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!

The Rose

A young girl passenger was telling me about her crazy Saturday night out this morning. It involved lots of alcohol, drunken fallouts, regrets and only hazy recollections. But I think the rose she left behind on the back seat of the taxi tells the story much better than words.

Binned

Another busy Sunday and the morning started off with lots of leftovers from the Saturday night. One of the first was from a house in the next town five miles up the road, but the fare had still not appeared after ten minutes of me waiting patiently. It was 8: am and so there was no way I was going to blow the horn and rudely wake the poor local folk up. I was pressing ring back which calls the customers phone every few minutes and after a while I faintly heard a phone ring, it was coming from the backyard of the house where I was supposed to pick up from. I got out and opened the door and there was my disheveled drunken lady fare sitting on a dustbin, she must have expected me to drive into the back yard to collect her. 
She was only going up the road a half mile or so to a local hotel, as we got nearer alarm bells started in my head when she slurred that she was going to collect her car. But as we pulled into the hotel car park she swore when she saw that her car was blocked in by four or five others. I let out a sigh of relief because I knew that the hotel staff wouldn't even consider waking up the paying guests to move the cars for some drunken lady. I was proved right and returned her back to her dustbin within a few minutes.

Black Eye Friday

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 pick up 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 long 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.

Holding The Baby

Some stuff will just never find its way onto these pages, some stuff which I see and hear would just be too hurtful to the folks involved. Other stuff can be told after the passage of time this is just one such story. This took place a good few years back now and maybe the people involved have hopefully changed for the better, who knows let's hope so. The job was to pick a fare up from a large house which was split into flats, it was a rough sort of place and I had to wait a while before someone finally appeared. Then two guys walk out carrying a girl between them who looked unconscious, they heaved her in the back of the car and told me the address she was going to. I went to set off but one of them almost as an afterthought shouted for me to wait and went back into the house. The two guys both of whom were drunk then staggered out with a baby held between them.The baby of no more than twelve or thirteen months old was thrust on the lap of the semi-conscious girl. The girl was that far gone she could not speak or even keep her eyes open and so when we got to the address I was given, I took the baby off her and knocked on the door fully expecting someone sober waiting there to look after the both of them. After knocking for a while with no response, the girl roused herself enough to stagger to the door, open it and fall in. She then tried to take the baby from me, but looking at the state of her I was not so sure that was such a good idea. I had a look around the house in case someone else was about but found nobody at all. I then tried knocking on the neighbour’s door to see if they could help, but they simply didn’t want to know. 
 Very reluctantly I put the baby down and left, I suppose I was guilty of not wanting to get involved. But of course, my mind wouldn’t settle, I kept thinking about what could happen, but then I kept reminding myself that the child would probably be taken into care if the authorities found out. I radioed into the office and had a talk to the lady operator she didn’t hesitate “phone the police you’ll never forgive yourself if anything happens to that child” she said. I drove around aimlessly for a bit longer but the more I struggled with it the more I realised that something just had to be done. The phone call was made and I never did find out what happened over it. I just sincerely hope I did the right thing, but who knows what's for the best. did I make the right call I wonder?

Car Hunting

I went on a hunt the car mission this morning, about the third in the last month or two.
 I had picked a guy up who had been out drinking till the wee small early hours and now he had decided it was time to pick the car up. As with the rest he was full of confidence that it was just a straightforward taxi ride to the car and then driving it back home, and just like the others his face fell a country mile when the car was not where he thought it was. So it was a blank expression for a minute or two then he exclaims “I know" and directs me to another pub car park two miles away, but of course the same thing happens there also. He gets increasingly panicked as we try another two places where he thinks he may have left his car. 
But at the last place we try and with £12.00 on the meter there is his car, great big smiles from him until he puts his hand in his pocket for the keys.  "Dohh! "

Payback Time

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 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 bloody 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 where 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.

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!

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.

 

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.

Beer , Cigs and the fare

This afternoon around 3pm I had the privilege of picking up one of the towns well known alcoholics and what fun that one was. She got in the car sounding as gruff as a grizzly bear and as soon as she got it then she climbed out the other side asking if we were there yet.

Within a couple of minutes this man came out the house and got in the car and got her in the car as well. Just as I set off she said she had no money to pay the fare and wanted to get out. The man she was with wasnt amused with her and he had no money either.

Then she says she wants me to take her to the shop so she can buy a bottle of cider and some cigarettes which got me thinking that if she didn't have any money then how can she afford those luxuries. (I mean necessities to her). I asked to saee her money and make sure she had enough to pay the fare. She handed me a £10 note and told me to take the fare out of that but could I wait at the shop. I set off and waited at the shop and she came back out saying she couldnt get served as I had her money and she wanted it back to by what she wanted. I figired that what she would buy would leave her with no money for the taxi and I questioned her on this. Her attitude was that I could wait for my money and she would drop it in the office for me next week. (I doubt she would even remember).

I stood my ground, refused to give the the money. The man in the car was on my side and kept trying to get her to see sense. I then proceeded to take them to their destination and I gave them change out of the £10 note.

he then complained that she didnt have enough for cigs and cider as this was more important than a stupid daft taxi fare.

Just cant understand some people

Holding the baby

Some stuff will never find its way onto these pages, some stuff which I see and hear would just be too hurtful to the folks involved. Other stuff can be told after the passage of time this is one such story. This took place three or four years back now and maybe the people involved have changed for the better, who knows let,s hope so. The job was to pick a fare up from a large house which was split into flats it was a rough sort of place and I had to wait a while before someone come out. Then two guys walk out carrying a girl between them who looked unconscious, they heaved her in the back of the car and told me the address she was going to. I went to set off but one of them almost as an afterthought shouted me to wait and went back into the house. The two guys both of whom were drunk then staggered out with a baby held between them.The baby of no more than twelve or thirteen months old was thrust on the lap of the semi-conscious girl. The girl was that far gone she could not speak or even keep her eyes open and so when we got to the address I was given, I took the baby off her and knocked on the door expecting someone to be there to look after both of them. After knocking for a while with no response, the girl roused herself enough to stagger to the door open it and fall in. She then tried to take the baby from me, but looking at the state of her I was not so sure that was a good idea. I had a look around the house in case someone else was about but found nobody. I then tried knocking on the neighbour’s door to see if they could help, but they didn’t want to know. Reluctantly I put the baby down and left, I suppose I was guilty of not wanting to get involved. But my mind wouldn’t settle I kept thinking about what could happen, but then I kept reminding myself that the child would probably be taken into care if the authorities found out. I radioed into the office and had a talk to the lady operator she didn’t hesitate “phone the police you’ll never forgive yourself if anything happens to that child” she said. I drove around for a bit longer but the more I struggled with it the more I realised that something had to be done. The phone call was made and I never did find out what happened over it, I just hope I did the right thing.