the street – especially not in a foreign country – but the stress-snake is now a boa constrictor.
‘Zer are no taxis,’ he tells me matter-of-factly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Zey are on strike.’
‘On strike?!’
‘Oui. It is about ze Uber, I believe.’
‘Uber?’
‘Yes. Zey are unhappy wiz ze Uber people.’
‘Oh. Okay. Thank you.’
‘Pleasure,’ the man replies, and carries on his way.
No taxis.
No taxis to take me to my meeting.
I am fucked.
Royally, comprehensively fucked.
I have never used Uber, so I have no idea how to order one. This is a massive and glaring oversight on my part, but I live in a part of the world where Uber isn’t much of a thing yet, and I have that lovely hybrid Mercedes to use, so why would I need bloody Uber in the first place?
If you’d driven it all the way here, you’d probably be there by now.
Fuck off, brain! You’re not helping!
What the hell do I do now?
I’ll have to download the Uber app and use it.
There’s no way I have the time to try to negotiate the Brussels public transport system. I can barely use the one in my own country. Four years ago, I had a nightmare getting across Manchester on the bus. And that was somewhere I spoke the language.
My hands are visibly shaking as I pull out my mobile phone and spend about three hundred quid downloading the Uber app using my roaming charges.
A good five or so minutes go by while I put in all of my information and get the account verified.
Eventually I work out how to book the car – which is actually very easy once you get past the signing-up part of the process – and I order one to come pick me up as soon as possible.
This takes a further five minutes to arrive. I now have fifteen minutes to get to Hergebruikt. A quarter of an hour to do a journey that Uber tells me will take twenty minutes. I am most definitely going to be late for the start of the meeting.
Never mind! I’ll be on time for my pitch session! That’s all that matters!
When the Uber arrives, it’s being driven by a Belgian man who must be in his eighties. The app tells me his name is Alphonse. It does not tell me what actions I need to take when Alphonse suffers a heart attack, which he looks like he is about to do the entire time I’m in the car with him.
Alphonse is not the fastest driver in the world, but then the traffic doesn’t really allow him to drive that quickly anyway. This is possibly just as well, as I think if he had to go quicker than thirty miles an hour it would rupture his left ventricle.
Time ticks by . . . faster and faster. The minutes dwindle. The boa constrictor wraps itself around my neck.
And then, when we hit a massive load of roadworks about a mile away from the building I’m going to, it jumps down my throat and starts to snack on my vital organs.
The road ahead looks jam-packed with cars. None of them are moving. I can see two men in fluorescent vests arguing with one another over a set of traffic lights that are drunkenly leaning to one side.
‘I am zorry for zis,’ Alphonse says, coughing as he does so. ‘Traffic ’az been very bad today, and now ve ’ave zis.’ He’s gone red-faced. Whether this is with anger at the traffic conditions, or embarrassment about the transport infrastructure of his great nation, I do not know.
All I do know is that I’d better get out of this car and start running, before I’m too late to do my pitch, and before Alphonse keels over his dashboard.
‘Thanks! I’m going to go the rest of the way on foot!’ I tell my Uber driver, and leap out of the car before he has a chance to say anything. At least I’ve prepaid the fare. Poor old Alphonse won’t go without his heart medication this week.
So now I’m running again – this time along the streets of Brussels. I have my iPhone clasped in one sweaty hand, using it to negotiate my way around. It tells me I have half a mile more on this traffic-choked road, before I can turn off and go down the street Hergebruikt are on.
Excellent.
Nearly there.
So very nearly there.
But also, so very, very late now.
I run around the corner and see that lovely coffee shop just in front of me, that I will never