Muck Magnet

As I pulled up outside an address to pick up a fare today I noticed a big black dirty oil patch outside and so I parked just past it to save my fare walking through it and messing the car up. The fare turns out to be a harassed mum and her three young kids, the two older boys got in the car and told me that they were going to a party meanwhile the girl of about two ran around and danced in excitement outside. Then, of course, the muck magnet which is built into every kid kicks in and she goes head over heels into the oil, she is covered from head to toe and all over her party clothes. And so the harassed mum finds a clean bit, picks her up and takes her in to wash and change.
Ten minutes later she runs out dancing and giggling and whilst harassed mum is locking her door she tumbles straight into the oil patch again if it wasn’t for the little girls tears and cries of” mum, mum” I would have laughed. Harassed mum decided enough was enough and just wiped her down and said she’d have to go as she was.
I guess that she never did a good job of the clean up judging by the perfect black child’s footprint on the less than perfect butt of my next lady passengers white jeans, I almost felt guilty but it was the last job and so I went home laughing.

Dresssenseless

Now you may not believe this but the taxi drivers here in Barrow aren’t really well known for their sense of style. But what with the heat wave which we have been experiencing for the last week or two, some of them have really surpassed themselves some of the tee shirts and shorts look like they were bought on some long ago foreign holiday at a time when the driver had had a good sample of the local tipple. Maybe at some time, they may have fitted as well, who knows but sadly with the ravages of too many pies and fries that’s not the case now. One driver I saw today broke all the rules cargo style three-quarter length pants (guys when you reach a certain age and size just don’t do it) and a black and white vest top way too small, looking down past the glimpse of white calves revealed black socks (pulled well up) and open toed sandals. But all was explained when I saw that he was proudly sporting in his left ear the biggest shiniest bluetooth I had ever seen, the radio waves from this must have caused temporary insanity.

Time Out

A lady who I pick up now and again asked me what the time was, I told her the correct time and she went to adjust her watch. I noticed that she set it five minutes fast. Why do that I asked "so I know the time" she said, this had me puzzled and so I asked a few more lady fares and they all seemed to think it normal quite a few said that they had different clocks and watches set either fast or slow” so they know the right time". This must be a female thing because it baffles us guys I can't figure the logic in this even the wife thinks it's perfectly normal. I wonder how many guys check the time at home and assume that the clock is set right.

Pardon

Today was one of the very few occasions when I found myself lost for words, I usually have no problems understanding just about any nationality, but today the two lasses who got into the back of the cab might as well have been speaking broad Martian. In the end, they had to point to where they wanted to go. They started to talk to each other and it dawned on me that they were actually Irish, I’m usually Ok with the Irish brogue but this dialect was one I had never heard before. Still we had a laugh and got there in the end, but this reminds me of the drunken lady I picked up a while back one rainy day.

She was so drunk that she could not speak at all and she just waved her hands in the direction that she wanted to go. When we eventually got to her house she wasn’t capable of counting the fare so she just threw her bag at me to get the cash out for myself. Next comes the bit I was worried about, there was no way she could walk and I didn’t fancy carrying her rather large bulk into her house, you never know what you may be accused of later. After banging on a few neighbours doors, I managed to get some folk who knew her and her drunken habits to help her in. If this is the state she gets in the middle of the afternoon I wouldn’t like to see her after a heavy night out!

Proportions

I was talking to a guy today about the rules of percentages and proportions and all sorts of interesting stuff. When I dropped him off  I thought of a few rules that seem to apply whilst working as a cabbie especially in certain areas of Barrow.
 Please don't take offence cos I'm only messing!

#The scruffier the house you pick up from the better the mobile phone they will have with them.

#The amount of rubbish in the front garden is proportional to the screen size of the giant T.V in the front room.

#The bigger the rottweiler the more outrageous the kids names, come on Porsche, Gypsy, Paris, Buster, Diesel gerrin the taxi)

#The complaints about lack of cash are directly proportional to the amount of times that they are picked up from the bingo hall or boozer.

#The slower they limp out of the house when they think somebody is watching the quicker they run into the off-licence (grog shop for our foreign readers) when you drop them off.

#The bigger and more pretentious the house the lesser the chance of a tip.

#The scruffier the house you pick up from the more blingy the jewellery worn by the fare.

#The more expensive the trainers the lesser the vocabulary usually limited to innit,nectar,latta,mingin,wotever,

Silly Sausage

This morning after four or five supermarket runs, I found that I had acquired a spare packet of sausages in the boot. I didn’t know exactly which fare had left them behind and so rather than waste them I handed them to my lucky next passenger with the words “there you go you’ve won the sausages every tenth fare gets a free half pound of sausages”.
I don’t know if she believed me, but she seemed very pleased with her sausages.

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!   

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.

Body Bits

It was one of my rare days off today, so as usual it was clean up time with the taxi. Vacuuming the inside I always find the same stuff, hair clips, the odd coin, and lots of glitter from the girl’s makeup.
 But it's the bits of people's bodies left behind that never fail to amaze me, always lots and lots of hair of every colour and not just head hair believe it or not.  Yes the I vacuum up the occasional hair which definitely looks like the pubic variety, how it gets there I just cannot figure.
 Fingernails I can understand there's a heck of a lot of nervous people out there.
 But I never see passengers bite their toenails yet I also find them on the floor.

Waxy

 You know a good tip is if that you want the low down on somewhere you are planning on dining at is to ask your cabbie.
 We are always given the verdict about the service and how good the meal was from lots of different folk. You know if restaurant owners wanted more trade they could do it easily by free or very cheap meals for taxi drivers. But then again listening to the squeals of protest from the front springs and looking at the over inflated spare tyres on the taxi ranks that may not be a good idea eh!
     One of my fares today was picking up a lady with her mother and grandmother after their meal at a local fancy eatery.
 Mother and daughter praised the meal to high heavens while granny just kept quiet. As luck would have it granny was the last to be dropped off, and so I got my chance to ask her what she really thought of the meal. “Fancy rubbish” she loudly announced why what was the problem I asked.
 “Well she said they gave me a side salad and the barmy beggars tried to put olive oil and vinegar on it”. What’s wrong with that I asked? She replied “Vinegar is for on me fish and chips and the only use for olive oil is to heat it up and put in your ears to melt the wax”. 
Don’t try this at home folks!.

Blue Badge

I see that down in the city of Manchester some cars have been impounded and the owners prosecuted for using fake blue disabled parking badges.(for overseas readers these badges allow parking on yellow lines for up to three hours).
 From what I see and hear every day on the streets of Barrow you don't need to fake a badge, it seems you get one even if it's your aunt's friend's sister in law that is suffering with an ingrown toenail. The town centre is littered with cars all badly parked using these badges as an excuse for their laziness and tightfistedness. 
I have watched these drivers park on yellow lines right next to a pay and display car park, and then stride several hundred yards across the car park to get to the shops, and even on occasion seen them run back for their forgotten walking stick. 
I had to double park and block traffic for a while today, as I helped my passenger a genuinely disabled lady into a shop. On the way back to the car I noticed that one of the cars blocking access was displaying a blue badge, but it was a large estate car filled with the tools and cable used by an electrician. 
There are obviously genuine users of blue badges but a large proportion are definitely taking the mickey. 

No Go Area

A while back now I had a job to pick up two people from nearby Ulverston and take them the hundred miles or so to Liverpool airport. When I arrived at the address I opened the boot ready to load the cases only to be told that they had none to load all they had was a plastic Tesco carrier bag.
Now to me a couple with no luggage going to the airport seems more than a bit strange.
So I asked them to pay up front and then enquired about the lack of luggage. Well the guy said we don't really want to go to the airport, we just said that for convenience but it’s not far from there though. 
He paid me no problem and told me he would direct me once we got off the motorway and into Liverpool. They were a bit of an odd couple with him being older and from this area she being a true scouse who swore every other word. I listened to them argue all the way down the motorway about nowt in particular and just as they were about to drive me mad at last we turned off the motorway. The guy started to give me directions which seemed to take us in circles several times this caused more arguments between them and it was decided that the lady( and I use the term loosely) would direct me the rest of the way. We drove into Edge Hill and then into what looked like a giant demolition site. Row upon row of terraced houses all boarded up with corrugated iron sheets, no sign of life not even passing or parked cars.
 I began to get a bit nervous and asked are you sure it’s round here, yes she replied “just a bit further. So keeping one eye on the road and the other on the passengers I drove slowly on. Ten minutes later she shouted “stop stop” and even before we had fully stopped she jumped out and ran swearing and shouting towards the only house in all the dereliction that had doors and windows. The guy handed me a ten pound note as he got out and said “thanks mate that’s for you none of the local taxis will come down here” I guess that explains the airport story they gave.

Nervous Tick

I was watching a TV programme called Terrets camp and it brought to mind an incident which happened a few summer's ago.

 It was a Saturday lunch time and I had picked up from the vast local gas terminal which was under construction, the male fare was a contractor from Newcastle, he was a daunting character, huge with a shaved head and lots of tattoos.

He asked to be taken to a pub in town and then on the way started to ask questions about the massage parlour which is near the pub.

He must have had some form of nervous tick when he got a bit excited; he dropped his head to his left shoulder and grunted loudly like a pig. I was startled but tried to just carry on just as normal as possible.

As we got nearer to town he asked more questions about the massage parlour and then squealed and grunted even louder.

 He said he was going to visit the massage parlour after a few beers. I wonder what the girls in the massage parlour made of him, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that visit!

Barking Mad

A middle aged guy gets into the taxi this morning constantly coughing his lungs up “are you a heavy smoker?” I asked when he finally caught his breath. "What do you mean"? He said. Well is smoking the first thing you do every morning when you get up.
 "No he said first I cough, then I smoke."

Bucket

A lady I pick up now and again bears a remarkable resemblance to the TV personality Hyacinth Bucket both in character as well as looks. The first few occasions she went to great pains to tell that me “oh of course I am not from round this dump” and that the “yokels are a lot of dirty rabble not fit to walk Barrows filthy streets”.
 This went on for a month or two until one day she come out of her house with her husband close behind her. Poor devil I thought pity him he must have a dogs life. He got in the front and his wife in the back and I waited for the usual haughty remarks,” have you got everything” she said to him. I looked at him expecting to see a poor downtrodden sort of guy who daren't answer back. He looked back at me winked and smiled then said to her “as always darling”. 
When she answered I was shocked by the change in her voice and tone she sounded ten years younger and spoke to him with a permanent smile on her face. So she was human after all, I looked at her in a different light after that.

Ancient Ruin

Our local ancient ruin Furness Abbey here in Barrow in Furness is always good for a wind up with the odd tourist, when I drive past it with them I always say that they are waiting for the builders to pebbledash it and install plastic windows. 

Sex Talk

How many other people can say that a perfect stranger has got into their car and within five minutes ends up talking explicitly about sex? 
This happened to me on a dull wet morning recently,the passenger was a perfectly respectable middle aged lady who some how got on to the subject of how young people are too open about sex and that people of her generation just don’t talk about it.
But she then went on to mention prostitutes, transsexuals, gays and extra marital affairs, all within a short ten minute journey. I don't suppose she would do the same with a bus driver or a shopkeeper but with us cabdrivers it seems anything goes.
I used to find it strange but nowadays nothing surprises me eh!

Black Eye Friday 2014

Way up here in this part of the North of England, we tend to call the last Friday before Christmas “Black Eye Friday.”
 It's the day most people finish work for the Christmas holidays and they tend to finish work early about lunch time and they then head straight down to the pub for a long boozy session.
 I find it amusing when it gets to about four o'clock in the afternoon I then start to pickup some of the less hardened boozers when they have had enough and want to go home.  Lots of them are then telling me what a good night they have had; they are convinced that because it's dark that it must be very very late at night. I never tell them any different and just drive them home.
 Once a year drunks I call them the very worst kind of drinker because they just aren't used to it, give me a seasoned drinker anytime.  They take ages to come out of the pub shaking hands, hugging everyone in sight, and then going back into the pub several times for yet more emotional farewells. Then once you get them into the taxi, the struggle is then to get them out of the taxi at the other end, because you are, their new very best friend in the whole wide world and they want to tell you their life story many times very very slowly and emotionally. Then its handshakes and if I’m very unlucky big bear hugs, but of course none of my new found best friends ever recognise me ever again.

Still it's all good sport, Merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

The Next Day

Funny how people hurt themselves on a Saturday night but it doesn't seem to hurt them till the following Sunday morning.

 I had two trips to the hospital in a row this Sunday both had injury’s to the same leg, the first had been at a party where they played an old punk track and of course, the guy thought he would relive his youth and see if he could still pogo like way back in his teenage days.

The next said he had fallen over a kerb, bet he couldn't find it the next day though.

 Reminds me of a few months back when I picked up a guy still very much the worse for wear who had fallen the night before. When he woke up, he saw something white on his elbow so he tried to brush it off; unfortunately, it turned out to be his bone sticking out! He was still laughing about it but that will have stopped when the alcohol wore off and the stitches went in.

 On the way up to casualty, I said to him, you know when you get treated that the nurse will say to you that this wont hurt a bit. “Yes” he said expectantly “well she will be lying” I replied!

Duwn Yonder

Now and again I will pick someone up who tries to catch me out by asking to go to a street with no houses on which very few people have heard of.
 A few local examples of these are Water St, Reservoir St, Thomson St, and Wesley Place. The only time I do get caught out funnily enough is when at the end of a long busy shift my mind will go blank when I am asked to go to somewhere I go everyday.
 The fun really starts when I get jobs in the outlying villages especially when I am given vague directions to a place with just a house name. I always find that even in the most remote hamlets when I stop to ask the way it is always a stranger to the area or the village idiot that I seem to pick.
 On one job a while back I picked a chap who looked sensible enough but when asked the way he replied “Ista gaan duwn yonder ginnel past meda wi sterks bur tat la left an gaas on abit lal git ta laurel hedge ista gaas onabit las lare. So that's what I did and I found it OK.
 But I kept laughing to myself after that a picture kept entering my head of this guy doing the voice directions in his Cumbrian dialect for the new fangled satellite navigation devices you get nowadays!