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!

Red Lady

I had picked a couple up very early on the Sunday morning , they had obviously been out all night long and both looked the worse for wear. They were both going to Walney Island the guy to the north and the lady a couple miles away further to the south of the island.
 When we stopped briefly to let the guy out he leaned back into the car and said to the lady in a really very loud voice "thanks luv best sex I have ever had"
 He did use an explicit old Anglo Saxon term really but lets not go there.
 He then shut the door and walked off, she then of course had to sit there embarrassed  for the rest of the journey, she went very very red and swore very quietly but vehemently for the rest of the journey.

Garden Calf

Walney Island's west shore park which is a kind of chalet retirement village has always had an unofficial competition for the wackiest garden ornament. Well I would say that this is the outright winner hands down so far!

 I will keep may eyes open when I am over there just in case someone acquires something even crazier.    

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!.

Sat Nav

Got myself a new sat-nav(GPS) the other day, and have been playing around with my new toy whenever I get the time. Not that I will use it much in town but I think it will be really useful for rural jobs and the odd out of town job.
 I had it switched on today when I picked up one of our regular fares a lady who happens to be blind. She heard the female voice from the sat-nav and asked me who else was there. I explained what it was and she was fascinated, so I programmed in her destination and let her listen as it guided us there.” How big is it” she asked so I handed it to her and she was amazed to feel how small it was.” Do you think I could use one” she asked”, it would be great for me to find my way round “I explained that she would not be able to enter stuff into it without sight. She was very disappointed, but as I said to her in the next few years you may able to get voice activated versions. She said this would be a boon to her and other people in a similar situation.
 Ain’t new technology great!

NYTAXI

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. 

Dung Beetle

A nice easy job picking up from the local hospital and ten miles up the road to Ulverston, or so I thought!

My fare was waiting in the foyer shoehorned into what must have been a specially strengthened jumbo size wheeled chair. I would guess that she would have been maybe between 28st (390lb) and 30st (402lbs) and had her right arm in plaster and stuck out at an extreme right angle.

She was with her mother who at maybe 4ft 10in and 6st (84lbs) was the complete opposite to her in every way.

I can’t wheel her declared the mother and looked at me expectantly, so I took a deep breath and started to shove as hard as I could on the back of the wheeled chair. At first, it would not budge and so I closed my eyes and gave it all I had and was rewarded with some movement. I opened my eyes when the victim began shouting at me and found that all I had managed to achieve was turning her on the spot three times. Mother pointed out that one of the wheels still had its brake on so I released that and prepared to set off again.

By this time, the ladies of the WRVS had evacuated the rest of the patients from the foyer and were comforting them with tea and biscuits.

 Off I set with the huge load squealing and shouting directions looking like a dung beetle pushing an elephant turd up an anthill.

When I finally reached the taxi with my Convoi Exceptionnel and I was pondering just how I would load her without any mechanical assistance, she popped up out of the chair like a whale breaching the ocean and shrieked “I can walk you know it’s my bloody arm that’s broken”

With that, she climbed into the front seat of the now lopsided groaning taxi.

I set of staggering back with the chair wondering why she waited for me to push her in the chair when she could walk and why I was daft enough to do it!  

Mother was sat very quiet in the back and daughter sat waiting to be belted up. This was never going to happen even if I could reach round her the belt would never have stretched the vast distance.

Next was the problem of releasing the handbrake which was hidden beneath some unknown part of the daughter’s anatomy, this was achieved with much embarrassed and apologetic fumbling and straining.

“I was ran over by a truck,” the daughter announced when we had set off, now being a sensitive sort of guy I didn’t follow my first instinct and ask her if the truck driver survived, but I couldn’t help but wonder.

Daughter had a loud shrill sort of voice that just didn’t seem to want to stop talking at me. After a mile or two mother quietly tried to interrupt her to tell me directions to the place they were going. This seemed to be a big mistake as daughter shrieked “can’t I bloody talk now you old cow” and this started a full scale argument between them for the next nine miles of pure hell.

Every time daughter shouted at mother, she turned round to face her in the back and in doing so punched me with the heavily plastered arm.

I was mentally exhausted and black and blue by I finally gratefully dropped them both off.

Some days I would rather be a dung beetle!      

Mobile Bad Manners

When someone talks to me from the seat directly behind me 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 there mobile phones and not to me. This mainly happens when they have the phone set to silent mode and they get a call or they suddenly decide they need to call someone 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 car and instead of talking to each other they are all talking and texting to other people on their mobiles. The other anti-social thing is when passengers  get in and turn there MP3 players down to tell you where they are going and then turn it right back up again for the rest of the journey.
 Some have it that loud that that I can hear their music louder than the radio, that has got to be be damaging to peoples hearing.

Methadone Mad

I had picked an ould lass up from a local doctors surgery and she wanted to first go to the chemist (pharmacy) and collect the medication that the doctor had prescribed for her and then to be taken home.

Now it was late in the day, the woman had really struggled to get into the taxi, and so I offered to go into the chemist and collect her medication for her whilst she waited in the taxi. She was more than happy with this idea and so off I went into the busy chemist shop, only to be confronted by a crowd of people all waiting for prescriptions to be filled.

After a few minutes, I got to the counter and handed the prescription over only to be told that they were very busy and it could take up to half an hour before it was ready. Well the customer was paying for the cab so I went out and checked with her and she was okay with that since she would be sitting all nice and warm in the taxi.

I have not had a lot of experience of the etiquette of a busy pharmacy so I just followed the lead of what everyone else seemed to do. Well that sure opened my eyes to some strange human psychology and behaviour.

The idea seems to be that you hand your prescription in over the counter, then withdraw, and pretend to be looking at the display shelves whilst all standing in a sort of semicircle with all eyes looking towards the dispensing counter. When anyone fresh entered with a prescription, all ears and eyes gave them full scrutiny, with one young woman I noticed tearing her attention away from the male incontinence products she was browsing and stretching to tiptoes to see over the display. Folk seemed to be fascinated by it all and were magnetically drawn towards the counter whenever a conversation was taking place there.

The idea seemed to be that when your prescription was ready they called your name and you went to the counter and confirmed your address and then sometimes the pharmacist had a word about the medication which really seemed to fascinate folk no end. I could see the rapt concentration on the faces as they strained to hear every fascinating word.

Then I saw the look of absolute injury and outrage on all the faces when two people who had only just handed over their prescriptions were called forward within minutes. The agitation spread round the shop like a rampant noro-virus and mutterings were heard all the way from the cold creams to the condoms.  When the two had departed one woman who had more than a passing resemblance to Herman Goering dared to ask the staff why these two interlopers had been served before her.

Everybody took another step towards the counter and listened intently as it was explained that the shady pair had been in for a daily dose of methadone which is a heroin substitute used by addicts. Herman was still outraged and said that that was no excuse especially with “bloody junkies getting priority over us decent folk”.  The pharmacist came out and explained that if they don’t sort the people on methadone out quickly they tend to get very agitated and have been known to kick off and assault staff and cause major damage.  All fascinating stuff to me, then the entertainment continued with a rather seedy looking guy asking at the counter for a prescription to collect. The chemist brought the medication out and the now sweating chap reached for it eagerly, but it was held just out of his reach whilst he was asked for his address. We watched and listened open mouthed as he reeled off at least fifteen different addresses none of which were the right one. The meds were taken out of his reach and he shuffled out of the shop mumbling and swearing.

After what seemed like a lifetime, most of the crowd had been dispensed with and a handful and myself remained looking at the ear wax removal products. The chemist kept shouting out a name but everyone looked at each other and shook their heads denying that it was them. Finally, the thought entered my thick head that I didn’t know the name on the prescription that I was waiting for. So I checked with my fare and yep it was hers, when I went back in to collect it every eye looked at me suspiciously.

 Address please said the chemist you could have heard a pin drop during the embarrassed silence whilst I tried to unsuccessfully recall the customers address. Dohhh!!           

 

Our Molly An Update

The piece on Molly below was posted way back in Oct 2005.
Some twelve months later Molly disappeared from sight and I sadly had to assume that she had either died or gone into a care home. Despite asking folk about her I heard nothing about her until today more than eight years later!.
An elderly lady I had picked up happened to know her well and told me that despite being nearly totally blind and deaf Molly still lives independently on her beloved Barrow Island. 
Because of her horrific experience of being in the care system for forty years Molly refuses to contemplate going into a care home.  Even though being totally house bound and dependent  on home carers she is the lady tells me still cheerful soul and is now well into her ninety's. 

                                 OUR MOLLY

This is our Molly,my favorite fare a happy lady who uses our cabs five or six times a day. 

But let’s look behind the smiling eyes, Born Salford in 1920 that makes her 85 Years of age.
 She lost both her parents at a very early age, mother when she was four and then father at six. Taken in by an aunt for a while she started to suffer from epileptic fit’s the aunt told her she was to go into a hospital for a short while, this ended up being for the next FORTY YEARS.
 Why? Because she suffered from epilepsy and back then you would be hidden away in an institute out of sight out of mind. 
Molly struggled when she was released because she had become institutionalized most things we take for granted like paying bills getting insurance, she had never ever done 
At the age of sixty Molly was talked into marriage , she never even knew her husband could neither read or write until he was unable to sign the marriage register on their wedding day . This marriage lasted for nine years and then because of her husbands death and the fact that she was living with his parents she became homeless, but instead of going into care Molly found herself a flat and a community who adopted her and she has lived happily ever since on Barrow Island.

Walney Floods 2014

Today must be the very first time that I have had to explain to customers that I couldn't take them where they wanted to go. They wanted to go to the far end of the island of Walney a place called North Scale, I had just come of the island so I knew that this would be impossible until the tide receded to clear the flooded roads.
I explained this to them but they just wouldn't believe that they couldn't get home somehow, they suggested different routes but every option they come up with I knew was flooded.
I explained that they would be okay to get home in half an hour or so but they unbelievably said "forget it we will get the bus" mmm wonder how they got on eh!   

Pictures below show just how bad it was over Walney today. 
 

New Year New Revenge.

Instead of getting involved in the mayhem of New Years Eve I opted for an early start on New Years Day. This gives good opportunity's for payback for all the Peter Kay taxi driver sketches that groups of giggling drunks always try to recreate in the back of the cab. It really does get a bit boring by the time you get to the hundredth time of "busy tonight mate” and "what time you on till” that Peter Kay has a lot to answer for.
 But the tables are turned early next morning when the fares are a bit worse for wear after a full nights partying. Nothing too harsh you understand, just a bit of gentle mickey taking.
 Such as looking back at the hung-over wreck in the back and saying” we’d better get you back to the crypt before the sun comes up eh!" Or to the fella wearing the brightly coloured frilly shirt, "we'd better get you home before your mother misses her blouse.
 Or the useful advice given to the young lass who looked as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards “I’d stay away from mirrors for a few days if I was you."
 One confused staggerer who was having trouble remembering where he lived and muttered "over the hill and round the bend" to which I replied "yes I know you are but where do you live,”
 But even I had to refrain from any cruel humour with my first fare of the day. This was from the crowded casualty department of Furness General hospital were he had been all night. It seems that he had a disagreement with a lass who promptly settled the matter by taking her shoe off and embedding the stiletto heel in his head several times, ouch.

Christmas Twins

I had picked up a fare today, an ould lass going into town to get some last minute Christmas shopping. She was excitedly telling me that she was going to get presents for her little ones, as it was their very first Christmas. Now as she looked to be in her seventies I presumed that she must have been talking about her grandchildren.

I’m going to get them an activity centre, a climbing frame, a little tent to hide in, lots of cuddly toys and some chewy treats she said breathlessly.

Don’t you think that’s a bit too much and far to early, for that age they will be more interested in playing with the wrapping paper and boxes at that age I suggested helpfully.

She laughed and said, “Yes they will love that won’t they, oh and I must get a CD of Christmas carols for them to listen to whilst they have Christmas dinner”

Now I was getting confused and beginning to consider calling social services to rescue these two mistreated mites, so I asked if that since it was their first Christmas are they twins perhaps. Oh yes she said laughing crazily “ones brown and the others black”

All sorts went through my mind until it finally sunk into my poor confused head that she was talking about her newly acquired kittens! Dohhh!   

Black Eye Friday

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, 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 merry Christmas and seasons greetings to all cheers.

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.

      

Vodka Day

Today (Sunday) had a strange vodka theme running right through it.
One of the first fares was sporting the most swollen most multi-coloured bruised face I have ever seen and without me even asking him he tells me the tale of him being stabbed in the face by "a friend" 
"Aye we had both been on the VODKA" he said by way of explanation and then asked me to take him to a shop who would sell him a bottle of VODKA at 9am on a Sunday morning. The VODKA he told me was a sweetener for his alcoholic girlfriend who he had fallen out with after drinking too much VODKA.
Lots of supermarket pickups after that with people starting to get their Christmas booze supplies in including lots of them with bottles of this weeks special offer on VODKA.
Later one fare was walking away from the taxi when I heard the sound of breaking glass my fares bottle of VODKA had come right through the bottom of her plastic bag. She took this rather badly and for a respectable looking middle aged lady she sure knew some swear words. But luckily for me she hired me again to take her back to the shop to replace the bottle of VODKA with a new one.
Later I was taking  a young lass to a pub she was going out for the afternoon and she told me that she had been out the night before and instead of paying high pub prices for her drinks she had hidden a bottle of VODKA in her bag.
The last job of the day and again it was someone going out to the pub for the evening and the lass was on the phone to her mates who were already in the pub waiting for her. "Can you get me a drink in" she asked them  and when they agreed she said "aye make it a double VODKA and coke".
On the way home I noticed that the Town Hall flag was flying but I was too far away to see which flag it was I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see that it was a Smirnoff flag flying because we sure contribute to the profits of the VODKA trade round here.

 

999 Taxi

Well it seems that the NHS now want cabbies as well as transporting patients home when they are still in a lot of cases desperately unwell now want us to attend 999 calls as well.
Not a lot of us have any sort of medical training or experience so if this is true then we can expect serious consequences.
I have had many cases of transporting discharged patients home and being more than a little worried about how they would cope when they got home. Some are brought to the taxi in wheelchairs and struggle to stand to get into the taxi. Then we have a struggle to help them out at the other end sometimes into a cold house without any way of preparing hot food for themselves.
We do what we can but at the end of the day we are neither qualified or paid to go beyond just driving the taxi. The other big issue is that if we do enter the patients property then we are not insured and are wide open to accusations of dishonesty or worse.    

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513856/Dial-999-TAXI-How-stretched-ambulance-services-rely-cabbies-police-firefighters-pick-patients.html#socialLinks

Sheep and Ladders

I was talking to a fare today who told me that he had just got back from the Falkland Islands, he works out there for six long lonely months at a time.
 There are about a hundred sheep to every single man he was telling me, so I asked him if he knew all his by their first names.

Lots of daft people up flimsy looking ladders round here in Barrow in Furness putting up Christmas lights, looking at some of the dodgy ladders I can see the local hospital casualty department doing a roaring good trade.

Legal High Delivery

As I pulled the taxi into a quiet side street near Barrow town centre to drop off my fare today the road was blocked by a horde of thirty or so people milling about on foot and in three or four battered looking cars.
They looked like a right seedy bunch and and it seemed to me that it was obvious that they were up to no good. Whilst waiting for them to clear a path I said as much to my passenger. "I know exactly what they are up to because I know some of them" he said. He then opened his window and shouted a name, at this one of the motley crowd ran off at fast as his dirty trainers could carry him. "That's my younger brother and they are there for a delivery of the latest batch of legal high that one of scrotes in the cars has brought into town."
What amused me about it was the place they had chosen to meet up and deal this so called legal high was right outside our local Alcohol and Drug Advisory Centre!
What does that tell you about what these so called legal highs do for brainpower or am I woefully wrong and they were making an anti establishment political statement?
Alcohol and Drug Advice Centre
  

Dirty Curtains.

It's always been a bit of a standing joke with some of my regular passengers when I get near to dropping them in their street I will say something like” which house is it again is it the one with the dirty curtains” or” is it the one on the rough end of the street”. But sometimes I do slip up and say things like that to people who I don’t really know, like today I said “oh you mean the one with the scruffy garden “ the lady didn't look very amused at all.
 There was a local driver who is long retired now but who was very well known for making remarks when he picked up or dropped of passengers, he would in all seriousness say such things as” that door could do with a fresh coat of paint” or that grass needs cutting and your hedge trimming” and “you can buy a brush and shovel cheap enough you know”

Bully Boys

There must be a whole generation of children growing up now who must be absolutely terrified of taxi drivers. There are lots of mothers who when the child won't sit still or be quiet use the threats of "the driver will shout at you"" the driver will throw you out," the driver will hit you."

I myself am perfectly mild mannered and non violent and have never been known to kick, bite or scratch at any time unless seriously provoked and I sometimes struggle to stop myself from laughing at these idle threats. Some of the younger kids do take it half seriously though and you can see them looking at me in frightened awe in case I really am the psychotic sadist that mother says I am. 

I don’t suppose we will get many taxi fares of these children when they grow up eh!

Plain Sailing

The fare who I later found out was a sailor on his way back to join his ship in Plymouth must have been taking his last fond farewells from his lady friend.
 She was still naked hiding her modesty behind the door she waved him off, only problem being she had forgotten that the door was glass.
 He come out to the taxi and got in we both looked back at her still waving to him and still unaware of her ample charms being on display. 
And then we looked at each other  and smiled and he said "daft cow."

Beckham

David Beckham gets into the back of my taxi the other day and he sees me looking at him in the rear-view mirror.
 After about five minutes patiently waiting I said: ''OK give me a clue.'' Beckham says: ''I had a glittering career at Manchester United, played in America and got over 100 caps for England, is that enough?''
I sighed and said: ''No, you idiot, where do you want to go?"

Amber Alert

Got a job this cold windy and wet Sunday morning at about 10 o clock picking up from one of our local churches. Not at all unusual on a Sunday to be picking up folk who have been to the Sunday morning service. We sometimes pick up an ould lass from this particular church and so I waited expecting to be picking up a little old lady.
I was more than a little shocked when a little old man strode out and jumped in the front passenger seat not because he was a man you understand but simply by what he was dressed in. A micro mini skirt with peach tights and a blouse and bright multi coloured jacket topped off with a peach headband worn on a completely bald head.
"That bloody winds going right up my mini skirt" started the conversation followed by "my names Amber Flowers, whats yours?"  Well once I had got over my initial shock and slight embarrassment we carried on a perfectly normal civilized conversation and I have got to say, what a nice person this turns out to be.

  Amber tells me that she suffers badly from nerves but all I can say is that it must take one hell a lot of nerve and a hell of a desire not to blend in with the crowd to dress this way.
I had seen her in passing quite a few times and must admit to keeping as much distance from her as possible, which I guess is what a lot of folk must do. But as they say "it takes all sorts"and Amber has chosen a slightly different perhaps harder path to the rest of us so lets hope its a happy one eh!  

No Body

I knew that it would be one of those funny sorts of days today when the first customer of the morning got out of the cab and sort of absentmindedly said "bye bye love you see you later"
I don't know who she was thinking of but I don't think it was me somehow.
I think she realised what she had said going by her pausing mid step and shaking her head and smiling before hurrying away. 
The very next job and it was pouring it down and I could just make out my fare walking down her garden path. As she got closer the handbag I thought that she had in her hand started to look very much like a human head being carried by its long hair. And as she got still closer that's exactly what it appeared to be she was swinging it casualty as if it was perfectly natural to be in possession of  some poor souls head.
I was just about to drive of as fast as possible when I noticed the lack of blood and as she got still closer that our body-less friend had a distinct plastic look to him. It turns out that she was an apprentice hairdresser and was taking our friend nobody back to college after using him for styling practice.
I suggested that she may like to pop him in a plastic bag next time she takes him out and about or she may end up practicing first aid instead of styling on her next taxi driver.

Last Century

At a meeting I attended at our local Town Hall the Taxi licencing officer suggested that it would be a good idea for the local taxi firms to exchange information on issues concerning the trade. A kind of Taxi Watch.
This would be useful to drivers, then bad payers and violent fares could be banned from all firms.
The only easy way to do this this would be an e-mail exchange between firms, but as we from the trade pointed out even in this day and age some of the firms unbelievably don't even have an e-mail address.

 Just what century they are living in in is a mystery not being able to send and receive e-mails is doing a disservice to both the firms and its drivers. 

The licencing officer has contacted all the firms to try and set this taxi watch scheme up and has asked those lacking one to supply an e-mail address.
Guess what? Absolutely no response from any of the firms!
Does this show that they don't give a shite for the well-being and safety of drivers or are they all just lazy buggers who cant be bothered?

Exotic Pets

A guy who was one of my fares today was telling me that his job is to deliver exotic pets like spiders snakes and lizards to pet shops and private buyers all over the U.K.
 Last week he told me he delivered some rock lizards to a house in a rough area of Glasgow, the buyer asked him to come upstairs and he then showed him a thirty foot long Anaconda snake. 
Will you swap it for the rock lizards he was asked? 
He thought about it for a short while and then remembered that this huge snake because it needed the warmth would have to travel in the front of his van with him, he declined the offer. 
Yes I think I maybe would have as well.

Neverbe Paid For

A guy gets in the car today and says "Lakeland Drive Ratings Village please" I looked at him and said ohh! You mean the old Listers factory site don't you. 
He didn't like me calling his brand new fancy housing estate that one little bit, but that’s what most people who remember the old factory it was built on call it.
It take a generation before any new name like that becomes accepted and used by locals. 
 There is this thing they do nowadays of giving posh names to these places and adding tens of thousands to the price.
Have you noticed that they don't build streets anymore, all new builds are called Mews, Gardens, Groves or some such fancy title, talk about pretentious eh! 
 There is one such new estate locally  with a "street" called Neverby Drive on; of course when we taxi drivers refer to it we call it Neverby paid for.

Wrong Impression

She was a pretty young thing who was deep in conversation on her mobile phone when I picked her up.
 She stopped talking just long enough to tell me where she was going and then shortly after the conversation with her boyfriend I guessed, started to get a bit saucy.
 She was describing in great detail exactly what she was going to do to him when she got to his house; she seemed to be totally oblivious of me overhearing her. 
The nearer that we got to the address she was going to the more she seemed to get excited about what was to take place. By this time my neck was hurting with the strain of looking dead ahead and trying not to look like I was listening.    
 We finally pulled up outside her destination and she asked the lucky guy to come out and pay for her cab fare, I got the shock of my life when it was a girl who came out to pay. 
Still as I always say to gay ladies "we have a lot in common" and when they ask what I reply "well we both like girls!".

Tooth Hurty

This last week or so I have picked up quite a few short jobs were the fare worked out at £2.30 and on some of these occasions when I said "£2.30 please".

The passengers looked at me and said, "Go and see a dentist then".

It didn't sink in with me at first until one fare seeing my baffled expression said "What time does a china man go to the dentist?”

Doh... and then is hit me! Why am I so daft sometimes  eh?

Devious Sunday

I have found that Sunday mornings are always good for a laugh. One fare is the little old lady off to her church service and the next is a bleary eyed drunk still blinking at the harsh morning light. I pick up all the people that wake up in strange places with a bad head, or somebody else with a worse head.
 Funny how all the girls try to justify themselves they tell me even though I don’t ask that "they stopped at a girlfriends house last night". One lady "and I use the word loosely" hailed me early one Sunday morning" Leicester St" she says, but that’s only a hundred feet away I said "So five pounds Leicester St" she replied. I am not going to argue about making easy money so off we go. We get round the corner and there’s the irate hubby waiting on the doorstep hands on hips and obviously very angry, she then makes a big show of handing over the five pounds to make sure he sees it being paid and no change given, must have been making out she had come from much further away, devious eh!.

Poor Relations

I see Barrow has been treated as the poor relation yet again by Cumbria County Council up in the far north of our county. Money for these schemes to police taxi ranks has absolutely no chance of trickling down here It seems that when Carlisle get hold of our council tax that they want to spend it much closer to home, never mind us poor forgotten  folk down in the south of the county.


News & Star | News | Taxi marshals scheme in west Cumbria hailed a success

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! 

What Barrow Taxi Drivers Put Up With

This is a small sample of what our local taxi trade here in Barrow in Furness has to put up with at the weekends. This is happening mainly after midnight when people have pre-loaded on cheap supermarket booze before heading into town. This is why the taxi trade is pushing for 3am early closure orders. Get folk out earlier and drinking in the more controlled environment of local pubs and clubs.

24 Hour Failure

We need to go back to sensible licensing hours then maybe we can save some of our pub's and working folk club's from closure.
People blame the smoking ban it's not that, it's the fact that because town centre clubs are open until 6am so the younger generation drink at home and then go out after midnight. Locally we only have to look at the nearby town of Ulverston  where the pubs are thriving even though everything closes before 2am. You will find lots of Barrow folk making the ten mile trip simply because nothing happens in Barrow until midnight. Tony Blair thought that with 24hr drinking we would become a cafe society and sip a glass of wine with a plate of pasta. Not a chance! we are Northern Europeans who consume as much alcohol in the shortest time possible. So let's get back sensible closing times and save our taxi drivers and folk in the licensed trade from this government sponsored idiocy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424718/24-hour-drink-law-disaster-Police-chiefs-brand-round-clock-pubs-terrible-mistakes-drunk-tanks-cope-late-night-mayhem.html

Net Beast

I had picked four guys up and one of them was saying how he had been talking to a 22 year old nymphomaniac in an internet chat room the previous night.
 His mates howled with laughter when I interrupted with the comment that it was probably a 22 stone transvestite for all he knew.
 There are still many gullible folk about who believe because they want to believe. 
 It reminded me off the young lady I took back to her home in Blackpool recently, which is about 70 miles from here; she had come through to visit someone she had met in the chat rooms and ended up staying the night.
 I said don’t you find that dodgy had you met him before or anything no she said we just spoke via the keyboard.
 Anyway as we drove along I had a better look at her in the rear view mirror and not to put to fine a point on it she was a beast!  So I don’t know how she had described herself to the poor guy but I bet he got a hell of a fright.
 She did tell me that he had paid the full £70 taxi fare so that says a lot to me.

Taxi Nightmare

Taxi (2013) Director Kevin Sharkey Producer Colm Sexton from Kevin Sharkey on Vimeo.
A Taxi ride turns into a nightmare for the driver and the female passenger. Caution: Strong language, racist and drug references. Shot on Canon 600D and 650D. Locations in Temple Bar and Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland

Jail Phone

A strange letter arrived at the local Taxi office that I work from the other day.
It was headed as coming from Her Majesty's Prison, which one I won't say to protect the identity of the letter writer. The writer explains that they had been picked up by one of the Acacia taxis a while ago and then found that they had no cash to pay the driver. Whether this was maybe an attempt to do a runner or not we don't know so let's give him the benefit of the doubt eh!
Anyway, the driver must have had the good sense to not let him get away with it and promptly asked for the guy's phone as surety.
 So the prisoner was explaining in the letter from jail that the next day he had been arrested and then sent to prison. What for he doesn't say in his letter so lets hope it isn't anything too bad eh! 
He didn't know who the driver was or what car he drove and only gave the street which he had been picked up from and a rough date.
 Amazingly, when the operator radioed over and asked if anyone knew anything about it a driver answered right away and confirmed that he had the guy's phone.
The prisoner asked in his letter if the driver could keep hold of his phone until he was released from incarceration in a few months' time.
Luckily, for him the driver readily agreed to this. But as no one was willing to write back in reply to the prisoner I guess that he will have to remain in suspense tucked up in his cell until he is finally released.     

Nee Naw

I was a bit curious when I spotted this car sporting the words N.W Blood Bikes.

I mean blood and bikes could mean any number of things to a lot of people eh?

So of course I googled it and the website tells me that they" provide a voluntary out of hours transport service to our local hospitals by carrying urgent and emergency blood, blood derivatives, samples, donor breast milk for premature babies, Doctors notes, and theatre equipment, in fact anything that can be carried by motorcycle, between hospitals.

We provide this service through the night, at weekends and Bank Holidays enabling hospital funding to be better spent on patient care."

Mmm I thought that sounds familiar, isn't that exactly what we as a local taxi service do every day of the year 24 hours a day. Of course we charge for our services but that's part of what we do for our living. Why do these seemingly charity minded bikers want to steal the bread from our table?

Is it because they want to help out the poor old cash strapped National Health Service?

Mmm maybe so but aren't they inadvertently helping to downgrade that very service into a charity aided shadow to the private health industry?

I have just heard recently that our area here in Furness has had a reduction in emergency ambulance cover down from five units to two. Oh but don't worry if anything major happens we can rely on the air ambulance helicopter to help. 

Mmm but wait a minute isn't that charity funded as well?  

What next: sponsor's names on staff uniforms and collection boxes in casualty maybe?

We should remember that we all pay towards the NHS and we shouldn't be helping to dismantle it.

But maybe the truth is that these guys may have the best of intentions but being blunt they could be seen as macho weekend warriors playing at being an emergency service rider.

Nee Naw Nee Naww eh!