Eileen

Her speech impediment makes it hard for me to understand her. You have to listen hard. In her late sixties and having spent, many years locked in her own home, away from the frightening outside world. She is now going to shows and taking part in community excursions, making friends. She pointed to a balcony on the second floor of the flats, on it, she grows herbs and flowers and especially strawberries. She loves strawberries. As we pull up to the entrance, she stutters violently and shakes and I hold her hand and ask what is making her so upset. Her neighbours spit on her herbs and strawberries from the next-door balcony, they pour beer and stub cigarettes into her herb pots. Laughing. Shouting. Poking fun at her speech. She hears them from her living room cackling like hyenas. She struggles to tell me she is being bullied. She is looking to move to a chalet type bungalow, small but with a small garden and this lit up her face. I watch her wave the electronic key at the door and it buzzed open. I sit outside, furious, watching and willing the hyenas to come out, Eileen is already on her balcony scanning her little pots and quickly disappears back in again. There is nothing I can do but stare up at the dirty net curtains of the hyena’s lair. I reluctantly leave. I am a working man and have to go to my next fare who is now wondering where I am. I do go back, slow to a crawl, sometimes park and look up. Today everything looks fine. Maybe I’ll pop back tomorrow. Maybe.

Karen.

I almost gave up waiting when a well-dressed, well-groomed young woman appeared with a small luggage case on wheels. She has been in the secure unit for six months. “We have to go and get my dog” so off we go to get her dog. She tells me she has been sectioned before and because of that, when the argument occurred with her boyfriend they locked her up again. She is worried, “What if my dog doesn’t recognise me? “What if he has been given a new home”? We arrived at the kennels that is some distance from the town. Karen has been in the office for some time and decides to stand outside. She needs to be outside. Way across the huge yard a dog is being walked and he is barking, Karen notices and is now moving from the door. The dog, a good 150 yards away is going nuts and is let go by its walker and runs across the vast yard. “Jimmy! Karen shouts, the dog is barking/crying as it missiles towards her. They meet in a dust cloud in the yard, both in the dirt, both shrieking with joy. Karen is on her back being washed by Jimmy, immaculate clothing not so anymore. A scene of happiness of such I rarely see in real life. It took an age to calm them both down enough to get them in the cab. Jimmies tail never missed a beat the whole journey. Karen only had the £4.20 she was sectioned with and my meter said £19.80 but that was ok. I took it and was happy with it. Karen saw me crying in the yard but that was ok as well.

John.

Twenty-five years in the navy, he is 73, smart and smells fresh and clean he has just visited his lady friend in the caravan that’s in the nice park just north of the town. It has just gone eleven and the meter trips over to the night rate at exactly that time; I notice he noticed that the meter is now on the enhanced night rate and ask him about himself. He tells me about the boatloads of alive and dead souls he has seen in all of the oceans of the world trying to flee from oppression. He has holed and sunk gunrunners and their cargo, he tells of lovely weather and death in the same sentence, always just an able seaman, never promoted and was happy with that. We arrive and I stop the meter total, he is sighing as he is counting his change. I laugh and joke and wish him a good evening, I even get out of the cab and open the door for him , stand to attention and salute, he laughs and walks off, I notice his shiny brogues, good ones. You can tell.  He did not notice my sleight of hand because I didn’t take his money, it wasn’t that much. After twenty-five years protecting this country, it was just a little thank you from me.

Maud.

Maud is a proud 87. She carries a stick, happy with the posh meal she has just had with her lifelong friend. They talk of emailing Harold when they both get in. Her friend, after aired and blown kisses and the lightest of touches of her arm, is off to his front door being carefully watched by Maud willing him this time not to trip again. On the way to Maud’s home, she tells of fields that used to be at the bottom of her rough crater laden unadopted road she has lived in for all of her life. When we stop at her house and she paid me plus a twenty pence tip, given to me in such a way that it felt an extra special twenty pence piece more than normal, she then told me of and pointed to a tree far in the distance on the ridge…

 On every midsummers night eve she has watched the sun fall onto and swallowed by the tree far away on the ridge and that it has grown big as she has withered and wizened with age. She watched this magical event with her mother as a child and then watched her grow old and remembers the last time her mother saw the tree swallow the sun. Maud tells me this may be the last time she will see it. She invited me to watch it with her. I declined, not wanting to invade this memory, but promised that I will take my grandchildren to see it. I watched her get in safely and knew that a little while later she will be back out sitting on her porch in her small front garden sipping a cup of tea enjoying the final midsummers eve sunset she will ever see. Maybe her mum will be holding her hand as they watch it together.

Crack whores in twin sets and bum cracks in cabs, dew drops on noses and whisky on baps, coke in brown paper that's tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things. Your humming this aren't you...

I am getting a better class of  artificially sexed up females high on crack, smack, coke and a smoke in the cab these days. Classic fashion statements are De rigueur for your average local crack whore. She is dressed in refinements, twin sets and good shoes...and a nice handbag. A perfect complexion that's straight out of the most expensive tin she could buy. Not your usual depiction of a crack whore is it? But with a decent disposable income, it separates you from the skank with more skin showing than clothing...or does it?



It's generally drugs that drives these women to offer the sometimes unofferable, they often want to fuck and it's gotta happen now. Now I doubt its the close proximity to my fabulous aftershave, or my perfectly manicured nails and expensive brogues that's causing these well dressed druggies to be so readily moistened and act so inappropriately.  In general, my normally well turned out good self, attracts the fifty something gay man that wants to be my daddy.

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"admittedly without a drug testing kit and their written permission it's hard to tell what these moist pantied lovelies are on at all sometimes."

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Probably the cause of this behaviour is more likely to be the poor quality of chemically produced alcopophol, and your good old honest crack cocaine that instigates the fumbling of false nailed fingers grabbing my jewels, but admittedly without a drug testing kit and their written permission it's hard to tell what these moist pantied lovelies are on at all.


It may well be that in times of austerity it brings out another new culture of refinement, I think back to the well and expensively dressed teddy boys and girls of the fifties, oh what drugged up fiends they were hmm?


I also can't tell who is going to run off without paying, or who's going to get violent, these acts of lawlessness were normally reserved for the young and daring, or students. There isn't a "type" anymore. I can't look out for someone "dodgy" I'm more likely to get scammed or beaten by men in a lovely worsted single breasted Italian suit with the made by hand label in Italian still attached to the sleeve. Hoodies tend to wear "hoods" because that's what most sports shops sell these days.


It's normal now for me to do the early evening drug run, the twin setted females and clone labelled men getting their orders in for the night, I pick up Mr X and friend (there's always "a friend") from a vague address and take him to another corner of another road, wait, then take them to another vague address to drop off the "playstation-xpoxy game" that their "mate" wants.


What about the skanky looking ho types dressed in nothing but a belt and a handkerchief then?  Nah! They're wearing what the Nextnewprimart Look group tell 'em to wear... Clothing is designed to shock any parents generation, anyway, the average teen or early twenty something wouldn't be seen dead dressed in sensible crack whore clothing now would they?




Until next time...

Confessions of a Cab Driver Part 3: Through The Night Darkly...

 This is not a work of fiction...

I know all about you... Yes you! You're the one reading this aren't you? You're the one that walked on by when I was being beaten weren't you? Surely you must remember when the crowd from the pub that were drinking a toast to their dead father, came out and kicked me under my cab? Ooo! how many men and women was it that beat and kicked me and my fellow cabby from another daddy? Twenty five? Thirty? yes really! That many! Don't you remember?

Or remember the time when you were peeking out of your curtains to see a lone cab driver being hacked at with a large kitchen knife by your neighbour, I KNOW you remember that one! Because you told me about it months later when you got in my cab, and laughingly recalled the scared Cab driver running down the road. I must admit you was a bit shocked to learn I was that Cab driver, but... how we laughed eh?

"He acknowledged my right to clean lungs, y'now, the ones he was gonna tear out of my chest, yes, those ones..."

Still shaking your head hmm? Maybe this will jog your memory. Do you remember when that father and two of his sons dragged me out of my cab and threatened to kill me? What was that for? Umm...That's it! I remember now! They did it because I missed their turning by a whopping margin of about ten metres, thankfully for me they were going on holiday that weekend and the father was persuaded not to gut me because that meant him missing the family vacation, Oh! Now you remember! Haha! I still pass by your door on the odd occasion, y'now, the one you hid behind.

You SURELY must remember this? Remember when the customer got in and head butted the dash? You were right outside pointing at him, remember? I calmed him down and drove him to where I thought was his home, you saw him crying outside your house didn't you, a couple of your friends had a look as well, good thing I drove off then, you may have had to witness when he had me in that judo type hand and neck hold, and watching me cry out in pain would have brought more of your friends to the window to have a look I suspect hmm!


Didn't finish there though did it? He took me to a further four houses, my hand and neck in this constant painful hold, funny? You were there at each one, listening to his cries, screams and ranting at you over his times with his family in the house where you now live. I was the only person that that heard that he was going to kill me when we stopped, AND felt the tendons in my hand and my neck, decide that they couldn't take much more pain, was only me though, wasn't it?


I remember you in the police car, I didn't see your face, but I'm sure you saw me, I was the one flashing you when he had his head in his hands crying, you must have had something more important to do I'm sure, maybe my eyes didn't have enough fear in them yet...


Ooo! how long was I gone? An hour and a half-ish? I ended up in bexhill in a back street outside your flat don't you remember? The time had come to kill me I was being told, but not without him having a fag first, he asked me if he could smoke in the cab, I have no idea why I said no, but I did, maybe when your worn down enough you just want it to end. courteously, he acknowledged my right to clean lungs, y'now, the ones he was gonna tear out of my chest, yes, those ones...


He had one foot on the ground and one in the foot-well when he lit his fag, It was at the exact moment I also floored the accelerator, he bounced off my cab and two other cars like a pinball before finally rolling to a stop, and as I turned the corner, I could feel my cancer ramping up brownie stress points. My cancer? I'm thinking it's none of your business at the moment, I have told of it elsewhere.

I went back to my office mad as hell, demanding why no one even missed me. The guy laying outside my office threw a bottle of something at me as I left, a final humiliating we don't fucking care salute, you were there as well, I still see you in your cosy police car from time to time...

Oh! I've seen this madman that tortured me for an hour and a half a couple of times since then, laughing and joking with his friends, he doesn't come to my cab office that he used to frequent so often in the past anymore...


I've got pages and pages of incidences of your punches and digs, and your spittle dripping down my face, and like many tens of thousands of Cab drivers all over the world, they will have too.


You were there every time something happened, you watched AND took part, its not the others, there are no others! It was just you... and me.


Did you find this quite uncomfortable to read? I imagine your adrenaline levels spiked just a little, may have even got your back up a bit. I'm sorry, but spare a thought for the fifty four taxi drivers that have been murdered in the UK in the last eighteen months or so, fifty four men that got ready for work, and kissed their families goodbye for what was really the last time.


You were there too, don't you remember?



This has been subsequently published in the Sabotagetimes.com