There's nothing quite like Karangahape Road at 3am. I strolled out of Oonst, early, as these things go, but quite late enough for me, and up around the corner onto the strip.
There was the usual bustle, if not the crazy jungle that pertains some nights in summer: kids queuing to get into nightclubs, the all-night dairy selling Frenzy dance pills, people heading in and out of town.
I always like to walk right up to the Mobil station at the Ponsonby Road corner before getting in a taxi. You see more, and it's dark but not really dangerous.
A middle-aged Samoan couple, both drunk, cuddled up on a bench on the overbridge; kids having their IDs rejected by a bouncer; some P-head types bustling past with their upright, uptight gait; a hooker resting outside Joy Bong (a Thai restaurant), who bid me a weary "goodnight" that had enough warmth in it for me to feel rude for averting my eyes as I passed her. "Night …" I called, belatedly, five paces past.
There's always a taxi on the rank outside the Mobil station, the driver perhaps too frail to drive in and do battle in the logjam outside Kiss and Baccio. Mine was Indian, and he put on some bhangra, which I always like: if the other choices are robot format radio and silly talkback, I'll keep taking the tablas, thanks.
"Point Chevalier thanks, driver."
"Would you like to go on the motorway?"
I thought briefly about who else was likely to be on the motorway at this time of night.
"No thanks. Great North Road is fine."
The buzz of some debate between drivers was bubbling around on the dispatch radio, behind the bhangra. One riposte, in an Indian accent, jumped out: "Why don't you have a house in Howick!?" My driver and I both laughed.
I usually have to direct the driver for the last couple of turns when we get to the Point, but that's okay. I know where I live, he doesn't. I'm always careful to enunciate the name of our little street, so that he might know it next time. I topped up the fare, telling him the tip was for the music. He liked that.
I can see no point whatsoever in being rude to late-night taxi drivers, especially immigrants. You know they'd rather have a normal job; and be at home with their wives and children instead of ferrying around drunks and bug-eyed twentysomethings in the middle of the night. They're probably scared half the time.
Perhaps when you've been a Minister of the Crown and you've been ferried around as a matter of course, you lose the ability to navigate home. Or perhaps that's just the way you behave at the end of a late one.
It's not yet clear whether Winston Peters did leave a taxi on Thursday night without paying the fare - which is an offence - or whether the taxi had been paid for. The Somali driver was sufficiently moved by abuse from Peters to contact the police, who are investigating the matter. The Dom-Post's story contains a rogueish quote from a "senior" police source, who described the leader of the New Zealand First party as "the MP for Courtenay Place."
Peters is probably guilty only of being a prick, which is not a criminal offence, although it is arguably a qualification for some forms of public life. But the next time he storms out of a taxpayer-funded taxi, he might wish to consider his own privilege.