “Is that you?” I asked.

He nodded and pointed off down the road, with a hand that was shrunken and deformed into a claw.

“You can show me where to go?”

He nodded and gestured again.

I indicated, pulled away from the rank, turned on the meter and headed off into the winter dark.

I was pretty nervous, to be honest. Most passengers are very good, and most of my work is what you might call mind-numbingly repetitive. It’s the fares that are a bit out of the ordinary that bother me, because I’ve got to work out how to handle things on the fly, and if I make a mistake, it’s a vicious circle.

I once had a tourist with limited English, and when I drove him late at night to the Formule 1 motel out on the highway, taking the back road past the television studios and the bushland and the kangaroos, he ceased believing me when I mistakenly told him it was very close a couple of times, and he demanded I stop and let him out. He paid off and must have walked a long way back to civilisation, but I couldn’t have taken him the last two hundred metres to the (invisible from the road) motel, because he had clearly ceased to trust me and was on the verge of taking action against the obviously mad cabbie.

My bloke tonight couldn’t talk, he looked (and sounded) angry, and I had no idea where I was driving him. I was hoping for a short fare, to tell the truth. A house in one of the nearby streets, maybe.

Instead, he directed me out onto the main road and we sped up to match the traffic. He was pretty good at giving good indications of directions, and which lane I should be in, so I relaxed a bit. I’ve often said that language is not a problem with cabbies, as you can always tell the driver where to go with four hand signals. Go. Left. Right. Stop.

And heaven knows that there are often language barriers with cabbies. Immigrants arrive and get a cab licence because it’s an easy job, and they learn English on the go. If the passenger doesn’t know where to go, like because you’ve just picked up a tourist at the airport, why you simply hand them the street directory and they will tell you. And if there are any mistakes, hey, the meter’s running.

My passenger directed me off the main road, through the suburb of Curtin and north. I kept glancing at him as we approached each intersection, but he wanted me to drive on.

The last houses disappeared and then we were on the Cotter Road and soon on Lady Denman Drive, past horse paddocks, bushland, the zoo and the dam. Not quite your howling wilderness, but neither was it a busy road. I started wondering about someone printing a name on a bit of paper and luring an innocent cabbie out into a deserted layby.

Through a tricky intersection and on through Gridloch Interchange, heading for Belconnen. He seemed happy as we poured up Bindubi Street, tapping his hand in time with Chet Baker, the soft jazz soothing the savage breast.

We stopt at lights near the shops, and he gave some instructions, drawing a diagram with his finger on the console. Right and left and right. Right.

That took us to the hospital. Calvary Hospital instead of Canberra Hospital. My son bashes dixies at Calvary, and it’s a pleasant place, surrounded by bushland.

We were met at the main entrance. A man who seemed very pleased to see my passenger, who positively bounded out like a puppy and skipped away with him.

Um. Thirty three dollars on the meter. The man had muttered something about getting a Cabcharge, but here I was, sitting empty, passenger door open. Waiting.

Waiting.

Ten minutes and the man came back with a card, paying the fare.

“I’ll bet he has a lot of trouble with other cabbies!” I said.

“Yeah. He’s really a sweet guy. Thanks for your trouble.”

And it was no trouble, really. Sure, a bit of anxiety here and there, but once I stept into his shoes and saw cabdrivers through his eyes and imagined some of the worries he’d have with them, it was no trouble at all. No wonder he was tense and nervous to begin with. I’ll bet that he’d been taken for a drunk or a lunatic any number of times, and when he couldn’t explain, it would be even worse.

That’s one of the delights of the job. The regular fares are pleasant enough, and the money’s nice, and a couple of times a shift I’ll have a good old chat with a passenger, but you never know who is going to jump into the passenger seat and tell you where to go. Every shift is the same, but different.

They were talking about walking the dog down their street, smiling at other people, and receiving back nothing but blank stares.

You know, I don’t think people are rude. As a taxidriver, I meet a LOT of people (one of the reasons someone who doesn’t know me well suggesting that I should “get out more” totally made my day), and most are friendly and polite.

So long as I am. I greet people with a smile and a “Good Morning”, “Good Evening”, “Good Heavens” as appropriate, make eye contact and take note of their needs. Someone elderly with a walking stick, for example, and I jump out of my seat to help them in, make sure they have enough legroom, close the door, etc. Younger folk, more spry of body if not mind, get Michael Jackson on the CD and they sing along.

I think it’s a matter of everyday life being superficial. Larry McMurtry noted in his book Roads : Driving America’s Great Highways that you can drive across the nation and speak not a surplus word to another soul, with self-serve petrol pumps and fast food restaurants. “Big Mac, medium fries and a bucket of root beer” does not make for a meaningful interaction, even if you add “please” at the end and the teenager instructs you to have a nice day as she hands over the rootbeer.

When we lived in smaller communities and knew everybody’s business, we could be closer to their hearts, if I may put it that way. Nowadays, the bus driver is someone on a random shift from the other side of a great city, the cabbie comes from a different continent, the news is broadcast by an anchorman instead of a town crier, and gossip is reserved for Facebook rather than a good old natter over the back fence with the minister’s wife.

Gone are the days when you sat on your front porch and waved to your neighbours as they walked by. One town council, seeking a return to friendly neighbourhoods, decreed that every new dwelling should have a porch. And so it was- the porches were built and secured with metal grilles to keep out intruders and the world.

I don’t have any easy answers. Smile at strangers and you could attract stalkers. Move to a small town and be unemployed?

Perhaps my best advice is something I follow myself. Imagine that, following your own advice!

Become a cabbie.

Trust me on this, you’ll get to know a lot of people, you’ll be a small but essential part of the community, and the pensioners will love you as you lug their groceries up the steps.

And at night, as you put on the soft music for the couple embracing in the back seat, you can sigh happily for the spirit of romance.

Cabbies might not have all the answers, but they know a lot more than they generally let on.

Isn’t that the dream? The everyday world is behind you, there’s a long road ahead, rising and curving to a far destination. Days and night stretch out, diners, service stations, motels, bridges, toilet blocks and a growing litter of wrappers and empty bottles in the back seat.

Hit the play button and let’s get this show on the road!

Hit the road

• On the Road Again – Willie Nelson. On the road again, just can’t wait to get back on the road again, going places that I’ve never been, seeing things that I may never see again. Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway, we’re the best of friends, insisting that the world keep turning our way.
• Holiday Road – Lindsey Buckingham. National Lampoon’s American Vacation. Oh boy. This is the theme to the Griswald family adventure in the American Queen Family Truckster. Watch the movie, do the exact opposite, you’ll be sweet.
• America – Simon and Garfunkel. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike / They’ve all gone to look for America… Isn’t that what we’re about? Looking for America on the roads, on the roadside, from the scenic viewpoints, in the diners. Everywhere.
• Get your Kicks (on Route 66) – Nat King Cole. There are a million versions of this song, but no Route 66 roadtrip would be worth it without at least one. Just the listing of cities along the route gets the mind racing over the map.
• On the Road Again – Canned Heat. One of my very favourite road songs. Willie Nelson is all very well, but this is a different road the Heat are talking about, one that’s buzzing and bopping. Get your motor running, pump the gas and blast off for adventure!
• Born to be Wild – Steppenwolf. Get your motor running, head out on the highway, looking for adventure and whatever comes our way. Yup!
• Route 66 – David Campbell. Another version, a few gears up from Nat King Cole and his mellow cruising. Campbell is non-stop. Even when he’s spelling it out. S-T-O-P, he says at a million miles an hour.

Destinations

• Let’s Go to San Francisco – The Flower Pot Men. Forget the end of Route 66 at Santa Monica. I don’t particularly like LA. But head on up the coast highway with those amazing views and hit out San Francisco, that delightful, whimsical, colourful, magnificent city by the bay. You want to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and keep going north? The chance is there.
• San Francisco Bay Blues – Eric Clapton. Clapton the Amazing. Just sit me on a vantage point overlooking that fabulous bay, whether it’s sitting on the dock of the bay or on a cable car halfway to the stars, Alcatraz moored out in the blue water, and I’m supremely happy.
• New York, New York – Frank Sinatra. If we’re going to buy an old NYC hack, then we’ve got to think on New York. What a fabulous place it is in those bustling streets at the bottom of ranges of skyscrapers. Hustle on the corners, cheer on the Yankees, look out from the Empire State Building. There’s a bazillion songs, movies and books written about New York, and if America is to be found, here’s a great place to begin looking for it!
• Chicago – Frank Sinatra. Route 66 begins in Chicago. Let’s anchor our trip here, look around that toddlin’ town, see if we can find America in the brash heart of the nation. Set our wheels on the starting point and hit the gas!
• Kansas City – Wilbert Harrison. OK, we aren’t going to Kansas City, but hey, Kansas City, here we come! It’s a state of mind, it’s the land of princesses for the wandering kings of the road, it’s a drink on a street corner, it’s a journey just thinking on it. Besides, I loved Kansas City!
• San Francisco – Nancy Sinatra. San Francisco, open your golden gate! Look. You can’t have too many songs about San Francisco. End of story.
• I Left my Heart in San Francisco – Tony Bennett. This is the ultimate romanticising of that bayside burg. And you know what? It’s all true. Union Park, there’s Tony’s heart standing on a corner, cable cars rattling past, palm trees whispering above. It’s here. Just leave your heart at the door, sir.
• San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in your Hair) – Scott Mckenzie. There’s no great songs about LA. But albums full of anthems for this quirky city full of gentle people. The people make the city. It’s true. They have the most mellow, laid-back lifestyle, bookshops and cafes, hills and sun, parks and frisbees, bay windows and lagoons. This is California. This is a place to love and be happy.
• Graceland – Paul Simon. No, we’re not hitting Memphis, not without a long diversion way down through Missouri. But this is all about going somewhere. A pilgrimage through songs and memories, ghosts and empty sockets. But let’s just bop along, falling, flying, tumbling, bouncing into Graceland. Looking for love, looking for America in every roadside attraction, every Big Blue Whale, every hokey motel, every tourist trap with a slushie and rack of hats.

In the zone

• Runnin’ Down a Dream – Tom Petty
• King of the Road – David Campbell. I love David Campbell’s upbeat cover of this classic song. We might not be jumping the rattler, but we’ll be kings of the road, just for a week or so. Wave at the kids, grab a burger, straighten your paper crown and jingle the souvenir key ring jewels. Nobody telling us what to do, we’re kings!
• Road to Nowhere – Talking Heads. We know where we’re going, but we don’t know where we’ve been. We’re somewhere in the middle, just belting along. Maybe Paradise ahead, here we go, here we go!
• Mustang Sally – The Commitments. Maybe we won’t drive an old Yellow Cab. Maybe we’ll drive a Mustang down Route 66. That’s the dream. All you want to do is ride around, Sally. Ride, Sally, Ride!
• Truckin’ – The Grateful Dead. It’s all the same. Together, more or less in line, just keep truckin’ on! Arrows of neon and flashing marquees on the main street. Chicago, New York, Detroit, it’s all the same street. What a long strange trip it’s been!
• America the Beautiful – Barbra Streisand. We may not find America on the road amongst the eighteen-wheelers and Winnebagos, but we can find her soul in a song. Purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain, from sea to shining sea! Listen to the emotion in her voice. she loves this place, its lands, its peoples, its ideals. Here it is.

Resources

• The thousand best roadtrip songs.
• An American roadtrip playlist.
• Roadtrip America’s roadtunes.

Foursquare on the iPhone

We’ve got a new game, my day driver and I. A game where cabbies shine.

IPhones each, we share apps. Sometimes they are classics. Shazam is just a brilliant piece of software. You want to know who sings the song on the radio? Just Shazam it for a few seconds and it comes back with the title, the artist, a link to the lyrics and a download button from iTunes. There are currency converters, weather forecasters, games a-million.

And now Foursquare, funking off the iPhone’s GPS and social networking. It’s a scavenger hunt, it’s a map of your day, it’s a point-scoring exercise, it’s gathering facts and sharing info.

Once you download the app, create a new account with all the regular rigmarole of user name, password, icon picture etc., Foursquare checks your location, finds nearby places of interest, and asks if you want to check in. Meaning do you want the world to know that you are currently at that location.

It might be a bar or a restaurant. A museum or a supermarkt, a statue or a cab rank. If where you are isn’t listed, just add it. And then check in.

You get points for checking in. And for adding new locations. And for doing all sorts of stuff, such as checking into a location with “bar” in its title on a school night.

And for adding tips. Yeah, I know all cabbies love tips, but these are information tips. Drinks are half price on Thursdays. Ask for the Megaburger with Rickie’s special sauce. The receptionist has four breasts – she’s got a double-decker bust.

Interesting, useful titbits of trivia and advice. Invaluable as a handy guide to the traveller.

If you check-in at a place more times than any other place, you become Mayor of that place. My co-driver is Mayor of the Canberra Airport Taxi Rank. If you are Mayor of a bar, and that barkeep knows his savvy, you get a discount on your drinks. Sometimes the office of Mayor changes several times in an evening, depending on who has the quickest fingers on their iPhone!

Cabbies are good at this game, because we go lots of places and have time to check in while we are waiting for the next fare. To another place.

My Foursquare is here: Skyring.
M co-driver is here: PeskiePete.

–PeterMac

Taxi 18 at the Shine Dome

Three young friends got into my cab for a ride into town from one of the Defence bases here. One was full of pride in her job – a cabin attendant on the RAAF VIP transport. She talked to her two friends about how the Prime Minister smiled and greeted her by name, was kind and considerate to her and all the other staff. She might not agree with all his policies, she said, but he was a nice man.

She had no kind words for another senior Government minister. He was only interested in calling for the most expensive bottles of wine aboard, and downing a couple on the relatively short flight to and from Melbourne. He called the cabin crew, “Hey, you!”, but he knew the onboard wine cellar by name and pedigree.

Tonight

He was wasted. This time on a Saturday morning, the only people over twenty-five in Civic are a few cabbies like me. This bloke was mid-thirties, business suit, tie loose, shambling along the footpath. A mid to senior-level public service manager, by his look.

My cab was next up and he opened the door, falling into the seat beside me. I examined him carefully. He was wrecked, to be sure, and he could be trouble. Trouble like throwing up, falling asleep, talking endless rubbish.

I drove off the rank, but stopped a few car lengths along to get the destination. He named a suburb five minutes away, and when I pressed him further, offered up the street name. This was hard work. He didn’t want to stay conscious. He wanted me to drive him home, and he didn’t care that I didn’t know where he lived.

Two months ago

Two middle-aged women got into the cab. They chatted to themselves in the back seat, and I cocked half an ear at their conversation, in case it included directions to the driver.

One was describing a young female relative, a cabin attendant on the RAAF VIP transport. She was upset and unhappy with her job. The Prime Minister was an arsehole, treating the staff like shit, demanding impossible things of them, swearing at them. The young cabin attendant had put in for a transfer. I wondered if this was the same happy young woman who had been in my cab before the election, when the government changed.

I wondered if she was the same one who had made national headlines a year ago when she had burst into tears when abused by the Prime Minister, causing an official incident report to be filed by the plane’s captain.

Yesterday

“There’s no point sugar-coating this,” the Prime Minister said, admitting that he had demoted a a junior minister for bungling an important program. A program that had cost four young lives, had been scrapped halfway through and had caused huge and unexpected unemployment.

Sugar-coating is what the Prime Minister does. He does it so well. To listen to him, his government is sweet, in control, moving forward, doing important stuff.

The problem is that it isn’t true. The government is under the Prime Minister’s tight control. The Foreign Minister has nothing to do, because the ex-diplomat Prime Minister handles all foreign affairs, making overseas trips on a weekly basis. Every government program is scrutinised at the top. Anything that could embarrass the government is sent back until the media release is phrased just so.

And that’s about it. The government has done nothing much except issue press releases. The Prime Minister has made a few important but symbolic speeches and failed to back them up with action.

Well, no, that’s not strictly true. The government reacted decisively to the global financial crisis by spending the surplus painstakingly saved by the previous administration. Money was handed out to people, impressive programs were dreamed up to make work, including the bungled roof insulation scheme with the four deaths, the surprise scrapping, the sudden unemployment, the ministerial demotion etc.

The previous government’s border protection scheme was abolished, with the predictable result that illegal immigrants boarded leaky old fishing boats for the dangerous crossing to Australia. A new boat crammed with desperate people is reported every week. Some of them don’t make it. Some of them take extreme measures to be “rescued” by the Navy, dying, drowning, burning in their desire to enter Australia.

Tonight

My passenger’s head was nodding. He was asleep. Or something like it. I cranked up the airconditioning and took the corners sharply. Usually this wakes up the dozers, but this chap was sinking fast, burnt out.

We reached his street and with a few jabs on the brakes, he was awake. Or something like it. “This is your street,” I said. “What number are we looking for?”

We cruised up to the end of the street, made a u-turn and stopped.

“Where are we?” he asked.

I gave him the street name and the suburb, double-checking against my GPS.

“This isn’t the right place,” he complained.

He looked at the meter, fumbling with notes to pay the fare. Hell, but I couldn’t let him out unless I was sure he was in the right place. Letting a dozey drunk out on an unfamiliar street long after midnight is a recipe for disaster.

“What number are we looking for?”

He pulled out more money.

“Where do you live? What number is your house?”

This was stupid. I was talking to a public service executive as if he were a five year-old.

“Do you have your address on a drivers licence or something?”

Finally he gave me the house number. It didn’t sound plausible, but we moved along the street, the sidelight picking out house numbers.

“It’s the other side!” he announced. “Turn around!”

We turned around and he directed me into a driveway. Well, the driveway next to the one he lived in, and we had to bump over a bit of grass to get there. He paid the fare, and got out, wobbly on his feet.

“Careful getting out,” I warned him. “Take your time.” As if he was a pensioner, creaky and slow, afraid of falling and breaking a fragile bone.

Drunks have fallen out of the cab before. They can’t stand, they flop out, their legs give way. It’s a worry, and I watch them carefully.

He made it out, staggering up the driveway while I kept the headlights shining for his progress.

That was enough for me. My night was at an end.

Tomorrow

This Prime Minister has wasted a splendid opportunity. For the first time ever, the Commonwealth and all State and Territory governments were under the control of one political party. Constitutional reform, an end to the costly divisions in health and education, new federal co-operation; the golden dream of every government was there for the taking.

And what happened? Nothing. The new Prime Minister made a few speeches, set his public servants working insane hours preparing reports on schemes that would never happen, dismantled some of the programs of the previous government and engaged in the mother of all public relations campaigns, working towards 100% favourable press coverage.

The government’s own list of achievements sounds wonderful, until investigation reveals that they are mostly announcements of schemes. Has the National Broadband Network been achieved? No. The first implementation in a tiny test market is months away.

The clean energy schemes are stalled or scrapped. The immigration policy is a disaster. The response to climate change failed before Copenhagen began. Election pledges on hospitals are broken. An education reporting scheme has had the predictable result of students deserting the schools ranked lowest, starving those schools of enrolment-based resources needed for improvement.

The government has lost control. All the public service research reports in the world, all the glowing media releases, all the fancy speeches cannot hide the fact that things are slipping away. The State and Territory governments are falling steadily, the chance for reform vanishing.

The media, sweet-talked to distraction, is sniffing blood in the water. Hard questions are being asked of waffling ministers. The Rudd gloss is fraying.

My take is that a man who cannot treat the staff with dignity and respect, venting his frustration on those who cannot fight back, smiling in public and snarling in public, sugar-coating disaster after disaster, squandering golden opportunities and promising heaven to come, my take is that such a man is not fit to run the nation, because he will inevitably lose the confidence of the people.

Not that I think the other party is any better. I don’t. The one thing I like about the Opposition Leader is that he’s honest.

Goodnight!

I’m disgusted. I’m a night cabbie, and for the past year or two, ever since the last Commonwealth election, I’ve been driving home public servants, drunk and exhausted. I pick them up from Parliament, from government offices, from hotels. Long after midnight.

Whatever they’ve been working on, it’s not working.

The idea is that, knowing there’s a savage penalty in store, drivers will fall into line, obey the road regulations in every respect, and the problem vanishes.

As ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said, announcing tougher laws, “We are sending a clear message to the community that Canberra’s culture of dangerous driving will not be tolerated.”

Government is out of touch. The accidents have been fatal. The crime of being stupid on the roads is one that is punishable by death. Drivers know this, so what possible notice are they going to take of any lesser penalty? A hefty fine for going around a corner too fast and sliding into a tree is nothing when you compare it to having a branch speared through your trunk.

Sending messages to the community and paying for advertising campaigns doesn’t work. Jon Stanhope could be sitting beside some of the morons on the road, reading out the regulations, and they are still going to slug down a six-pack and whip out on wet roads for a pack of fags.

When self-policing obviously isn’t working, you need to get real actual burly police out there on the roads doing the policing.

The point for the government is that police are expensive and fatal car crashes are free. Apart from replacing the odd light pole it’s a user pays situation.

Well, Chief Minister Stanhope, I’m about fed up with some of these public artworks you’ve been scattering round interchanges and motorways. A pile of painted rocks and twisted metal girders may be art in your book, and well worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to the “artist”, but it’s another useless roadside obstacle for drivers to run into if they lose control on a wet road, and it’s the cost of a car full of policemen patrolling the streets to catch the lunatics driving dangerously.

And there are lunatics out there. I’m a cabbie. I see them every day and night. They don’t care about the death penalty, and they aren’t going to care if you ratchet the dangerous driving fine up to a million bucks. It’s not going to happen to them so why should they worry?

Well, make it happen. Get a couple of coppers in an unmarked car appearing out of nowhere when they least expect it. That’ll send a message.