Is a taxi driver. Seriously.
I considered my options this morning, opted for good behaviour and went to the conference. The catholic conscience so lovingly instilled in me by the mad nuns tends to load up on the guilt when unauthorised fun is being considered so I opted for the path of least resistance. With the boss gone, I also realised that I no longer had a partner in crime.
So off to the RAI I went. I eschewed the tram and damned the expense by flagging down a passing taxi. They're all Mercs here, and this one was a lovely silvery new one. I'm a bit of a magpie about such things and so hopped in without making certain important observations.
The first was the hi-tech dashboard. This is very clever. It tells you lots of stuff. The driver was blithely ignoring the following increasingly panicked messages from his car:
"Passenger restraint failure - proceed to nearest service centre"
"Front tyre pressure below operational limits - proceed to nearest service centre"
"Rear brake failure - proceed to nearest service centre"
"Front brake failure imminent - proceed to nearest service centre"
Well, you get the idea (although 'passenger restraint' sounded a bit kinky to me. I've been here too long.)
But that wasn't what scared me - I've used minicabs in London that were powered only by the wattage of the stereo. No, what really scared me was another aspect of the hi-tech dash. It was an in-place DVD player. What I thought was a nice picture of a town square turned out to be a shooty-shooty-bang-bang film with Matt Damon. As we careened through Amsterdam, narrowly missing cyclists and trams, the driver gave me a dutch commentary of the film, gesticulating at particularly good bits in case I'd missed them.
When we arrived, I noticed a wad of DVDs stuffed down the seat pocket. It looked like Matt Damon wasn't the only thing my driver liked to watch. I fervently hoped that the stickiness of the seat was only in my imagination.
I caught the tram back to the hotel tonight.
And now I'm going out, catholic conscience or not.
