Tony.

Quick mate! Quick! He wants me to get to a pub in the middle of town quick it seems. We arrive and park up a little distance from the pub. He is nervous, excited. We wait. Ten minutes go by. “What are we waiting for?  I whisper so the people in the pub 50yds away cannot hear me. “My children…” he gagged back a cry. “ I’m losing my children.” He was talking to himself and was getting more agitated as he stared at the pub door. Twenty minutes go by.  A woman comes out and lights a cigarette, he tenses, and she is clearly the person we have been waiting for. A couple of minutes later a man joins her, cuddles then kisses her grabbing her arse as he does. Tony is breathing heavy “My wife…” he is whispering to himself… My children…I’m losing my children” he then explodes out of the cab and runs at the kissing couple. Screaming. Pushing. A scene. I leave.  I leave because weeks earlier this same woman tore at my clothes demanding sex. I obliged. I didn’t ask if she was married, I didn’t ask if she had children. I feel sick. I never gave a thought.  I was single. I saw this man’s life fall apart. I took part in his downfall and watched it finally fall apart. He was whispering prophetically his own future moments earlier, the future where he sees his children at the weekends, where he over compensates with them at every opportunity, a future where his home is probably a dingy flat. He saw that future sitting next to me in the cab. I stopped women calling upon me to scratch their itches; I refused from then on to shape someone's sombre future. I have seen Tony in the park with his lovely kids, he was laughing and happy, but I knew at 5pm, he takes them back to the woman that has sex with complete strangers.

Cleaned.

The local theatre emptied and the mum and young daughter are now in my cab, it’s quickly evident however that the daughter is not feeling well and the mother opens the rear window to its fullest extent and shoves her daughters head outside. I offer to stop so she can empty her stomach contents onto the side of the road. I was too late, the daughter was already projectile vomiting all over the side of the cab as I was driving, and it even spread over the rear window. We arrived at their house, her mother immediately offered to clean the mess off the cab, and I accepted her help to clean up.  My first task was to make sure that there wasn’t any vomit was inside the cab and opened a rear door and crawled inside to check. The mother came down the path with a large bucket of soapy water and threw it at the cab. The window was still down and I and the whole interior of the cab was now soapsuds and steam. I vocally let her know how displeased I was and she ran and locked herself in the house and called the police, whom after my explanation could not stop laughing. It took three hours and all my own clean towels from my home to dry it out. After changing clothes and explaining what happened to the controller, he did a bit of a wee in his pants. I fail to see the humour in this and you had better not be smiling.  

Joan.

Its 2am and I’m picking up an elderly lady from the hospital to take her home to a nearby town, she is quiet and thoughtful, you sense that some people should be alone with their thoughts. A few minutes go by; the night is especially dark as it is a new moon. I hear the start of a little choke that precedes a cry, something I hear a lot. The already low volume of the radio is silenced as I switch it off.  I ask if she is ok as gently as I could. “My husband, he passed away tonight” I just listen.  “We were married for sixty one years and I have never been alone, never slept alone and never been in our house alone in all that time.” We sit outside her house for quite a while, I hold her hand and she makes eye contact with me for the first time and sees me being a bit tearful and I apologise for my silliness, eventually she plucks up courage to go into her own house. I told her I will be with her till all the lights are on. I end up making ‘that’ call to her daughter and she is on her way. I leave. I do not belong there. The house is now full of activity; neighbours are knocking, even at this silly hour of the morning. Its 3.30am she isn’t alone and I drive away, I forgot to get paid again, but it doesn’t really matter. Not really. I finished my shift soon after, got to my own car and find it smashed up by vandals. I had a bit of a cry.

The Extremely Agitated State of the Short Distance Driver

I’m rather...

Annoyed that I told you to put out the cigarette, but you had to have the last drag in the cab, inhaling deeply like it was your last breath and blow it in my face, you’re smiling at the rebel in you that’s saying “Hey dude! I just dumped my shit on you! Ha!” Cunt

Angry that you think that even when you are politely told to please not eat in the cab, you think it’s “The thing” to carry on eating and deny you are even doing it. Permeating my clothes with the smell of your deep fried and reheated meat, my workspace stinks, my twelve hour imprisonment in this three square yards of tin and plastic. Fuck you and your wet greasy mouth and fingers that you have just wiped on my seats.

Disgusted that pumping your girlfriends pussy with your fingers is ok for me to watch, smell and hear. You feel the smug master of your moment over a female and me, the fateful me that is meant to be grateful. Bastard. I don’t want to touch your gonorrhea’d shilling.

Incredulous that your cursing and wildly gesticulating diatribe and droplets of spit hitting my face, my open mouthed face, my trying to reason with you face, all the while drinking in your projectile spit. Why? It’s costing you fifty pence too much. Your £400K house is nice with great kerb appeal as I sit outside it, grateful for any money at all for my work, my £5.70, my time, my fear. You strut away like a gladiator, walk away you imbecilic fool, I am less of a man now, another bit of me chipped away, humanity draining job of mine. I dream. Daydream in the dead of night with rain and fog as ever-constant companions. The indicator ticking away my soul. I dream of killing you. For fifty pence, yes, killing you, thinking no more of it and having a cup of tea as my prize. Fuck you for making me feel this way. Fuck you to hell.

You make me feel dishonest, my betrayal of mind, my betrayal as my phallus reacts to your grinding in your seat and fumbling at my crotch. Your breasts ample and willing to give, you’re playing the game, I don’t want to play the game and feel your anger of being rejected. My own being has betrayed me. My mind thought about it, even willing me on. My life could have been in tears. Your wetness can fuck off, I hate you for making me betray my path of love for my beloved, guilt ridden still for casting away your willing temptation. My bastard erect betrayed me. Fuck off whore, wife of another, teacher of children. Fuck off.

I won’t thank you for making me tearful. Your wife soon to depart with ovarian cancer eating away, with itself not caring that its own cancerous demise is coming soon. I won’t thank you whilst you pour your tear sodden grief into my soul. I sit with you and hold your hand. My mind is blessing you and your children. You should not have gone out to be cheered up. 

You shouldn’t have gone out at all.

How to Talk To Anybody

 

Excerpt from ‘Taxi Driving for Dummies’, which I really should get around to finish writing.

This is a comprehensive but not exhaustive list of conversation prompts to be used in most verbal situations whilst driving a taxi. May be used also if a complete stranger gets in your car, and you are leering at the bloke/package/woman/breasts/legs/arse to your immediate right.

1.   To most, people that work.

“How is your business/trade in the current economic climate?”

Let them cry/gloat/moan. Nod a lot and do your sincere face.

2. To people that are unable to answer first question.

Talk about the weather and then agree about the weather then both jointly tut about the weather.

3. To people that do not talk.

Do not talk.

4. To people that are homeless.

Do not say anything patronising with “Why don’t you” in it.

5.  To all housewives/stay at home mums

Disbelieve they are old enough to even have children.

6. To all elderly men.

Talk about sex, point at a sexy girl and give a wink and a nudge.

7.  To all elderly women.

Talk about sex/tell them to stop undressing you with them eyes.

8.  To all single late twenty something men.

Convince them they are getting a bit old for that now.

9. To all single late twenty something women.

Console them; convince them they are still attractive. Do not sleep with them.

10.   To all single late thirty something men.

“I can smell your liver, are you an alcoholic?” is not a good conversation starter, often       ends with man crying for 45 minutes.

11.   To all late thirty something women.

Avoid conversation of any kind, look straight ahead. Do NOT make eye contact.

If you accidentally make a connection, telling them you are married/gay unfortunately will not work. Good luck.

12.   To forty something single men
A: If they are dressed well, congratulate them on what must have been an amazing bachelor life.
B: If they are not dressed well and smell of dog and cigarettes. Talk about dogs and cigarettes. 
 
13. To single/married/divorced/fresh out of prison late forty to fifty something women.
Be very careful. They will have you if they so wish it.

Treat like omnipotent beings that can, with a click of their finger snap you out of existence/or your pants.

14.   To all teenagers.

Mirror their conversation adding lots of “innits”/whatevers” and “sick” You will still get paid in 2 pence pieces and not get a tip, but you WILL get a “Cheers dude” or a “Laters” which is a clear sign of respect and a sign you don’t look that old yet, which is nice.

To everyone else. Smile and say nothing, they may have other taxi drivers locked in a cellar somewhere.

NB: Non-Payers

A. If they faux pat themselves down in 00:10^th of a second, do not believe them and relieve them of items that you can sell on Ebay.

B. If they undress themselves in a sheer panic and offer you, watches/phones/new shoes in bag as payment, believe them and help accordingly. If they take off their shoes and look in their socks for the money, they are clearly taking the piss.

In the next chapter “How to Leave Drunks in Hedges” we discuss the correct obtuse angle to leave near comatose inebriates in their own hedge. The 116° or 130° conundrum discussed.

Originally Published In The Sabotagetimes.com

The Tiny Yorkie Dog Incident.

It’s a heady, stuffy warm mid-August late evening. The smudged painting of a blue-pink and yellow sky and low sun makes for a truly beautiful vista. As I drive along a quiet seafront road, I’m chatting to an articulate, engaging and funny story teller. This entire visual feast combined with good conversation is a rare joy.

As my eyes click open and shut and in the split second of a blink, a small pair of dog’s bollocks slide across my windscreen. My entertaining passenger is silent and opened mouthed. I’m also braking to a stop, a very quick well practised screeching, sliding, tyre smoking safe full stop.

I pull over just in time to see a middle-aged man and woman lifting something up from the beach below. At the end of what I thought was a rope, is a dripping wet and worryingly limp tiny dog that has now instantly explained the flying dog’s bollocks my brain had photographed a minute earlier.

I think the rest of this sorry tale can be told from a better perspective. So let us look at this from the point of view of the middle-aged couple standing near the zebra crossing.

The couple are deep in conversation unaware the extending lead with a tiny dark yorkie dog on the end was reeling out to its fullest extent onto a Zebra crossing. The little dark dog is now having a shit on the black part of the crossing nearly all the way to the middle of the road. The man holding the lead has heard a car, my cab. He realises where the straining shitting little dog is, he sees me in my cab at full national speed chatting away to an equally smiling passenger. I am not going to stop; I can’t see a small dark dog having a shit on the black part of the crossing. The middle-aged man pulls on the lead and in one quick urgent jerk, a sea angler would be proud of; the little dog that is about the size of a kitten has suddenly gone from a squatting position to a flying one.

As the dog brushes across my windscreen and my mind takes the picture of the tiny dog’s bollocks, it continued its journey at a pace through space over the heads of the middle aged couple, passes the railings and ends up landing in a pool of sea water on the beach below and to all intent and purposes is now dead.

I gingerly enter this arena of death and tears as the couple are pulling the dog up from the beach by its neck onto the promenade, both convinced it was an ex-dog, shifted this mortal coil, gone to meet its maker, you get my pythonesque drift. I attempt to get involved in their grief and lay some of the shame of this event on my shoulders, when as the middle aged woman tries to give the dog mouth to muzzle resuscitation the little bastard thing came back to life and bit her face and shits itself. (Although involuntarily this time) considering in the last minute, this little dog has been strangled, thrown at a speeding taxi, chucked in the sea, hanged and his owner tried to eat his face. I would be shaking and bearing my teeth too.

where's my fucking pills?

 I quickly left them there on the promenade bemused, confused, bitten and covered in reanimated dead dog poo.  I got back in the cab and took my customer home, whom, within moments of driving away also nearly shit himself laughing about the whole debacle.

I’ve now added this event to my burdensome checklist of things I have to look out for whilst driving the cab, these include looking out for pedestrians on crossings, sleeping drunkards inbetween parked cars that tend to stretch out as I drive by and then run over their arms.  Included on the list also are driving around fat blokes lying in the middle of the road and having to remember the give way to the right rule, I also now have to add a quick careful look for little black or white dogs having a shit on zebra crossings.