text: According to some Hallmark card, somewhere 'Life is so precious,/And each day is a gift./So enjoy every minute,/As it were your last to live.' So imagine my disgruntlement to find 25 of those precious, precious minutes frittered away, gone, never to be seen again, while waiting for my (very late) prebooked taxi.\n\n\n Just think what I could have been doing with those beautiful minutes! Dancing, playing chess, smelling flowers! All I actually wanted to do with those minutes, though, was to get to work - hence the reason I booked a taxi. At a mere 15 minutes late I called to ask if it would be much longer:\n\n\n Taxi person - 'It's one minute away, just around the corner'.\n\n\n Me - 'Can you tell me why it's so late? Of course it's not your fault, but I'm now late for work, and I did prebook it earlier this morning, for 15 minutes ago'.\n\n\n Taxi person - 'People are taking their children to school!...' - Now, I had been labouring under the false illusion that people had been taking children to school for quite some time now (decades, even) and yet the world of taxi punctuality somehow managed to keep on turning, but clearly I stand corrected - '...and anyway, people who booked their taxis days ago are still waiting!'\n\n\n Interesting defense. Anyway, time passed. Another phone call, different taxi person:\n\n\n Different taxi person - 'Please hold'.\n\n\n Three minutes pass.\n\n\n Different taxi person - 'It's at least 10 minutes away, stuck in traffic. I'm very sorry'.\n\n\n Me - 'I appreciate the apology, but it's okay, I'll just cancel the taxi'.\n\n\n Different taxi person was nice, I liked her. And as I walked to to the bus stop, I contemplated Ida Scott Taylor: 'Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone'.