Jitters

In stark contrast, to yesterday's run of funeral jobs I had a few wedding runs today. One was with the bride, chief bridesmaid and the bridesmaids brother going to the bride’s mothers to get themselves ready for the big ceremony. They were going a nearby village which is a six-mile ride away.
The two girls seemed to get more and more stressed for every yard that we drove along, they were on the phone making last minute arrangements and asking each other if they had forgotten anything all in all in a total flap. On the way, we stopped off at the posh hotel where the reception was to be held and when the bride and bridesmaid got out of the taxi to drop something off there was silence for a minute or two then the brother and I looked at each other and just burst out laughing. Talk about stress give me a good funeral do anytime.

The Burnt Charcoal Suit

One of my lovely passengers, who's a hairdresser was telling me a couple of stories the other day which she assures me are both true. 
The first was told to her by someone who works at the local crematorium. They had a visit from a lady who had recently been widowed and whose late husband's funeral and cremation having taken place only two days previously.” I've come for the suit “she said the staff were mystified by this request and so sat her down and asked what she meant. It turned out that she thought that the customers at the crematorium were undressed prior to being cremated.
 Upon being told that this wasn't so she said “I would have dressed him in one of his old suits if I had known that”.
The second was that a young lady kept coming back to the shop to complain about her perm. It keeps falling out she said, and so the shop redid her hair, this happened three or four times and the shop staff were baffled. On her last visit they sat her down and asked her a few questions about just what she was doing with her hair.
 They found that she actually thought that a perm meant just what it said, and so when she washed her hair she just towelled it and expected it to dry exactly how it was when she left the hairdressers.

Meth Lifestyle

I had two meth runs in a row one day recently, for those that don’t know meth is short for methadone which is a liquid heroin substitute doled out by the pharmacist and has to be drank whilst in the chemist’s shop.  This is a daily thing for these people and part of their normal routine, but don't go thinking that it’s all shady young chavs in hoodies, it’s both males and females and with a wide range of ages from twenties up to fifties.   
  Some say that these people have a drug problem but no to a lot of them it isn’t a problem at all.  With most of the long term users it’s simply a way of life and they know nothing else. Think of it this way, what wouldn’t you give to be free of all responsibility and to just treat life as one big game. Usually no fixed address so no bills to pay and no kids to look after, just like most of the users they are brought up by relatives or end up in a care home. Cash isn’t a problem easily earned by small time dealing, supplying other users. 
They tend to give the wrong destination when ordering the cab and it then turns into a run-around and a drop off on a vague street corner after going from one side of town to the other and back. Now sometimes if I stay real quiet with more than one fare in the taxi folk seem to forget I am there and talk about all sorts of strange stuff, today was just one of those occasions. This kind of opened a window onto the wild crazy lifestyles that some of these users take for granted. And it does sometimes seem that they can experience crazier stuff in a week than most of us see in a whole lifetime.  Three people in the taxi and they were all pretty silent until the meth had been taken and then they started to relax and talk between themselves.
One story was the tale of a fellow user who had not been able to go to his brothers’ funeral that week from his prison cell. “Naw the screws wunt let him go cos he’s an high escape risk he got out of the cop van in Lancaster and was on the run for a week, then when they got him he squeezed out of the skylight of the sweatbox (prison van).”  The lass then responded with “they double cuffed me when I went to me nanas, why didn’t they do that and put him on a lead” (a long chain from the cuffs to the prison officers) just then the actual guy they were talking about rang them using a smuggled mobile phone direct from his prison cell. They seemed to treat this as nothing out of the ordinary apparently mobiles are quite easy to get hold of in jail. 
They spent the rest of the cab ride laughing and telling each other stories about how they got caught for dealing and what cars the police were “sneaking around in”.  They didn’t think it fair that the police were now using cars with blacked out windows to watch them from and even using rough old cars to follow them with.  
Wow how some folk live eh!

Priest In The Confession Seat

    When a fare takes the option of walking past the front passenger door and ensconcing themselves behind me, I sometimes mention that they have taken the confessional seat. This happened today with a chap who was going to a local Catholic church, St Mary's in Barrow town centre.

"Funny you should say that" he said, "Because I am a clergyman".

                                             

Now driving a taxi is a great leveller and be they prince or pauper when in my taxi they are all treated as an equal to me and so I started out with a gentle mickey take. You will be looking forward to this cold spell that they are forecasting then. I asked with a straight face.

“Whys that then” he asked sounding puzzled. Well it will lead to a nice increase in funerals for you and a few more bob on the collection plate.

He realised that I was pulling his leg and laughed along with me when I said have you noticed in the local paper obituaries that they all die in alphabetical order. I am changing my name to Zebedee then he replied and then we got down to the real nitty gritty,

 I mean you can’t have a priest in the confession seat without talking religion can you.

I told him my view that the Furness area had always attracted religious elements even though it was at one time even more remote than today and could only be reached by crossing the treacherous sands of Morecambe bay.

We first must have had going by the stone circle on Birkrigg common druids or sun worshipers of some kind then of course, we have the Cistercians who founded the monastery at Furness Abbey in 1147, followed by the Quakers in the 1650s some say Furness was the birthplace of Quakerism.
 Then we have strangely in the 1970s the arrival of Buddhists at Conishead priory now the Manjushri Centre with its newly built golden temple.
He was more than a little interested in the Buddhists and told me that they are not the usual Zen Buddhists but a Tibetan sect called Kadampa who have a different set of beliefs and philosophy which he had studied and didn’t agree with, he of course preferred Christianity.
After a very interesting conversation when we arrived at his church and he was getting out I asked (already knowing the answer) which is older then Christianity or Buddhism then?  Buddhism is he said smiling as he passed the alms for this poor taxi driver.

      

Dead Granny

One of the most common moans I get from my passengers is about the rundown state of our Town Centre shopping streets. They bemoan the lack of shops and complain that most of those remaining are pawn brokers, charity shops, and hairdressers.

They just don’t seem to grasp the fact that whilst they are moaning I am usually taking them to or picking them up from one of our many huge supermarkets.

It’s far too late to complain now after years of spending the bulk of our cash in the supermarkets most town centre's are now beyond saving.

Maybe if Tesco etc had stuck to simply selling groceries then maybe, we would still have a little bit of life left in our shopping precincts.

 But it seems that they want to own the whole world by moving into typical high street trades like chemists, florists, opticians, etc.

  Banking and insurance aren’t immune from the march of the multinationals progress either and I hear Tesco will even buy your scrap gold from you nowadays.

As I said to one of my fares the other day it won’t be long before you can drop your dead granny off at customer services and collect the ashes in an urn of your choice along with your shopping at the checkout, complete with Tesco club points! 

The Funeral Party

At first I thought it was a one off but after picking up a few drunken people who had been to funerals, it seems all they want to do is fight each other.

These sad events bring families together, people who havnt seen each other for ages and you would think they would be wanting to talk to each other but when the beer flows all they want to do is fight and argue,

It happened today and even in the back of the car on the journey they were trying to knock hell out of each other.

I did wanr them but they didnt take any notice. I stopped the car and told them all to get out. They apologised and promised that they would sort their differences out when they got home.

The fighting stopped but the arguing and insults continued.

And what was the reason for all this. People who hadnt seen the deceased in ages were trying to stake a claim to the will.

Its a sad case but no excuse for fighting with each other. They should respect the dead persons wishes and get on with life