Men! We are at War...

Pippa's Arse this, Pippa's pert bottom that, What is the matter with you lot? Pippa Middleton's arse is not a religious icon, admittedly though, it was discovered by the world in a big church. Get a grip men, it's part of their plan for us to focus on her derrière whilst the rest of them take over the world.  Confused? You should be, you and I mister are in the middle of a long war...

What am I talking about? Women. Birds. Babes. Chicks. or Oi!  Whatever your favourite cute slang word for them may be, you don't understand them do you?  You throw your hands up in the air and accept the age old bollox that men are from Mars and women are from another galaxy, Andromeda probably, that's near but far enough away isn't it?

You've seen him right? We all have, the pug ugly bloke with the stunner on his arm, what's he got you haven't hmm?

My commander in chief.

The answer is not what he has, it's how he talks to women. He is a general.  One of our glorious leaders in the war.  Men judge other men, ie; I feel better because I'm taller, dress well, and have more money than him. Women have created that reoccurring thought beast.


A woman doesn't really think like that.  Ever.  To attract a female and proceed into the upper ranks of manhood is far more basic and simple for most beaten submissive men to understand. Now your thinking come on then Mr Big Bollox what is this great magical secret?

Take The Piss.

Three words. The only ammo we will ever need in this war. Pippa's arse? Pah! I would have slapped it and sent her on ahead to get the beers in.

Successful Battle Strategy Example: 1.1 section 1. first paragraph, taken from the blue book of being a man, which is green by the way...

"At a bar, you've seen a filly you'd like to um... Talk to.  Walk up to her, (she is already preprogrammed with a selection of laughs, put down's and cold icy stares at your weak line of chat) buy yourself a drink.  Never, ever, buy her a drink.  Instigate eye contact and say something simple like, "Your top doesn't match your shoes" and walk away, don't make any more eye contact or look back. Guaranteed during the course of the evening she will approach and ask YOU what you meant.

Your hair colour is clashing with me shirt

Ok, she has finally approached you, now what? Remember she is probably an admiral of her local fleet of fillies, like the navy, there are more admirals than captains. Note: she is ready to fire off a diatribe at you that is rapid and well rehearsed.  Tell her someone as stunning as her should really buy better shoes.  Stop.  Tell her you have to talk to a friend and walk away from her a second time.

You have now thrown her the equivalent of a stun grenade, she is standing there outside her comfort zone. You have complimented her and rejected her, she is confused. You haven't disrespected her.  You haven't invaded her space or made any sexual innuendos. She has a highly sophisticated inbuilt defend and destroy system to use on you. But her system has just crashed. The "Blue screen of death" to coin a phrase has just gone off in her head.

Walk back immediately during her reboot, be quick, they reactivate pretty damn fast. look at your watch, make sure it's a good one as women naturally have good profiling skills, Lorus and Timex and anything that can be bought from the Argos catalogue tells them you are a dick. Tell her to put your number in her phone, explain you are busy for the next couple of days, but to ring you and maybe you'll have a coffee at a place of your choosing and if you're free and have the time. You have not relinquished any control.  You have not been threatening or demanding. You have told her nothing about you, but you HAVE told her you're in charge and you are not needy or wanting.  She now believes she is dealing with a senior officer. You told her she was stunning and she wants to hear more...

         End of communication.

Leer and you get nowhere. Yes, women love to be told they are attractive, do it in a slimy way and they gain control over you and the battle is lost. Women love MEN, not men that mirror a woman.

Even if you are in a "Relationship" the war is raging on...(what the fuck happened to the concept of boyfriend and girlfriend? It doesn't even appear as an option on facebook! Not even noticed that have you?) The word "Relationship" is a heavy armoured weapon they use to smash you quickly into being a submissive twat. Its a word that YOU should own to flatten her into submission when you feel the time is right to take the next step, not her.

The Battle Plans: excerpt from section 3.2. "Living with the enemy"

A cheeky but effective way to keep your "Relationship" from sinking, Why not phone your partner at work, convince her to remove her undies and post them to YOUR workplace. (Next day open the envelope to a FULL viewing office, say nothing and put the undies in your drawer, act as if this is normal.) This is the same as getting a promotion by the way.  She will be coming home wearing no underwear, she will be expecting something and make sure you give it to her.

NB: DON'T send your pants in the post to her.  The post-room boys will open it and hand them to her in front of a full office. THIS is not the same kudos as YOU got. And don't be expecting something when she gets home, well, apart from a jab in the ging gangs with a stiletto. You lose this one soldier.

Confidence gentlemen and a bit of patience is the key. Oh! Women will tell you this article is a load of bollox. Ignore their ploy and subterfuge. Men, there is a war going on.


Take the Piss and do it well men. It's a war and they are winning, they almost have you where they want you, as a servile lap dog, the irony is they love a bad boy, whilst they demand YOU comply, they yearn for the bad boy, in their dreams and secret thoughts.

Rules of Engagement: excerpt from section 4.1

Attire, Buy good clobber, expensive always clean brogues, spend at least a months salary on a decent watch, Invest in a nail cleaning kit thing women have and keep nails and your teeth clean at all times.

She can handle any size weapon

Misbehave, don't disrespect. Throw a tantrum, don't be violent. And for fucks sake, man up! Lets stop this age of men showing women their female side, show her your manhood and show it often. Then stop. Throw her a googly, show her tenderness, love and little acts of beauty. (Don't buy her flowers, only do that for your mum or nan) YOU own all these weapons. So start using them now, She will only unconditionally surrender and end this damn war to the man that has these qualities.

One day in a not too distant future, our glorious fallen flat capped forefathers will salute their sons for retaking this battlefield. Pubs will be back, women will be in the snug as grateful girlfriends and Bars will be Banks again. And only then, will you be a man my son...

I Was a Strippers Runner.

It's 1973. There is an oil crisis in the middle east.  The IRA are blowing up anything and everything. Richard Reid the shoe bomber is unfortunately being born and J. R. R. Tolkien has unfortunately just died. There is a secondary banking crisis that causes negative equity in the housing market and the UK has finally admitted to being within 30 miles of the near continent and has joined the European community.  A new value added tax has been stuck to everything and the Conservatives are in power and Sunderland only go and beat Leeds 1-0 in the FA cup final. Sort of sounds a bit familiar doesn't it.

It was during these series of events I trip and fall on a feisty and now angry stripper on a chilly and crisp November afternoon just off Soho Square in the West End of London...

 

After being called something clearly physically impossible to do by myself, I offered to carry her heavy bag as an apology. She accepted and pushed me into the club shouting at me to hurry the fuck up, I pass the big fat Greek doorman and followed her down the red lit stairs. "Look after my bag" I was instructed with a red painted long finger nail pointing within an inch of my eye, she warned me not to move. I sat and didn't move...


Another reason I didn't move was because I was in the second row of a smoky and dark, sparsely attended strip club watching a brightly lit stripper do what strippers do.  As I haven't seen many naked woman in the flesh, this became an instant highlight of the last four days.


My next surprise was Cathy.  A brunette, pale skinned and curvy, full lips with the reddest of lipstick, was now wearing a blonde afro wig and on stage taking her clothes off to the now iconic song "Walk on the wild side" by Lou reed.  That song still stops me in my tracks at whatever I'm doing. I still remember her perfectly arched back and fine arse moving and gyrating to it.


I felt compelled to make myself useful for the privilege of watching her unbelievably perfect bottom and picked up the knickers and basque thrown to the side near the front of the small stage and I put them in her bag.  Within minutes Cathy the stripper now minus the wig, was marching towards me on the way out of the door, grabbed the bag I was holding and sped off past me, I followed her out willing my hard on to go away.


She watched me collect her outfit and gave me fifty pence, thanked me and rushed off.  I ran after her and asked were she was off to next.  she was already speed walking to another strip club 100 yards up the street, one of about fifteen or so she would perform in rotation most nights.


So the deal was done. Cathy often called me a cheeky little bastard, but I got £2 a night from her and in turn saved her money buying new outfits because either the top or the bottoms on most of them were nicked during a performance by the other girls or snatched away by paying punters wanting souvenirs. I was a goal keeper of knickers, the comedic fighter of old men to rescue a bra.  I even ending up on my arse on one occasion with two old men fighting it out over her black satin knickers, I say "Old" anyone over thirty at my nearly fifteen years of life would have been old to me.  One fight even stopped the show and Cathy and three other strippers on the stage were wetting themselves laughing at the tug of war I was having with her now stretched and torn frillies.

I'd like to think she regales her exploits to her grown up children today.  Maybe, she tells the tale of a young man who she once paid to pick up her knickers. Maybe, she has never ever told a living soul of her life as a stripper. Maybe...


Why was seeing naked women the highlight of those last four days when I fell over Cathy? Apart from the bleedin' heterosexual obvious, I was going "Home" every night to my bits of cardboard I stashed away to sleep in.  I was homeless.  A runaway.  I slept with one eye and a two inch penknife open in my oft shivering young fist.

The £2 a night deal with Cathy kept me fed on a breakfast, lunch and dinner from Wimpy's and bought me a warmer coat, she probably saved my life from the heroin oblivion that I was offered by gay pimps and some of my fellow street sleepers. In fact she never knew I slept on a cardboard mattress near Centre Point underneath the warm air ducts that kept me in a constant state of damp...

Less than ten years later I was running some of the more exclusive menswear boutiques of the day in the west end of London. I was dressing a multitude of major and minor celebrities, minor royalty and had Esq printed on my business cards.  Everyday I passed some of the doorways and strip clubs I slept and frequented on my way to work.  My own shop doorway had its homeless sleepers, I kicked them out and got rid of their cardboard, I didn't give them a second thought.  Ever.


During my time as a perfectly dressed, groomed and manicured twat I even masked my cockney accent with something more agreeable for my clientèle.  Now of course, I am full of eternal contrition and until now I have never really told of it in any great detail.  I have had some amazing careers in my life, adapting and reinventing myself as required, I think those days on the streets and now my life as a Taxi Driver and budding writer are as close to the real me as I'm ever likely to get.  I am also aware that I'm only ever a pound away from being homeless.  Indeed, we all are....

And I often wonder If Cathy still has a fit arse...



Update! This has since been published in The Observer on Sunday Magazine Broad sheet pull out special on Soho in the West End of London. (May 2015) it also had up to 7000 likes on their online version including The Guardian site.

NB: This is an expanded upon narrative from a previous piece I did called "Mirror In The Bathroom..." It can be found on your right in the popular posts section (eighth down) it goes into more detail about my time as a runaway and homeless teenager.

Thanks for reading. 



This has been published on the Sabotagetimes.com.

I Hate Football...

Hackney Marshes,
Europe's largest playing field.
1,500 players every Sunday.

My father Martin lived and breathed football.  From the age of five until I was eleven years old, he took me to nearly every home game at Spurs in Tottenham.  I saw, yawningly, every apparent so called master of the game from 1963 till 1969.  My dad was also in a Sunday football league club who's stupid name I cannot remember and played it down the Hackney marshes and practised it at the London Fields in Hackney every Thursday evening.  I was at every match, helping with the kit, ball boy and orange cutter upper and hander outerer.


I remember the smell of sweat, liniment and the heat that came off my dad and his mates.  All this boredom took place crazily in mid winter, when a fall meant a bloodied gash on your legs from a frozen solid ground.  I recall twenty two men creating a fog of steam on the pitch from breath and body.  I was immersed in football, a grounding in the game that would make other kids jealous. But, I fucking hated football.  I didn't get it then and I am in as much in the dark about it now.

Jimmy Greaves

Kicking a football seemed such a mind boringly dumb thing to do. At the spurs ground one Saturday, Jimmy Greaves nearly took my face off and knocked me over during a heavy tackle that pinned him to the fence I was leaning over, y'now the bit they put adverts on for chav football kits, drinks and fags.  Why didn't I move as this herd of power grunting and cursing came hurtling towards me and nearly took my head off?  I wasn't paying any attention.  I was looking at the green grass.  We didn't have much of it around the towered hamlet that was the cockney cultural centre I lived in called Bethnal Green. A stupid name for a worn away permanent bald patch of a scabby part of London.


Someone recently asked me in the Cab what did I think of Spurs, and to deliberately stupefy this eager and drunk football fan I told him I had no interest in horse ephemera, he paid me, called me a cunt and got out. All that happened when I deliberately antagonized this fan of overpaid and over here football playing egotists, was to enforce my belief further that punditry and fandom for football, is at best a distraction from sorry little dramas in their lives.

I miss my Dad, he hadn't been to Spurs in many years. he couldn't afford it and to my eternal shame I couldn't afford the time.  I should have took him. I should have stood with him in the same spot we occupied faithfully come rain or shine all those years ago.  I never did.

Recently, sadly, my brothers, sister and family members were standing outside the City of London crematorium by the hearse carrying my father. It was resplendently covered with flowery footballs, personal tributes and the Spurs insignia, all faithfully crafted and recreated in carnations.  One of those inexplicable moments happened that can never be explained in life.  Spurs manager Harry Redknapp walked on by to visit a loved one, he looked over, clapped and saluted my Dad and then continued on his walk to his own private destination of remembrance.

I missed this final poignant little tribute to my Dad, a footballer and lifetime fan of it.  I was looking away staring at the wind making shapes in the green grass, reminiscing...


I hate football...

Published in Sabotagetimes.com

The Women Of The World Unite And Make Some Pancakes Day.

Pancake day eh? Strangely, albeit humorously coinciding with International Women's Day and "Booty Appreciation Day!" UK women just don't Get the "Booty Appreciation Day" thing by the way, they'll probably be thinking its yet another new car or toddler shoe-wear promotion at Mothercare or something.  But what's happening today? Thousands of tweets on Twitter from women being all stand uppish and globally arsey about pancakes?

International Women's Day. A noble UN recognised institution going back over a century. The Suffragette battles for equality, nameless women standing up for their oppressed sisters. Noble and noteworthy indeed one and all.  But what do I hear and read this morning? Women moaning about making pancakes! On this century old day of campaigning for woman's equal rights, instead of bemoaning your lot in life why don't you go out and buy the ingredients needed to make some lovely pancakes?

Ooo! Have I got your back up now? Let me remind you it's normally the matriarch of a family that pass traditions down to the next generation. If my dear old Mum was still alive today, I'd have driven to East London to sit in her kitchen and stuff myself with her pancakes, it was one of the very few things I looked forward to as a child and those yummy smelling memories will make me smile forever.
 

I'm just saying if anyone wants to buy me this..

You go ahead and rebel, all you self promoting do-gooding trendy women of the UK. You're the ones missing the point of how special today is.  Confusing your roles as mothers and matriarchs with your bemoaning of low pay and lack of status in the workplace is a crime against all your children, men, relatives AND friends that have no mums.  Yes, dads make great pancakes too, I know I do! But when your mum makes them...sigh.


So why not bang your drum tomorrow hmm? Of course, it being Ash Wednesday you will probably hijack the day and moan about fags won't you? AND ignore the fact its the start of Lent for millions of people.  Get in the kitchen today and create some new memories for your children and rekindle some old ones for others... And invite some of us orphans around while you're at it...


Oh! Annie Lennox, Stop banging drums for every cause on the planet and toddle off home and make your kids some pancakes there's a love...

What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up?

Out with the old...

"What do you want to do when you grow up?" Ignoring and not hearing the question, I sat instead in wonder at the new bendable grey vinyl seat I was sitting on, wondering if it will melt if I leave one of my 10p ciggies on it and glancing out of the window at the old school chairs that had been here since the olden days being chucked on the back of a lorry. My ears are disconnected from my thirteen year old brain as not to tax it during this rare multi tasking event. There is a hairy faced man trying to get my attention with a slap to the side of my Linco beer washed long haired empty head...

In with the new...

I'm trying not to make eye contact with the boring hairy faced man posing the question to me. Instead I'm fiddling about in my blazer pocket trying to dig out a rogue sherbet pip that was lodged in the corner.  I'm wondering how to get it to my mouth without this idiot with a shelf of an eyebrow from noticing.  That eyebrow, it went from crows foot to crows foot, a continuous track of hair. Dam my thirteen year old mind if only I could focus for more than three sec... Ooo! Look! A fly...



"Who do you want to be like Boy?"

"Gary Glitter sir" I replied.

I don't know why I said Gary Glitter, because that was a new rhyming slang for a shitter - that's toilet in middle English if you're not up to speed with East Anglian pre-Roman dialects. I meant to say Lou Reed, which is still slightly toilet like I suppose.


"Gary who?" he says with his face scrunched up and all of his facial hair meeting in the middle of his face.

"Glitter sir," with a heavy sigh wishing I'd said Lou Reed.

I can't remember beyond that. Asking a hormonal and oft distracted 13 year old boy with a semi permanent hard-on what he wants to do and who he wants to be like when he grows up is like asking a woman to quickly choose wallpaper, or a handbag or tampon size for the first time. You get my drift.

36 is a good age

I think 36 is a good age to ask what you REALLY want to do when you grow up, you won't be at work fiddling in a pocket for sweets or gazing at a skip in the car park waiting for something to be thrown in it, your more likely be thinking if you go in early tomorrow you can dump that futon your dog shit on into it. Your hard on is more likely to be under control and you will have mastered making good eye contact, apart from the odd glance at a weird mono eyebrow, mole and other strange facial edifice that you can use as conversational currency down the pub.




Thirty six was the age I left London for Hastings on the south coast. I had a business, and after a couple of years, drove it into the HM Customs official receivers wall. Yes, thirty six is a good age. You've probably been in a crap job for a while now, and maybe like me, have been hiding from the tax man and vat people. Divorced and permanently bitter. Your scowl has the makings of scar like wrinkles in your face and you have decided, that maybe its time to do what YOU want in life. Which for me meant becoming a Taxi driver for a few months while I decided this next phase in my life, just to tide me over you understand. I'm still driving a Cab twelve years later.



I'm glad my careers "advisor"  didn't help me in my quest for glitter and fame, even though silver lamé is relatively cheap these days. Well this idiot didn't help anyone, which is why I locked the security dogs from the next door building site in the classroom with him. And as for what girls wanted to do when they grow up? Fuck knows! I never asked one to be in my gang did I? 

 What do I want to be and do when I grow up? Dunno yet, watch this space... Arse! I said THAT twelve years ago didn't I? Bollox...

The Last Lament Of The Pub...

Not so long ago, in a pub, any pub, anywhere, there used to be a song in every Man's heart, a smile and a hearty slap that said come and join us in a drink, the females were sat at the tables smiles aplenty.  The Landlord and bar staff, the orchestrator's and subjects of jocular remarks selling single malt whiskies to those that wink and know best.  The lad at the bar staring at the barmaid's breasts.  The clunk of dart hitting board and the Ooo's and whoops of success that one width of a wire would bring.  Happy one and all.  A night finished and a wander home of echoed laughter down the street, shhh's to remind us not to wake the sleeping...

Trust me, she looked good after a couple of pints...

Well...That's what I remember, it was where and how I served my apprenticeship of a small part of life. Learning to drink. It is where I learnt to respect old Ted and his mates.  They told me stories that would leave me open mouthed in shock and wonder at their escapades during the war.  A couple more single malts and they would tell stories of loose ladies, a couple more and they would tell ghost stories that would shut the pub down for ten minutes during the telling of it.


It was in a time, that from the outset the Landlord knew you were maybe six or eight months from legally being able to drink at all, but the nod from your betters and elders told the Landlord that now is the time for your apprenticeship to begin.  A pint was put in your hand, gone in minutes, another, then another, yet another still...The walk home was broken with retches of your stomach trying to empty till nothing came, a silent scream your tummy was making, letting you know it doesn't like to be filled that quickly with alcohol and hops.


The apprenticeship continued.  The old fellas tut tutted and you were told to apologise to the Landlord, they silently knew they orchestrated your retch filled walk home the night before.  Advice to pace and not to mix your drinks came from the man that smelled of whisky and pipe smoke that had the aroma of sweets, he told you that if you want to die, do it slowly like the jaundiced quiet man who's liver is all but leather sitting alone and silent at the end of the bar.  But, for most, the apprenticed learnt to drink and respect anyone older than you by a trio of decades or more.


I know a lot about drinking, I know that in 2011 getting drunk is a target that must be reached quickly and by all means possible.  A drug deal in the toilet, or a little bit of something your trendy mate is bringing around will help the transition from sober to shit-faced, soon...very soon.  Combine it with a case of discounted cheap beers from your local supermercado, you are indeed drunk before you hit your favourite slut or cock pulling ex bank that's licenced to sell alcohol.


The little girl who's barely over eighteen who is happily serving you into a near coma, isn't going to give any advice to stop or slow down the newly apprenticed drinker.  The trendy preening fuckwit barman with skinny jeans and a peekaboo highlighted hairdo isn't going to tut tut you into slowing down either, they don't care if you are about to be smashed out of your head.  The Landlord has gone corporate, he sits in his worsted suit in an office that's quite possibly hundreds or even thousands of miles away.


Follow a "procedure" and you will get a licence to sell alcohol and be legally able to slam anyone into oblivion.  Responsible drinking isn't just your responsibility, it WAS all our responsibilities, it WAS the social order of things that went way down the line into the midsts of time.  We are now losing thirty pubs a week in this country, all mostly Victorian, some older.  Nobody builds pubs anymore to learn or apprentice in.  They turn shops, banks and warehouses into bars.  Nobody builds pubs.

ANY newly created drunk in the last fifteen to twenty years aren't role models of fuck all anymore.  Where have all the happy drunks gone? They have been long buried, long cremated in neat little rows of stones at your local cemetery.  Up the line in time, drunks are becoming vicious, uncontrollable and soon to be a burden on the National Health service that was created by the cemetried masses of our recent past.


Do I have time for any pitiful whining when a drunk gets into my cab? No, but they will complain they've drunk too much yet again and wont have learnt anything from their last spew ending binge. Most will have that smug gormless look though, after all, they think at the very least they deserve a medal for their gallant attempt to get smashed out of their heads.


If you get in a cab and your immediate thought is, this driver is a miserable bastard, it may be because he wants you out of his cab asap. He doesn't like the smell of sick breath and a dying liver. He doesn't like listening out for the sound of vomit making its way up from a bloated stomach so he has time to pull over and save his cab from a soaking of bile and piss.  I know unfortunately myself and my fellow cabbies from other daddies will have to smell it again next week and the week after... until one day we are picking up their relatives from a hospital because their liver and other organs finally gave up...

I Know a Man That Tried to Assassinate a World Leader...

Hitler with Franco

I know a man, who lives near me, who in 1964 at eighteen years of age, hitch-hiked across France and acquired explosives, crossed the Spanish border, made his way to the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid and was arrested just before his attempt to assassinate the dictator General Francisco Franco, whom for 39 years was the Spanish military general and head of state of Spain. Franco had a total of 30 attempts on his life. For me, that would have been a sign to stop being such a nasty cowardly little bastard of a dictator.


I don't actually KNOW the would be assassin personally, I know OF him, he lives around my way, I have even read his autobiography "Granny made me an anarchist" and his name is Stuart Christie. A Scottish international revolutionary militant, publisher, anarchist propagandist, writer, translator and editor and considered an all round subversive type. He certainly made the militant trade unionists of the seventies look like they should have been his bitches.  He was also found not guilty in 1972 after one of the longest criminal trails in British history of throwing flour bombs at miss world contestants, Bombing embassies, police stations, blowing up conservative members of parliament cars and the property of a few cabinet ministers.

His Autobiography

I thought about contacting him and having a coffee to discuss what would have been one of my few articles not related to feckin' taxis. In the movies, you see these reporter types pull out a little pad, lick their pencil and scribble away in shorthand with a bit of tongue hanging out. So I would have felt a complete dick with the brand new A4 sized reporters pad I bought from Tescos. It would have been like turning up with a Nobo white board. So I bottled it and didn't.


So what do I know about him that you would find interesting enough to carry on reading instead of checking your facebook status? Was he dangerous? MI6 thought he was. Interpol thought so too, General Franco was reasonably confident he was that's for sure.

Instead of being publicly garrotted to death which was normal for your assassin terrorist types in Spain at the time, he was sentenced to twenty years in the Carabanchel prison, which at the time was the biggest prison in Europe and built to house political prisoners. He was freed on Sept 21 1967 after a letter from his mum and public pressure from the likes of Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre. Who are they? Well google them you lazy bollox, what am I? Your feckin' history teacher?

He was an editor of the unauthorised British edition of Pravda. the notable Leon Trotsky was his counterpart in Russia albeit 60 plus years earlier. Christie still writes and publishes many books and articles on Anarchy. He also runs www.christiebooks.com

A quote from The Anarchist Encyclopedia:

Stuart Christie

"Christie was under constant surveillance and harassment of the police and blamed for the actions of numerous guerilla groups, such as the "First of May Group"-leading, in 1970 to eighteen months in jail before charges of "conspiracy to cause explosion" failed, when he was cleared after a long trial in 1972."

 Well, there you go then, a rather short potted history of someone I have not knowingly met yet, someone that should have had a film or one of them docudrama thingamajigs done on him by now. I may even have taken him home or down to the pub in the cab.  He is a Glaswegian with a history and a penchant for blowing up dictators and allegedly was organising subversive plots all over the place. He is in his retirement years now. But I suspect GCHQ still has a tap on his phone and MI6 are still sifting through his rubbish every now and again...


Will I one day have the nuts to say hello to him in the town? Nah! I've heard about them Glasgow kisses...and anyway, I get all girly and silly with people I genuinely admire. Bollox, I gave away my politics there didn't I? Oh well! That's me on the GCHQ and MI6 lists then, I'm off to burn me gas bill before they go through me bins...

The man himself actually emailed me and said he found this article "Very droll" So, according to Dictionary.com it means he found it amusing in an odd way and whimsically humorous! Er... that means he likes it right? I..I mean he isn't likely to blow bits of me up or anything is he? I mean I'm not dictatorish or anything and I'm not related to anyone in government.  Well...the mrs works for the council and um... oh bollox never mind...

Confessions of a Cab Driver, Part 7: I Have Agreed To Do Bad Things...Very Bad Things....

So...you want me to kill EVERYONE in the pub

From murder to theft. Cattle rustling to debt collection. I've been asked for my help to do it.  I hope there isn't a "Bad things I've agreed to list." at the pearly gates held by a clip board tapping angelic jobs worth, if so I'm completely bolloxed.  I've agreed to do bad things and some were very bad things indeed...


I've agreed to...Go back and kill everyone in the pub he has been kicked out of for him. He would, but his hand feels broken where he punched a wall and he has football in the morning.


I've agreed to...Run over a cyclist on the way back after I have dropped him and his girlfriend off because the cyclist looked like a "Poof." Got paid an extra fiver to do it too.

I've agreed to...Come back later and help him kill his next door neighbours dog. He has a spare machete I could use.

I've agreed to...Fulfilling her rape fantasy, she will leave her door open and I'm to creep in after my shift and rape her, "Any time I want."

I've agreed to...Drive to a field, be met by two men who were to give me something.  I am to take this to another address. The "Something" when I got there was two struggling sheep held down by four idiots.


    "If you ARE an idiot and think Taxi drivers will do anything as long as its on the meter, we would be the cheapest assassins on the planet and you would already have a calibre sized hole in your head."

I've agreed to...After I drop my customer off, go back to where we saw a dead deer, "Gut it first to keep the meat fresh."  Haul the dead 3/4 ton deer stag into the boot of my cab on my own, leave it overnight hanging out of the boot parked outside my house. Take it to a butcher he knows, get the cash then drive back to his house, give him the money. He will then give me "A couple of bob for my trouble." Yes, he was that stupid.

You want me to do what?

I've agreed to...Being shouted at outside his house so his wife could hear because he was three hours late home after fiddling with a floozy. He made me rehearse the dialogue as I drove him home, he was to shout about how late I was picking him up and I was a robbing bastard and he wasn't paying me. This actually happened without a hitch, word for word...except the bit where he hit me while his wife watched at the door in her dressing gown and slippers.  That bit wasn't in the rehearsal and was a complete surprise, he did whisper sorry though. He prepaid me a tenner for that slap.

I've agreed to...Drive to a business address and simply ask "Is the cheque ready" after what seems like a panic stricken few minutes with everybody quietly running about, a cheque is thrust into my hand, I then return it back to the person that hired me.  I later find out that this company uses cab drivers and couriers to get companies to pay up, they tell them they are sending the boys around. The reason it works is simple, the driver is normally so calm and polite when asking for the money he often has no idea he IS the "Menacing" boy that has been sent around.

There you have it, Cab drivers are often asked to do “Things” by the stupid AND the clever. Thing is, sometimes the stupid are clever and visa versa.  What is this potential killing, raping and thievery worth? Nothing. On the meter.  Base money.  The cheapest option that is available to idiots to access a man and a vehicle for however long they want.

We all know if a person wants to seriously kill people and their neighbours dog and asks a complete stranger to help. THEN provides a spare machete to do it, they obviously need psychiatric assistance.  If you Are an idiot and think Taxi drivers will do anything as long as its on the meter, we would be the cheapest assassins on the planet and you would already have a calibre sized hole in your head...

Apart from the debt collection and being slapped and shouted at, I didn't do any of the other things mentioned above. Obv.  Scarily, they were very sincere in their offers.  Trying to get a cab driver to do dodgy shenanigans for the minimum fare just highlights the level of IQ these idiots have and the small disposable income they have available, which equates to roughly my £2.50 minimum and 10p per hundred metres. Cheap ain't I?

Why agree at all? Just tell them an affirmative no! Right? I agree to this inanity to get them out of my cab quicker, easier than having a rambling often drunk and aggressive dickhead explaining his master plan to me for twenty long, mind numbing and oxygen depleting minutes.

So, St peter, I didn’t ACTUALLY do any of the very BAD things above, can you remember that when I turn up at the pearlies? The thing with the stolen milk float and the coffin we can discuss. Obv.

The Cause, The Effect Of The Cause On The Affected, And What Caused It...

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Confessions of a Cab Driver, Part 4: Yes! I know You've had a Crap Day...

I know you've had a hard week. Your boss who's still not old enough to shave yet has been pissing on your efforts and nicking your best ideas as his own and Imogen in accounts has accidentally Cc'd you in a company wide email telling everybody what a dick you are and what a small penis you have. Please when consoling your sorry life, for once, have one or maybe ten less drinks tonight and don't mix all your drugs into a vodka and red bullock and down it. Because tonight, I will be the sole beneficiary of all your bitterness, fashion mistakes and possibly your unbridled latent gay sexual tendencies and prove that, maybe Imogen in accounts was right. You ARE a dick.

Oh! You need reminding what you did recently? You can't remember? well, last time...


You danced and dicked about in your seat to my banging quality tunes and let's face it, you're more than a bit fat. I had to turn the music off.  I didn't want uneven tyre wear and give my auto self adjusting headlights a fit.

You got in the cab with your bucket of chicken and ask me if I wanted to see your giblets.

You punched my cab as I drove by. According to top physicists and anyone with a brain, mass times velocity etc, equals it must have feckin' hurt loads...

You wore stockings to that annual gimp n' flog dinner in town and they weren't even a matching pair! The vision of you tucking the excess fat into the tops of your fat hairy thighs and asking me to help still haunts me...

You fell asleep on my bonnet dribbling, I deposited you on to a nearby pile of dogs crap and regurgitated kebab meat. I am quite proud of my reversing skills and do it with a sushi chef like spatula precision.


You wobbled towards me covered in sick with a foot long saliva drip hanging from your lip in the hope of getting in my cab. I reversed slowly to match your speed to deliberately fuck with your head.  The vision of you punching your legs and shouting at them to hurry up is one of the highlights of my existence.

You acting like an idiot because you've been mixing your drugs, got you kicked out, you were far from home AND you didn't have any money. I normally provide a hoop and stick to continue your journey, but this is subject to stock availability and paying a heavy deposit and whether or not I can be arsed.

Nb: A fake Rolex may be considered as a deposit if it has all the correct markings and is designed to fool an expert. The ones designed to fool a chav on holiday in Turkey won't be accepted.

No, I don't know where his wallet is.

You fell into an unconscious drunken heap between two parked cars and flopped out your arms for a stretch JUST as I drove past. I, of course stopped and reversed over them again to see what I have just driven over. Sorry about that

You got in my Cab and after a while you put your hand between my thighs and stupidly asked "What shall I put as my facebook status in the morning hmm?" I suggested "Deceased" as I made a hole in your hand with my pen.

You asked, No. Menacingly demanded that I wait whilst you go back in to the bar, finish your drink and kiss all your friends goodbye...twice. I did wait, so when you eventually came out, you watched me drive off giving you my surface to air middle finger missile thing that only I think is funny.

Oh! Bollox... Forget all of the above. You're not going to pay attention to anything I've said are you? Just pay me that's all I ask. I'll even laugh at your jokes and carry you to your door. Just pay me that's all...

I know! I know! I'm fickle and lack conviction... Oh! And my least favourite phrase? "Don't worry driver, I won't be sick." Because that's my cue to power slide, stop and push you out into a nettle bush because you're about to be sick...


This has been published in the SabotageTimes.com

East End Royalty and Me... Honest Guv...

East End royalty. My associations with the great and the dodgy are far reaching and by some, too far fetched to be believed. But no, my little bunnies of doubt, they are in fact all true...


In the mid fifties my Dad's half of the family descended on Bethnal Green from Ireland, they did their bit and succeeded to overpopulate an already overly populated East End. My grandad's sister spawned a sprog that spawned Patsy Palmer, 'er of EastEnders fame.


I was given over to the nuns at the school of our Lady of Assumption to be caned and abused for a few years. Whilst there my fellow abusee and classmate Bernadette  had a brother that grew into the Tommy Walsh that does all that gardening and building malarkey on the telly.


In the early 60's aged five I was pushed aside by one of the Kray Twins cronies outside Pellichi's Cafe in Bethnal Green Road. My mum said the crony got a slap from Reggie and I got a pat on the head from Ronnie and a strawberry sarsaparilla.


As a teenager my girlfriend Joanne's sister went on to marry WBC World Flyweight champion Charlie Magri. While watching Charlie's "This is your life" tribute on the telly in 1983, my new young ex wife wasn't best pleased when I recalled the intimate details of my time with Charlie's sister in law, I slept on the settee for a couple of nights. I last heard he ran the Victoria pub in Bow, a pub I have had at least two fights in myself. It is now used by the trendy checked shirt and black jeans brigade and muso's that have been kicked out of Shoreditch for not being trendy enough.


My secondary school, now closed, is the set for the CBBC children's program M.I. High. Nope! I haven't a bleedin' clue what that is either. I frequented my school albeit quite infrequently with Michael Cashman ex EastEnders actor, gay rights charity founder of Stonewall and Labour MEP for the West Midlands. He would have been smashed and bashed if we found out that he had parliamentary tendencies back then.


In the 70's I occasionally played with an all too willing big breasted plaything in the stairwell of the flats I was dragged up in. My mate Terry who lined up to cop a feel AFTER me, had a little git of a brother who annoyingly always turned up when my fondling of this amply breasted prize was in full grope.  That little brother is now the Royally commanded comedian Micky Flanagan.  I'll give him bleedin' "out out"


Billy Ocean worked in the same rag trade sweatshop in Bethnal Green Road as my sister and mum. Billy still regularly says hello to my ex wife, why? I don't know. His ex touring and recording saxophonist Wes Magoogan famed for his alto sax solo on Hazel O'Connor's track "Will you" and the Ska revivalist band "The Beat" is a person of my acquaintance, he too was dragged up near me. He sadly chopped his fingers off with a chop saw.

I recall these and other ditties from the cities arse end of London now and again if I can indeed be arsed. I do have a captive audience seeing as I have control of the volume knob and the central locking and as I'm licensed to carry no more than four persons by the council of horrors down my way, I could entertain and give vast monologues of complete bollox all night long.  But, I am oft dumbfounded and entertained more by the very minor and the very ordinary instead.

Reflections...

Some of the people I meet whilst doing my job, are not, perhaps the type you would want to meet, or the type you would want to have a coffee with. These people you probably wouldn't even sit next to on a train, maybe its the sixth sense you have to keep away from that "sort." They have strife ridden lives, like the woman you nearly sat next to on the bus this morning, or the anonymous lady with the bad odour that has just brushed past you in the shop, or maybe the angry young man that swore at nothing, just across the street from you...

There is a soul...

Its a time of year I often use for reflection, trying not to be selfish in a world that encourages you to be selfish. Indeed, my own immediate thoughts recently seem to be organising a trip to London to see the men and women that are my own children. But I needed to stop and reflect, still nagging in the back of my mind are the vulnerable people I've met doing my job. They are not remarkable people, their stories are not any more harrowing than the horrors you read in the papers, but they are however, no less unimportant either. I want to tell you about a few of these souls, I hope they and in fact all those that haven't got any family and friends to help them, get a break in life and a little bit of peace...

I recently took a young girl to her home that looked all of 12 yrs of age but was in fact 17 and now all too regularly self harms. She had her year old daughter taken from her by social services and adopted because of the abusive actions of a vicious boyfriend. She found out too late that abuse wasn't a normal part of life and even now that the abuser boyfriend is no longer around, she will never see her daughter again.


I also recall recently listening to a well spoken 73 year old woman who was unkempt, unwashed and unloved, she had lived in rural Ireland for 30 years with her husband who ousted her out onto the street with nothing. A 25 year old imported Thai replaced her. On the same night I met a woman that was made redundant recently and found a cleaning job that brought in just £10 too much a week on top of her meagre benefits and now has a criminal record for just trying to pay bills.

There is a soul in those eyes...


I also remember I spent a moment in time talking with a woman that saw her toddler walk out of a first floor window to his death on the pavement below. She is fed up of telling people why she only now has two children and wants to stop retelling and reliving that terrible moment. I told her maybe she should just tell them she has three children, always and forever three.


I've met women who have to prostitute themselves to keep their partner stocked with the latest computer games, beer money and the daily little wrap of crack he craves. I meet women that have such low esteem, they will do anything just to make their partner smile at them every now and again. I've met women that drink to forget the times they tried and failed to make a relationship work, because they felt it was their duty, not their partners, to indeed make it work.

There is a soul in those eyes you have just looked away from.

Some people, desperate people, I've met doing my job, will do anything to protect the family, they will steal, prostitute and beg to put food on the table. More often than not they forget they also need to look after themselves. Thankfully these days, most of us don't even have to think about doing such things, would you if you had to? I have equally met callous people that wouldn't care less for any of the above.

The song says only women bleed, sometimes it does seem that way doesn't it.

Here are some helpful numbers, I used Cruse more than once, they are wonderful caring people.

Samaritans helpline 08457 90 90 90

Cruse bereavement care 0844 4779400

Childline 0800 1111

Confessions of a Cab Driver Part 7: Loose Women And I Don't Mean Them On The Telly...

Here are ten ladies of little or no virtue that have been in the cab in the last twelve months. As my wife may decide to crunch my nuts with the 10oz flowery printed hammer she waves at me now and again, this could well be my last top ten involving women. So, here are the ladies that even the most desperate would say no to.

I certainly did... Er, say no I mean...

1. Whilst attempting to show a young lady how to alight and enter a vehicle in a more ladylike manner, I was forced to watch her front ladies bits wink at me as she got in and out of the cab about ten times... or was it 15 times? Or... maybe it was twenty...


2. Three young triple bellied ladies, that obviously didn't fall far from the ugly tree Jabba the hut must now live in, did the "Lets embarrass the taxi man thing" by all getting their large thrupenny bits out...


3. An extremely drunk lady in a tutu was offering various sexual delights if I let her in the cab, she continually banged on the window and was quite determined to get in. Thing is, I wasn't in my cab, it was locked and empty. Myself and other cabbies from other daddies were happily watching this vision of kebab grease dripping loveliness through the window of my office as we all enjoyed a nice cup of tea.


4. An elderly lady gave me her back door key and asked me to pop round after my shift. She mumbled something about "Her little bitch" I never did find out if she meant I was her new little bitch, or if she had given me her key to walk her dog. I still have the key tho...


5. Woman got in my cab wearing a strap on dildo. She said she wore it all evening at a party and offered to "Do me" with it, of course I refused. Pointing at the strap-on, she continued and said "Do me then"  I did feel a bit insulted that my natural god given appendage wasn't required. Not that I would have, but y'now my ego and a bag of change is all I have...


6. Not all of the morally irresponsible are female. A gay guy wanting to lick me and taste me, but he made the mistake of invading my personal space which is not unlike an international exclusion zone. As I dragged him out of the cab he was wailing "Don't do my face" So I didn't. Grown men crying at the roadside is so pathetic. And his shoes SO didn't match his outfit...


7. Young lady told me I was quite screwable, As I looked at this five stone eager temptress I did wonder into what? I told her I don't screw very well though, as I have a bayonet fitting...


8. A deal I was recently presented with, was I could have the cab fare, but I had to reach into her underwear and pull out the money. As I am always fiscally challenged and have to do things I'm not proud of to ensure my mortgage is paid, I lifted her tummy up and pulled out the neatly folded tenner and gave her the change. Antibacterial gel is so handy isn't it?


9. A middle aged man offered me the "Opportunity" to "Enjoy" his wife whom was also sitting in the back, as long as he could watch. The last time I was asked this I pretended to be gay, but that ended up with the wife wanting to watch...


10. Scottish woman tapped on the window and straight away offered me sex, right now. She said she wanted to "Live for today" I told her I only live for tomorrow and drove off...

10a. Young lady said she wanted to get dirty and naughty before she gets home. Excitedly, I suggested we could kick over a wheelie bin. But she got out with the hump calling me an unmentionable thing I really cannot divulge.


I have dozens of occasions that are rather too graphic and sick to be published. Don't try to get me to tell, because I most certainly will not. Well... Alright! Offers over £50 quid gets you all the filth... and I'll even email it with a plain brown paper packaging type background.


Disclaimer.

With the exception of putting my hand down a ladies under garment to retrieve a tenner, (remember, I am fiscally challenged) I didn't use a strap-on or lick and touch any of these rough morally challenged ladies of little virtue in the making of this article. I am clearly a victim and my trauma wasn't covered by any injury lawyers for me type insurance policy either. I may have potentially invited a divorce hearing from Mrs T. M. (again) and I hope the hell I went through this year to bring you this article is appreciated.

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.

____________________________________________________________

"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."

____________________________________________________________

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...

A Sunday Morning in Brick Lane...

You may have read a previous piece of mine on my blog here titled "Mirror in the bathroom." (Find it if you wish in the search bar. It's about my brief time as a runaway, living and surviving out of bins in the West End of London etc... In it you will have read about my battle to free myself from a tyrannical mother and how our relationship changed.

This piece is about a very brief moment in time one Sunday morning years after I ran away and subsequently came back home. It's 1981, I've been married for three years and I have a two year old daughter. I work in the West End as a trendy snotty boutique manager and every day I pass the bins I ate out of when I was a not so snotty broken and put upon 14 year old...

It is a cold Sunday morning in Brick Lane market.  A regular trip for me to grab some  bargains for Christmas. I was brought up in this market, being now not so far away from my own dotage, I can now at last proudly lay claim to being a proper cockney, at the time alas I was not so proud of it at all because of my enviable position as a manager of one of the best fashion houses in the West End, I even retrained my voice with a much more pleasing one that my clientèle expected.  Hiding my bastard heritage was a good thing right?

I caught sight of a familiar face in a heavy shuffling crowd of breath, brollies and winter hats.  It was my little Mam.  The crowd parted as I got nearer to surprise her and only then did the full sight of what was happening fill me with a gut ripping shame that picked me up and threw me back down onto the wet ancient cobbled streets I denied I was even from.


My mother was standing with her little shopping pram, in it were the ornaments I looked at on the mantelpiece all through my childhood, these were the special ones that didn't get thrown at you.  In her hands were the jewellery and trinkets she had collected over the years, she'd draped them over her small cold fingers neatly like a hand model to give maximum selling impact, her face ruddied with the cold. This strong powerful matriarch of my family was quietly mouthing something or other to get the attention of some of the passing throng to notice her.


I didn't speak, I pushed through the crowd consumed with rage and embarrassment to get to her.  My mother.  My one time nemesis.  A woman that could stop a man cold with just a stare was reduced to begging for someone to buy her loved trinkets.  A man was offering her "A fiver for the lot," I pounced on him telling him to fuck off, pushed and watched him disappear into the sea of shuffling wet coats.  I grabbed my Mam by the hand with her small metal grey shopping pram bouncing behind her and bulldozed my way through the browsers of tat.  I now realise it was the first time she had held my hand tight, instead of mine holding hers.

I took her away from the uneven broken ground we were on, a place even today you will find people selling stuff that maybe shouldn't be sold.  We stopped outside the Jolly Butchers Arms pub in Brick Lane and I bought both of us a polystyrene cup of hot steamy tea from a stall. She stared as if in a trance at the pub, it being full now of the merry and the cold.  She then snapped back into reality and looked at me with her bright blue teary eyes and told in her still rich Dublin brogue of the debt she was in and why she was trying to sell her little treasures...


I gave her most of my weeks wages right there and then.  She was promising me she wouldn't do it again, I realised by the look she gave me this probably wasn't the first time she put on her coat and scarf and "Nipped out for a while." I didn't explain to my now ex young wife why I came back empty handed from the market, but on Monday morning dressed in my usual expensive Italian finery I did give myself a loan from the till... a bit more cockney than I was when I locked up this mecca of fashion two days before.  I ran it for others that will always have more money than me.  Fuck 'em I thought as I folded the money into my pocket to feed my kids and pay my bills. Fuck 'em they could afford it...

This is a late edition to the above, I'm reminded about the Jolly Butchers Arms pub in the penultimate paragraph above, I have written about this place before, a long, long, time ago...This REALLY is my beginning, This is about my Mum.  Shall I continue with it? Or let it just fade away...

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

                                                                                            -Jonathan swift

Chapter one

It's the late fifties, a sterile tiled room, in it was my soon to be Mam...

She was pushing as hard as she could, felt herself tearing from the effort. The room was lifeless and grey. The only colour was the blood on the bed. Sister Mary, the head of the home, was as impatient and still as cold as she was when she opened the door to her 21-year-old sister, whom three weeks ago was kicked out of her home in Ballyfermot, Dublin, with just the fare and an address in north London of her sister to go to. Her mother was not able to face the neighbours and the church, with the sheer shame of it all. Anne was expecting maybe a crumb of comfort when she finally arrived at the St Augustines mother’s home after the gruelling trip across an unforgiving Irish sea, but instead got the vilest look of disgust from her eldest sibling.  The now black robed Sister Mary. After a lecture on how evil my soon to be Mam was to even be here, she was escorted to her room. Her penances for her sins where about to begin.

 ‘Push Anne push’ said Sister Mary ‘I hope you remember this pain, it will serve you well the next time you want to act like a harlot’

Anne wanted to put her sister on the tiled cold floor with her fist and used that anger and adrenaline to push me into this world in one final guttural scream. They fussed and cleaned and one of other nun’s handed Anne the new bundle, ‘Feed him before he goes’ young Anne tried and succeeded. The papers were signed and the adoptive couple were ready in the next room and excited to take their baby home.  Anne could hear them, it was the first laughter she had heard between the constant prayers she did with the sisters. "I want to laugh" she thought, wrapped me up and quietly and quickly went to her room, My new Mam put her coat and shoes on, opened the window to the crisp April night air, climbed out… and ran.

Sister Mary, despite being young Anne’s older sister, was a cold heartless servile of God, she went to her bed that night and failed to pray for her frightened and broken little sister, whom was about to get lost and swallowed up by an even bigger bitch, the city of London.

Blood still running down her legs and feeling exhausted, she stood at the bus stop not knowing where she was to go. Twenty minutes later carrying a bag and the new sleeping bundle, she walked down Brick Lane in East London after going as far as three pence would take her. She fell into the Jolly Butcher’s Arms public house. My step father whom she was yet to meet when awake, picked her and the silent little cold bundle off the floor…

 
I have added this first chapter of a much larger book I have done about my life, no, my family's life... it remains raw and unfinished. My personal rise and fall, the  deaths of my sisters, my parents, and other loved ones. It may be too much emotion to put on a piece of paper, Who knows, maybe one day I'll finish it, put it in a drawer and walk away...



Until next time...

Let it not snow! Let it not snow! Let it not snow!

This is a locally specific rant, and originally appeared online at hastingsobserver.co.uk  don't worry, I'm chemically calm now...

I'm comforted to see that Hastings council, my local "authority" at 1300hrs today (weds 1st December) announced on Twitter that they will take a "sympathetic approach" to anyone that leaves their car in any of the car parks in Hastings because of the weather.


I read this as an opportunity to do some shopping and not worry about getting back to the car because the ticket ran out. As you will know, council's don't like you spending money in town centre's, because they would rather you bugger off half way through your knicker shopping and self promised decent coffee and walnut cake in the bullet cafe, so someone else can use your hastily vacated parking spot, so they in turn can half finish their shopping as well.


I have a problem though, to enable me to take advantage of this one off offer of free sympathetic parking - I have to get out of my drive! and I can't do that because I'm snowed in, in fact I can't get out of my bloody road because that's snowed in too.

*Friday 3rd Dec still snowed in, sorry to interrupt your reading, I'll be quiet now...


In actual fact I won't be able to do my job as a cab driver today and possibly tomorrow too, the job that incidentally costs me over a £100+ pounds a year in fees to the same council that's offering a sympathetic park in one of there lovely car parks today. the staff that open and close these facilities are all buggering off home at 15:30 anyway...No one around to slap on that ticket is there mmm?


Not working because of lack of grit hurts, as I am constantly fiscally challenged, the last time I had a price rise, (y'now in line with utility bills and fuel, you can't use inflation figures because that's just silly) was unbelievably in July 2003! Not that I'd want you to care about that, because I don't want you adding me to the reasons why you can't have that holiday now can I?


So Hastings council will probably defer the blame to the REAL authority that deals with the roads, East Sussex County Council, but they are dozens and dozens of miles away and at time of writing have probably all buggered off home on a snow tractor giggling like girlie's...


Until next time...


...or when I can dig myself out...Oh! And happy Hanukkah!

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