I’d rather spend NYE in high heels and a mini atop a freezing mountain than risk a taxi-less outing
NEW Year’s Eve, love it or hate it, if you are alive, you cannot really avoid its artificial sparkling optimism. Ring out the old, and ring in the new. Make some noise, go out with a bang, or start 2018 with an explosion of excitement.
As traditions go, in Ireland we are relatively conservative. A candle in the window, a coal in the fireplace, a raven-haired man over your threshold at midnight (or is that a cat?). It varies from county to county, and from house to house, depending on your state of sobriety or inebriation. However, if we are entirely honest, the most prevalent and consistent Irish tradition for decades now has been New Year’s Eve agoraphobia.
The excruciating and toe-freezing reluctance to leave your own home for fear you will never, ever, get a taxi home. Cloistered within our living rooms and kitchens, we remain massively scarred from personal experience. A nation possessed with latent New Year’s Eve detention syndrome. Anxious that if we venture out for a beverage we may never return, and that, along with our loved ones, we will be entirely lost to the night.
As a result, everyone over the age of 30 who does not feel totally comfortable standing on a pavement clad only in a mini skirt in sub-zero temperatures for hours on end stays at home drinking or sulking (or both).
The taxi industry in Ireland has a lot to answer for. It has provided us with years of endless entertainment on Joe Duffy’s ‘Liveline’. Causing regular deliberation and angst, the debate reached fever pitch in the early noughties when the deregulation of the taxi industry became a more controversial topic than water charges. Absolutely everyone had an opinion on licence plate numbers, hackney fares, and the lack of availability, particularly in Dublin. You couldn’t get into a taxi without having a full and frank discussion about pensions, plates, and the price of radio rentals and insurance.
The argument was very onesided, though, because taxis are never a problem until you really need one. Much of the supply issues are solved now, if anything many taxi drivers believe the sector is swamped with taxi licences.
This does nothing to dilute the annual New Year’s Eve question, however. Where on earth do they all go on New Year’s Eve? Like the Keyser Soze of transport, you can’t find one anywhere.
I may have solved the conundrum. It is hardly surprising that, like you and I, many taxi drivers simply choose to go home to spend time with their families. After a long and busy Christmas period, who can blame them?
We, the travelling public, deeply resent this festive retreat, however, with many believing the profession should feel morally obliged, if not legally compelled, to stay on the streets, ensuring no man, or scantily sequinned young wan, is left behind.
But spare a thought for the hard-pressed taxi man (and woman). Nowadays they are not simply ferrymen. At this time of the year, in particular, they are counsellors as well as chauffeurs and collectors. Their main job is gathering up all the ‘tired and emotional’ people from our streets to return them home in one piece.
It is not easy as we slide towards a society that treats Prosecco merely as very expensive sparkling water. I recently overheard a girl at a bar saying: “I’m not drinking tonight, I am just having Prosecco.”
Some such revellers forget they have sequestered a taxi in the first place. Then they hang on inside parties to swig the last bit of merriment from the bottom of their glass. Meanwhile, outside, the poor auld taxi cab is being pounded like a tank in Beirut by carousers who are way past caring about the rules of the on-off light.
Then there are those revellers who, despite having made it into the back of their festive cab, completely forget where they are going. Others forget they have to pay, or have no money to pay.
New Year is a time of reflection for many. Most can do that quietly, but stick us in the back of a cab and
chances are you might be revealing more of your thoughts to a complete stranger, because it is easier than broaching it with a loved one. Add in a bit of yuletide merriment, and one can only imagine the suffering endured by taxi drivers.
This, of course, all presupposes you find a piece of tin to put your bum in on NYE. Fear not, technology has arrived to save us. Smartphone apps, like Mytaxi and Uber, have been developed to tell you where your taxi is located. Moreover, it can also helpfully pinpoint where you are yourself, which can be a big help at this time of the year.
Enthused by this technological wonder two years ago, I tested one such mobile app on several occasions, then whipped it out on New Year’s Eve to bamboozle my friends with my logistical brilliance. Only to discover that whilst the app located me perfectly, it failed to locate one taxi within a 40km radius. I walked three kilometres home in the freezing cold, in ridiculously high heels.
Look, you have got enough to worry about on NYE. Even if your outfit is fabulous and your makeup is done to perfection, there is still the logistical mess to endure. Navigating your way home on December 31 is no easy endeavour.
A friend of mine once told me he would rather climb Mont Blanc than go out on New Year’s Eve. Musing that it would be less dangerous than going out in Dublin, because at least he would be sober coming down the mountain. He was dead right. You know what else, you would never be expected to wear sequins or high heels on the side of a mountain. Stay indoors. Happy New Year.