Road Kill

I took a fare out to the village of Baycliff today and on the way out down the coast road, we came across a beat up looking car parked haphazardly on the road with the hazard warning lights on.   As we got closer and slowed to go around it the driver got out and went to the rear of his car and stood looking down at a dead seagull on the roadside. So after that, the fare and I laughed and tried to figure out what on earth he was doing. "Giving it the last rites, " said the fare “no he wants to make quills with its feathers "I replied" or an Indian headdress" he answered.  Or maybe he's one of these guys that likes to eat road kill I said "not much of a meal there" he said, " unless he puts it in a stew."  On the way back into town I checked, and sure enough, the seagull had gone.

Lost

Now and again, I will pick some joker 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 in Barrow in Furness 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 tiring shift my mind will go blank when I am asked to go to somewhere I go to every single day.

But the fun really starts when I get jobs in the outlying villages and countryside 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 always turns out to be a stranger to the area or the local village idiot I pick.

 On one particular 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 exactly what I did and amazingly, I found it fairly easily.

But I couldn't  help keep laughing to myself after that thoughts kept entering my head of this guy doing the voice directions for those new fangled satellite navigation devices you get nowadays.

Card Trouble

I got a call to pick up from one of Barrow’s more expensive hotels this morning, when I got there my passengers turned out to be a couple with no luggage still in the clothes from what looked had been a wild night of gallivanting .

Well nothing unusual about that, but when they got in the car, he gets in the front and her in the back, and whilst she was quite chatty, he was a bit withdrawn. The girl who was a stunner, asked to be dropped off first, and then the guy was travelling on for another four miles. He was hard work at first, a bit morose but after a while, he comes out with the story.

 He had been out with friends and somehow become separated from them and then feeling a bit lonely, he ended up getting drunk and copping off with the lovely lady.

 "Great" I said," so you had a good night why the long face"? "Yes a great night he said beautiful hotel and champagne on ice". He was quiet for a moment and then holding his head in his hands he said; "only problem is that like a fool I used a credit card". "Never mind you won't get the bill for a month or so," I said, thinking he was worried about the money," problem is it's a joint card with my wife and she gets the statements," he said.

Whoops!

Dumbphones

When someone seems to be talking to me from the seat directly behind nowadays, I have learnt not to answer straight away. 
This is after a couple of embarrassing incidents when I have answered them only to realise that they were actually talking to someone on their mobile phones and not actually to me. 
This mainly happens when they have the phone set to silent or vibrate mode and they then get a call, or they suddenly decide they desperately need to call someone right away and it cant wait a few minutes till I drop them off.
 Mobile phones to me can be very anti-social things, many times I have had three or four passengers in the taxi and instead of talking to each other they are all talking and texting to other people on their smartphones.
And I really really hate it when children are asking mum questions or trying to talk about their day and the mum completely ignores them because they have to urgently  update facebook or text back to some rubbish on messenger!
  The other anti-social thing that winds me up is when they get in the taxi wearing earphones and then turn the music down to tell you where they are going and then turn it right up to the max again for the rest of the journey.
 Some folk have it that loud that that I can hear the music louder than the car radio, that surely must be damaging these antisocial music fanatics hearing in some way.

Black Gold

I noticed today that a coal truck had lost part of its load on Greengate St here in Barrow in Furness. 
Not that many years ago people would have appeared seemingly from nowhere with buckets and carried it off for use in the garden.
 But no not nowadays it was just left to be crushed under the wheels of passing traffic.  I sometimes wonder just how many people would actually know how to light a coal fire in this age of push button central heating.

The Dublin Connection

I was over in Dublin for a few days rest and recuperation (lots of Guinness) last week and spotted this!

This was seen on display whilst visiting the Dubliner museum next to Dublin cathedral. 
This is the fascinating  story of Lambert Simnel who was crowned king over there in Dublin and then sailed over to invade England landing at Piel Island, which I can actually see out of my window at this very minute. History is great eh!

Thus the tradition of having a King of Piel was born

Strangely enough our taxi driver friend over in Dublin  had posted photos of the very same  subjects that I had photographed on his excellent  blog. They include some of the same sand sculptures in the courtyard of Dublin Castle and good old Molly Malone.
He must have been one of the many thousands of taxi drivers who passed me by on the busy streets of Dublin.

Trapped

   I seemed to be picking up lots of people from all four corners of the globe this week, including Poles, Slavic, Chinese and a real nice Australian couple from Perth.

One among them was talking excitedly in a strange language that I could just not figure out whereabouts was from. After many times of asking him to repeat what he was saying slowly things just kept getting worse, he was talking even faster and much louder.

 This went on for quite a while until I realised that he wasn't speaking in a foreign tongue at all.  Unfortunately, I had shut the electric windows accidentally trapping his hand. 

He was simply swearing with what turned out to be a very strong Glaswegian accent

  

Robot Taxi

Mmmm is this the future then?

Kinky Dress

Two young ladies were deep in the middle of a conversation when they got into the back of the taxi this morning.
” Well you can borrow one of mine if you want” said one" I've got a nurse, policewoman’s and a French maid’s outfit at home” 
Then she must have spotted my widely gaping mouth or straining flapping ears.
 She laughed and said “hey it’s nothing kinky we've been invited to a fancy dress party tonight” .
Oh yes  and you just happened to have those type of outfits already at home did you, I laughingly replied ?
 They both then went bright red and kept bursting out giggling for the rest of the trip.
 Still who knows, maybe they belonged to someone else  her Dad maybe eh!.

Walk Of Shame

Around here, emerging from the place where you have spent a night of drunken passion is usually known by the local young people as the "WALK OF SHAME".

 I have come across this countless times picking many a red faced lady up in the taxi who is still dressed in her night be fore’s glamorous outfit.

But I had never come across one quite like this Saturday mornings walk of shame, nautical style.

The call was to the dockside way out down in the docks far away off the beaten track to a place most locals would never visit.  The place was guarded by a lift up barrier and a security guard on 24 hour duty, the guard when I opened my window to ask about a passenger just laughed and mumbled something into his radio.

Shortly after a smirking guy in bright orange overalls got in the taxi with me and said in broken English "to ship" and directed me to the waterside where a Cypriot registered ship was tied alongside. He asked me to wait and then boarded the huge ship and went below. Several of the crew were on deck and I watched as they laughed and joked pointing below and at my taxi. All was explained when a young woman walked out onto deck blinking and shivering into the freezing daylight.

 She wore a short skirt and a cropped top showing her bare midriff and definitely not the sort of shoes for walking the plank. She had to walk the full length of the ship and then totter across a rickety looking gangplank onto the dockside and then across the dock with its dirty water filled potholes before finally making the sanctuary of my taxi.. By this time, every porthole seemed to have a laughing or smirking crew member looking out watching the long walk of shame.

"Where the hell are we," she asked looking round baffled at the barren industrial landscape, I explained and then we reached the barrier with the security guy and again he couldn't stop himself from laughing as he let us out.

"Bloody hell I woke up with a hangover, the floor was moving and everyone was speaking a foreign language. I thought I'd been kidnapped,” she told me as I drove her the five miles home. 

I blame the alcohol myself; still she was lucky I noticed that the ship was heading out to sea later in the day, so she could have ended up anywhere. 

Fuel Frustration

Now being a taxi driver has recently been named as one of the ten most stressful jobs so it’s best to try and be calm and placid all the time whilst working, or else they say that the stress will eventually kill you.

Now nothing usually gets to me, I tend to try and ignore the bad driving and rudeness of the minority who are the morons of the road.

But one thing really gets my teeth gnashing and my rarely used stock of swearwords in full flow.

It was a busy day, I was low on fuel, and so during a lull I headed into my usual supermarket garage to top up the diesel.

But it looked as if every other driver in town had the same idea at the same time and all the lanes were backed up.

After doing the usual dip zoo magazoo to pick which lane to wait in I joined a line of cars.

Much later I was next in line and it was finally about to be my turn at the pump.

The driver of the car in front of me had got into their car and I moved eagerly forward ready to take its place.

The driver happened to be a woman but I have had the same maddening experience from both sexes.

 She firstly checked her hair and makeup in the mirror and then carefully stowed away her credit cards cash and sweeties etc, into her handbag.

 I started to edge forward as she put her bag on the floor and started to fasten her seat belt.

 But after fiddling about finding the buckle and adjusting the belt to her liking, she then found that her keys were not in the ignition, so it was off with the belt and back out with the full contents of the bottomless bag.

By this time, all the other lanes had emptied but another car had come up close behind me and I was helplessly trapped not earning and squirming with frustration.

A good few minutes later and the missing keys were found, the seatbelt was fastened, and my hopes were again rising.

Only to be cruelly dashed when a final mirror check revealed some defect in her eye make-up.

Yep you guessed it the make-up was in the bottomless bag on the floor and so it went on with her still blissfully unaware of the queue behind her.

That is until she noticed that my taxi was now only a coat of paint away from her car and that I was revving the engine and mouthing curses about her and all her ancestors before her.

She drove of looking quite flustered, I filled up whilst taking deep breaths, and considering a change of career perhaps a Buddhist monk or a soot juggler eh!

  

 

Things people say in an argumant

It was around 11pm last night that I picked up a young man and woman who were constantly arguing with each other from the moment they got in the car. The argument stopped briefly to allow one of them to tell me where they wanted to go to and then it started again as quickly as it stopped.

I didnt want to get involved and just kept driving and saying nothing as on a lot of occasions they do try and involve the driver with questions such as "What do you think then? I am right or is she right?" I don't get involved in other peoples arguments as I just want to get my job done. Get them to their destination, get the fare from them, and move on to my next job.

However, I couldnt help but laugh when the girl says to Boy "You think you are gods gift to women, well sorry to burst your bubble but gods gift to women runs on batteries! :) " --- Made me laugh anyway

Naked in summer

Well its been a while since I posted and the reason behind this is that I have spent very little time out on the roads as Bob has been on holiday for a couple of week enjoying the delights of America and beyond and I have spent most of my time in the office doing the things that Bob would normally do as well as doing my own work in there as well as trying to get to the gym for a workout.

I'll tell you a little story which actually goes back a few years when a passnger rang up to complain that a naked driver had picked her up and insisted that he was wearing no clothes at all.

It turns out the driver was wearing a pair of green shorts but whilst sat in the drivers seat his flab from his oversized belly dropped down convering his shorts and making him look naked.

Of course, with me going to the gym, I don't have that problem... Ahem....

No answer

I was sat there listening to the taxi radio when the operator shouted up a driver and there was no response. She then shouted another driver and again there was no response. This went on for about 4 different drivers then all of a sudden all I heard over the radio from the operator was

"Is anyone rogering me tonight or not" I think I knew what she meant but the way iot came out sounded more like something else if you know what I mean. I just went into fits of laughter

Roger - Over and out

Airport Journeys

Recently I have done a few airport runs picking up foreigners who need to be brought to the home town. Its not a bad run down the motorway and the journey can be completed in 2 hours each way so there's always a time for a good craic with the passengers assuming they speak good English.

This is actually usually the case and you can talk about all sorts of things with them and feel that after a 2 hour journey that you know them. Some just talk about work and some just grunt the odd English word at you.

One guy I picked up this week couldn't stop eyeing up the girls. It was beautiful weather and the girls were out wearing next to nothing and every female we past no matter what age or what they look like, he remarked saying that English girls very beautiful.

Another gentleman I picked up who couldn't speak much English was listening to music on the car radio and he kept joining in with English songs and words but well out of tune. I think he was trying to learn the language

The best of the lot really is what most foreign passengers do when you take them to the car... They try and get in the drivers side as they are not used to the fact that we drive on the left.

The price on the meter....

This weekend gone I picked up 3 dumb blonde girls who must have been around 16 years of age each. The conversation in the car gave me the impression that none of them could afford to go out to a party but they felt they needed to and only had £30 between the 3 of them.

Part way into the journey one of the girls realised she had left a birthday card behind and asked me to turn round and go back so she could pick it up. No problem there but then she asked me if I could stop the meter and kept saying things like" Your not going to charge us for this extra bit of journey are you?"

I explained that the price on the meter is the price they pay and its not my fault that one of then had forgot the card. This didnt sink in and all 3 of them ended up demanding I turn the meter off and start the journey again once they have picked up the card.

It didnt wash with me and I carried on regardless and charged them the fare on the meter which came to £4.90p . They insisted that I should knock £2 off as I had to go back but as it want my fault I told them to take responsibility for their own actions and due to their incompetence it has now cost them more money and I am not knocking anything off the fare.

The fare was paid in full which caused the 3 girls to get out of the car trying to add up how much they could spend. One said that they had £25 left between the 3 of them so that makes £10 each for drinks and they would scrounge a lift home instead of a taxi.

Seems to me they need to learn how to do maths.

Embarrasing Names

Quite often when one of our telephonists takes a phone call from a customer, they don't always hear the name correctly. This could be for a number of reasons such as loud noise in the callers background, An unusual to pronounce name, The callers too drunk to say their name properly as well as operator error where the telephonist hasn't listened properly or has hit the wrong keys on the keyboard and spelt it incorrectly.

Not too long ago I got sent for a job in the name of "Proudcock", When I did pick up the fare, it turned out the name was "Proudfoot". Makes you wonder what was going through the operators mind at the time of the call.

However, earlier on today was the best so far as the image shown on the PDA unit below shows.

The name was "BASTET". Now if I try to say this as its spelt then it can very easily be mistaken for the word "Bastard" and I thought that there's no chance of me risking having my face used as a punchbag by someone if I pulled up outside the pub and shouted "Is anyone a Bas**rd.

I double checked with the radio operator and it turns out the name was BASSET.

Has anyone else ever picked up passengers with strange names or given to you incorrectly by a radio operator

Sounds like....

Quite often I will pick up a fare and they will try and tell you where they want to go but can`t quite remember what it is called.

I got asked to take a fare to "The Caffeine". This got me thinking as I couldnt think of anything to do with caffeine apart from cups of coffee,

Turns out the location he wanted was called "The Canteen".

Sunday Roast to go....

Bob doesn't post much at all these days as he is mainly in the office but when he does get out on the road he tends to get some strange jobs.

The job that he went on last Sunday was one of those jobs where you don`t think you are going to get your fare to the destination in one piece.

Curious..... Bob picked up a fare and the fare came out with a Sunday Roast on a plate and asked him to deliver it to an address in Barrow. We do a lot of courier work picking up parcels and goods etc but a Roast Dinner.... Hmmm..

And the reason for the comment about not getting the fare to its destination is that (according to Bob) the meal smelt so good he was tempted to eat it.

What would you have done. If it was me I would have eat it then go to the chip shop and buy some chips to give to the person at the other end and say. "Heres your dinner".

Only Joking. of course but it does make me wonder what strange items have you been asked to deliver anywher

Fixed Fares

This week I picked a fare up from the Town Centre and took him into the nbext town and aksed him for the £6 fare. He paid it but started asking questions like.

That's extortionate, we`ve only just come up the road?
Is it a higher rate on a Sunday?
Why do you charge so much?

The fact that he said we had only just come up the road made me calculate the mileage to around just short of 4 miles. I explained this to him but he said it seemed like a few hundred yards.

The guy spoke with a broad irish accent and told me that where he came from that the same journey would cost him around 75 pence.

Is there any taxi firm out there that has a minimun rate this low?? speak up...