My absence from this page last week led many to think that I had died. I almost did, by golly. Not from the flu that I caught on my vacation, but from heatstroke before leaving. I'll explain you.

Bermuda's taxi drivers have won the war against the public they detest. Not a single cab in all of Bermuda would come to take me to the airport at the start of my trip, except for a limousine service that said they'd do it for $250. So I had no choice but to drag my travelling bags down the ill-paved Ferry Road in the blistering heat, working my way towards the airport.

All that GPS business has made no difference whatsoever. If anything, it has made matters worse. The taxi drivers, once our "ambassadors" to our visitors, are now a surly rabble, too rich to care, out of control and incapable of understanding the meaning of the word "service", which is curious on an island where service is the only product.

Fine. Who needs them? I had an appointment to tell some influential insurance people in Florida how great Bermuda is, and didn't want to stand them up. Ferry Road, by the way, is a lot hillier when you're dragging bags than it is when you walk it without suitcases.

Almost as soon as I made it to the main road to and from St. George's, a car stopped and its driver offered me a ride. "I'm a gypsy cab," the driver said, and my joy was almost unfounded.

Partly because I was now going to make my flight, and partly because my understanding of economic theory had been proven right. When people want something, and especially when they need it, capitalism finds a way for them to have it, if they can afford it. It's the great triumph of what is otherwise a rather brutal system.

So the truculence of the cab drivers has resulted in what is known as a "market solution". I will give you no information that would enable you to identify my gypsy cab driver. Not even when they secretly fly me to Romania, to prop my eyelids open, "Clockwork Orange" style, and force me to watch Government TV 24/7 (of which, more below) will I reveal even the shadow of a detail.

But I will tell you that this gypsy driver has correctly identified a desperate need among the citizenry, and is satisfying it. Staggering along before I met the gypsy, I had a sense of déjà vu. At first, I thought it was a memory of the 1981 General Strike when the Union stopped work, thus contributing to the 25-year decline in its members' fortunes that followed. People carried their own bags then, too.

Thoughts of 1981 were in due course replaced by thoughts of the Bataan Death March. I'm virtually an old geezer, and here I was lugging luggage (I guess that's why it's called luggage) in the heat. Then I realised that I wasn't reliving 1981, nor was I in Bataan; it was a whole other thing.

Do you remember when you were younger, and you were sweet on a girl who said she wasn't sure how she felt about you? (Were girls ever put in the same situation? Maybe.) You'd be nice and she'd be coolish, while she weighed up her chances of finding someone better. You'd make it plain that you'd do anything for her, and in time, she began to take advantage of the situation.

The thing would almost always culminate in her asking you to drive her to a party. You'd think "hooray", but when you picked her up, she had a chap with her, "a friend" with a square jaw, who was also coming to the party. You rationalised this somehow and remained pleased that you were helping; maybe things would work out.

Then, usually that same evening, you'd see the two of them kissing, and you finally and bitterly came to understand the truth.

As I suffered silently along Ferry Road, the realisation hit me. Here I was, about to travel at my own expense for the umpteenth time to sell Bermuda to the world because I am in love with the country and its people (other than its taxi drivers). The country, unfortunately, won't tell me whether I'm going to be allowed to stay for a week, three years or forever, and I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Bermuda is never going to kiss me. I expect they'll throw me out for saying this, but what kind of way is this to treat people? Not just me, but the thousands like me? Good people, useful people, actual people with actual lives, who contribute greatly to the economy and want nothing more than to work.

Speaking of a group of service providers who completely fail to understand the need for service, let me speak now of the Post Office. A Data Express envelope was sent to me this week. It was intercepted at the Post Office, who determined that it contained no dutiable items. Then — this is where I get a headache — they posted me a notification that I could collect the envelope from the Post Office.

Why didn't they just post me the envelope? I'll tell you why. Because for decades, the Post Office had a monopoly, so service didn't matter. So there wasn't any. There still isn't. When I went to collect the envelope — half a day wasted — a woman behind the counter shouted at me when I innocently presented myself at the Data Express counter.

"There's only one line", she screamed, although what she meant was "You're just like all the other customers, interrupting my day with your constant demands for service. Just go away." The line had a dozen people in it, many of them covered in cobwebs, so I just went away. I have a life, as pointless as it is, and I'd rather live it than take a pile of guff from public servants whose salaries I pay.

So here's the message for this week. To be economically successful in this world, and especially in Bermuda, all you have to do is to provide a service. Ideally, with a smile. You'll make millions.

Finally, in the interest of balance, I have something nice to say. When I got back from singing Bermuda's praises, I started to watch CITV. Now, obviously, it's an idiotic idea and a massive waste of money. Everyone knows that. But, someone made a decision to have most of the presenters be women with unfeasibly large breasts.

Now that, my friends, is how to do television. I will watch nothing else. Just one thing, though: it really should be called DDTV.