Monday, September 14

Long Gone Landmark

My fare was a lady along with her two grandchildren who were roundabout ten and twelve.
She was trying to describe to them the place that she wanted to meet them later on, but was having no success at all. She was getting madder and madder and the grandkids more and more perplexed.
For the tenth time she said almost at scream level “by the bank on the corner down from the Railway Arms pub and the police station.” 
The kids just looked at each other completely baffled.  This is when I interrupted and pointed out that every single one of the landmarks she mentioned had all closed down, some of them many years ago. The poor kids wouldn’t have had a clue what the heck she was talking about. 
This got me thinking about just how many people use landmarks that are simply not in existence any longer. 
I still get asked to go for fares at the back of Stollers in town which is a furniture store which moved to the outskirts of town maybe twenty years ago and the fish market that hasn’t sold a fish for many a year. Or I get asked to turn left at the Astra lights as they recall the cinema which was demolished lots of years ago. There are many more of these long gone landmarks which folk use, as well as names of places which have long been changed some several times over. 
I feel sorry for the younger new taxi drivers who must get baffled by all this ancient history! 
But still it will get worse, the rate that pubs and clubs are disappearing nowadays. You know that most folk use pubs to give directions and so when they are all gone we shall all be completely hopelessly lost!   

1 comment:

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