Chauffeur

I'm not aware of making the life choice to become a semi-professional chauffeur; indeed I baulk at the definition that says such a person is employed to drive...at what point did I sign that contract? Yet it would appear that one of the chief joys of living in our sub-rural neck of the woods is that I spend more time driving out of it than living in it.

There are four principle types of sub-clause in this non-existent contract. Thou shall be available for the following type of chauffeur duties:

1. Point-to-point: - these consist of short drop offs or pick ups, such as the school run, taking to the train station, going to the nearest cash-point when you realise there are no more coins down the back of the sofa and your purse isn't going to magically produce any notes by itself.
Fairly painless, these trips involve more hassle getting in and  out of the car than involved in the journey itself.

2. Loop the loop:- longer trips that begin, for example, as a short mission to deposit one offspring at sports training, collect someone else from an after-school activity, drop off a much needed jacket left by a visiting child the day before, buy a few litres of milk, back to collect the sporty child and then home again. None of it terribly far, but one and a half hours can easily fly by before you've had a chance to blink. A friend told me recently that he'd broken his own record by completing two loop-the-loops in a day (nothing special in that, they have a habit of segueing into one another), but in his case for loop two he hadn't got out of the car once in six hours; timing is everything when maintaining perpetual motion

3. Circumnavigation:- for me county and regional journeys come into this category. As the parents of fairly sporty offspring, one in particular; more hours than might be healthy have been spent crossing the bridge to Wales two or three times a week, travelling to Bath, finding athletics stadiums or hockey pitches in obscure industrial estates at the edges of vast sprawling cities, or nestled, cunningly disguised, in the centre of ancient towns. We don't have satnav and so far haven't missed a match or competition as a result, the thought of another person's voice telling me where to go would be too much!

4. Grand Tour:- Somehow these have become a feature too. As the toddlers grew to teens so their interests grow, as does the desire to leave the nest. University open days at the opposite end of the country, national sporting competitions, ditto, mean that my knowledge of Britain's motorways and by-ways has improved considerably in recent years. The fact that one can take such a tour shows how far we've come since the early Grand Tour days of gritting our teeth and loading the car, mostly with story tapes, and heading for Brittay as the closest 'foreign' holiday; bribes and nappies at the ready!

Hours worked: hard to set in stone!

Perhaps two thirds of the above is as a result of advance notice/routine, call it what you will.
Most impromptu calls tend to be of the point-to-point type journey; but one's employees reserve the right to expect flexibility at all times.
Thus with half an hour's notice, if you're lucky, you are dropping child A at one party, collecting other-half from the train station, and 'I didn't book a taxi, mum, could you pick us up, won't be too late, about 1am?' Well naturally, what else would I be doing? Should have stayed in London, they have buses there!