Soap Opera

Now and again one of my fares will ask me if I had watched a reality TV show or one of the soap operas the previous night. Nine times out of ten I answer "no I don't watch much telly" and the fare will look at me as if I must be criminally insane or live in some strange other universe. But the plain and simple truth is that I just don't need to watch reality TV, reality plays out each and every day on the back seats of my cab. All the real life drama, comedy and tragedy you could dream of are unveiled by passengers telling me of their sometimes chaotic lives.

 The big difference being that instead of some attention seeking, money grabbing wannabe my reality show stars are real genuine local folks. And as for soaps, well some folks will give me the latest episode of their storyline each time I pick them up, sometimes the plot will be a bit dull but with others I just can’t wait for the next thrilling installment.

Take Saturday night for instance, a five mile trip turned into a whole series of roller coaster emotions, all played out on my all knowing back seat.

 I took no part in the performance; all the scenes starred just the one young starlet and her mobile phone. The first call she received seemed normal enough at first but soon degenerated into a full blown row with what I assumed was her partner. The accusations flew back and forth and voices were raised to a shout for a few minutes and then the phone was obviously slammed down on her. She looked at the phone for a minute obviously frustrated that she couldn't finish the verbal fight and then tried redial a few times. When she got no reply she let out a piercing frustrated scream and then burst into floods of tears. After a while the phone rang and she snatched it to her ear expectantly, but no it wasn't the kiss and make up call she was expecting but someone threatening her with violence in retaliation for some punch-up that she had been involved with the previous night. She seemed frightened and pleaded with the caller that wasn't her fault and that she didn't start it, and that she “didn't want no trouble.” After she had soft soaped her way out of a bashing she hung up only for the phone to ring yet again with another caller. This time it was my fare that was straight on the attack loudly accusing the caller of “grassing her up for doin that tart over” and threatening to “kick her head in.” After delivering a filthy tirade of swearing and abuse it was my fares turn to slam the phone down.

 We reached her destination and it was time for the closing credits, but the phone rang yet again and I couldn't help but notice that she smiled in anticipation of the next thrilling episode.

I Don't Do Domestics

Sunday afternoon and I pull up to pick-up outside a local pub, just like I have done many hundreds of times before. All seems well as the couple walk up and he gets in the front and she slides into the back seat. I ask where too as usual and then think the guy is joking when he says calmly “I don’t want her in the taxi with me throw her out please.” Still thinking he is joking I smile and ask “where too” again and the lady shouts loudly “yeah where too, you two timing rat.” When I look in the rear view I see that the lady has been bawling and that her eye make-up had ran making her look like Amy Winehouse on a bad day. It’s then that the horrible truth dawns on me; I have been hijacked into a full blown domestic. It seems that she had followed him to the pub and was trying to catch him out misbehaving. Both seemed to have had more than a drop to drink and soon all hell was let loose as they started to argue. Both tried to get me involved, but as any taxi driver will tell you the unwritten rule is that you never ever get involved in domestics. After much shouting they both got out the cab, and then promptly got back in again, and then out and then in. After the fifth time I held my hand out to the guy and he handed me some cash. With that I was off leaving them both stood on the pavement arguing furiously away. All of this was very much to the amusement of the watching nicotine addicts chuffing away on the pub car park. I just don’t do domestics, but still I wish more passengers would pay me for doing nothing.

Pancake Day

Have we all forgotten about pancake Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday as it is sometimes known? This year it has fallen very early because of the early Easter, but even so this is the first year that none of my fares seemed to know about it. None of the shoppers I picked up from the local supermarkets had bought pancake mix or the traditional lemon juice to squeeze over them.

Now I learn that health and safety rules are beginning to put an end to the traditional sport of pancake racing.
A Cathedral pancake race that is part of a 600-year-old tradition has been stopped because of health and safety rules. The bell at Ripon Cathedral, which has rung at 11am to mark Shrove Tuesday since the 15^th century, has signalled the start of the city’s pancake race for many years.
However, the event, in which children, traders, soldiers and even clergy compete, has been abandoned because of the amount of work needed to carry out risk assessments.

In past years, the event, part of a long tradition of pancake races in Ripon, was likened to a village sports day, a last chance to have fun before the solemn season of Lent.

The race has been growing in popularity and even involved members of 38 Regt Royal Engineers, based in Ripon, who cook pancakes from a field kitchen outside the west front of the cathedral.

“We had hoped to make the pancake race as much of a tradition as the pancake bell and it’s a travesty that it has been killed off."

It’s sad isn’t it, and now surveys tell us that two thirds of people in the country no longer mark the Christian tradition of making pancakes.

Pancakes have featured in cookbooks since 1439. The custom of flipping or tossing them is believed to have started in the 17^th century. They are made from rich ingredients that include eggs and milk, which were used up in households before the 40 days of Lent during which only plain food should be eaten. I don’t know, folk will be telling me that they don’t even know that it’s Ash Wednesday on the day after Shrove Tuesday next eh!

Honest Luv

Finally I emerged blinking into the unaccustomed bright light and holding up my now loose pants. Twenty four miserable hours locked in a dark spider infested cellar on a food free diet. Twenty four long lonely hours with only an occasional chink of light from under the locked door, at which I would wail "It was only a joke luv, honest." Women eh! no sense of humour.
(this of course is all a result of the last post "screwdriver"

Dangerous Lady

HELL hath no fury like a woman scorned... as hapless plasterer Jason Wilson discovered at the weekend.
His long-term partner Emma Thomason took exception to something he’d done on Sunday and let him know about it – by packing all his worldly goods into the back of his works van and letting it roll into Cumbria's Whitehaven Harbour.
Jason’s sympathetic boss Graham has given him the week off but will be expecting an explanation when he returns on Monday morning.
Graham Wilson said: “Basically the lad was out for a pint and she took exception to something. I don’t know the ins and outs yet, but it must have been serious for her to take this course of action and I’ll certainly be asking for an explanation.
“I have been to see the van – which is a total write-off – and all his clothes and possessions are in the back of it. She must have been really mad at him.
“I have never met her and he has only worked for me for a few months, but from what I can gather they have been together for a long time.
Astonished on-lookers could not believe what they were seeing on Sunday evening. One said: “I had just been for a meal in a Harbour restaurant and I was walking along the dock when a van pulled up on the slipway.
“This woman jumped out of it, slammed the door and walked away. It went rolling down into the water.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it.
“I was going to ask her what she was doing but I looked at her and she gave me an evil stare before I could open my mouth, so I decided I’d better not.”
The van rolled into the water, which is over 12ft deep, and was completely submerged.
The coastguard volunteers tried in vain to get the van out of the dock, despite the water level being dropped by a metre to try and aid the recovery.
The next day a professional diver attached winches and the van was hauled back up the slipway.
The final bill for the incident could run into tens of thousands of pounds.
Graham Wilson added: “I was furious at first but I can see the funny side now, and at least we’ll get some free advertising if the picture of the van is plastered all over the papers.
“I haven’t had the bill yet, but the diver was £400 and the recovery wagons cost a fortune.
“That van itself is worth eight or nine thousand, so the total bill will be massive.
“I just hope that the insurance company are prepared to pay out.”
The Whitehaven Harbormaster said “Thankfully they were able to get it out within 24 hours, so the environmental effect was minimal.”

Jokers

Sunday morning and the 1st of April and of course we get the usual rash of phony phone calls for taxi's to fake addresses. This is to be expected, and we get them every April fools day, but it seems that some of these folk haven't cottoned on to modern technology. When they ring our office the number is displayed and if they have used us before, the computer matches that number with the name and address. And if it's a mobile every single address that it's ever been used to call a taxi to and from is listed. But when we get a phony call to an out of town address, as I did to Dalton this is when we see it as downright malicious. When I saw that there was no such number in the street, I called the office thinking that maybe the customer had mistaken the number. I was given the mobile phone number that had called and when I rang it a very drunk women answered, who was shocked when she realised that we had her number and hung up after trying to deny ringing us. A while later it suddenly come to me who the voice belonged to, it was definitely the crazy women who we banned in January. It seems that she has some sort of fixation with taxi's and used them even for short journeys of a few hundred yards. Only problem was she never seemed to have any money to pay for them, and always asked the driver if she could owe him the cash, which of course she never ended up paying. Still never mind the phone she used will come up as banned on the computer next time she tries to call a cab.

Legal Vultures

I get used to being told all about folks illnesses and what operations and treatments they have had, and some fares even go so far as to ask for my opinion on their medical problems. I as always tell them that I don't know and that"I wanted to be a doctor but just never had the patients" I think that maybe it's a case of a problem shared is a problem halved. But this last week I have picked two different fares up who were each going to see their solicitor about marital problems and divorce, both of these folk I had never met before in my life and yet both of them within half a mile of picking them up were telling me all the personal details and the reasons for the intended divorce. Both of them seemed to be upset about what the former partner had supposedly told their solicitor about the reason for the breakup and telling me they were going to tell the solicitor all about the nasty habits the former partner had, whether this was picking their noses or biting their toenails in bed I don't know, but is it worth the muckraking, what does it gain? I told both of them I know nothing about the law but that they were just the sort of clients that solicitors love, the more they disagree and complicate things the bigger the bill gets.

Thwarted

The rather drunk lass staggered into the back of the cab and started to curse and mutter, and so I asked if everything was OK. "No" she told me and then went on to tell me a tale of how she had been out the previous night with her male best friend who happened to be gay. He she told me had ended up paired up with another gay guy and they had all gone back to his house. Then after hiccuping a few times she went on to tell me that shortly after arriving there, her best friend had disappeared, leaving her alone with the other gay chap. " Well no problem there then you would have been safe enough" she swore and said "oh no I wasn't, he's just spent the last six hours trying to undress me". I asked if she needed the police or anything, and she said "no I think he was just trying to get my best friend jealous,I'll tell him off tonight". Well the truth of the matter is I simply don't believe a word she was saying! Six hours trying to undress her? when she could have left anytime she chose and believe me the two press studs and the wisp of elastic wouldn't have thwarted any guy who was half serious. Myself I think she had been playing the age old pastime of many a drunken women, that of trying to turn the gay guy straight. Well by the sounds of things I guess she wasn't successful!

A Women Scorned

As soon as my lady passenger got in the cab she asked me if I knew of a driver called Tony(I won't give his full name) who worked on our outfit, I did but I replied" no not really", so she began to describe him in the most unflattering terms, you know she said the small fat ugly one, well I said that could describe a lot of our drivers. And so she goes into even more gory detail, until finally, I said" yes I know who you mean"." He was my former husband" she said and then went on to tell me what a useless piece of trash she thought he was and how he had cheated on her and robbed her. "Why don't you use another cab firm to avoid him then" I asked "oh no I follow him around as he moves from firm to firm and tell all the drivers about him" And so as I was a captive audience for the next ten minutes or so I was treated with tales of how he was a bad father a bad lover and the full list of all his many nasty bad habits. A bit later I passed this driver and even though I took everything she said with a pinch of salt ( you know a woman scorned and all that)I couldn't help looking at him in a whole new light.