was recently rendered speechless by a mother of teenage children, who was a customer in my taxi. We were talking about young people and their drinking exploits.
“Alcohol is weird,” she said. “It’s almost like they put something in it to make you drunk. Like a drug, or something. But it’s only a liquid.”
I was, and remain, utterly dumbfounded.
One night in October 2013, I was having a quiet night at work. So quiet, in fact, that I unwrapped the little packet of Love Hearts that were left in my car (along with a lollipop) by a customer who happened to be a recently released armed robber.
Nom nom nom. My kind of tip.
(Other tips that I have been gifted include a packet of truly delicious bacon; a CD of a local group, donated by said local group; a CD of a young female rapper, donated by herself; a Magnum (as in the ice cream, not the weapon), and a truly splendid Christmas jumper, donated by one of Gary Newman’s road crew!)
had an appropriately bizarre series of customers last night… to the point that the occasional customer who WASN’T in Halloween costume looked frankly weird.
Highlights of the festivities included:
* being reassured by an earnest and eloquent Frankenstein that his caped friend wouldn’t be sick… turned out that the cape was in fact a blanket from a volunteer paramedic, and the friend had left most of his evening expenditure in a bucket in the ambulance…
* two older witches with their partner wizards, walking up the drive of a private house… suddenly joined by a silent mass of fellow witches and wizards who were making their way up from the bus stop…
* a witch in a very short dress being boosted over a church wall… turned out that she didn’t have any knickers on :-&
* Fred Flintstone and a delightfully curvaceous Wilma, who I dropped off in fine fooling, and collected a few hours later… poor Wilma had overindulged and was feeling a bit queasy, while Fred patted her shoulder reassuringly…
* having my taxi chased by a blood-spattered man in a leather apron, much to the delight of his friends, all of whom turned out to be my customers. He then sat right behind me, and genuinely creeped me out without doing a thing…
* Seeing random lone zombies stumbling home, drunk enough to give a convincing impression that the city was being invaded by the undead…
* and finally… I pulled up at one club to discover that my customer was in a Nazi costume, complete with Swastika. The distaste on my face was evident. “Do I really have to pick YOU up?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t discriminate against people just because of how they look,” came the wonderful reply.
It transpired that he was quite a decent lad who abhorred everything that the Nazis stood for, and has chosen his costume as it represented, in his words, “the evil of all evils.”
We had a good chat about racism (which he had experienced) and gay rights, and about his costume. It turned out that he had hired the basic costume from a local shop, but that the Nazi embellishments had been made by his Mum. Really.
As I dropped him off and drove away, I was witness to the bizarre spectacle of a Second World War Nazi soldier bending down to tickle a little cat under the chin.
Happy Halloween!
“Until The Cavalry Come” (MTV)
I recently met the man who composed and sings this song, when he jumped in the back of my taxi, with a battered guitar. He was on his way to play a local gig. He told me about this video, and I looked it up on YouTube. Intriguing video, beautiful voice, and lovely melody.
I loved it, and told him so when I picked him up again. He was touched, and asked if he could play it for me. Then and there, in the back of my taxi. Just him and that battered guitar.
It was one of the most unexpected, and one of the most astoundingly beautiful musical experiences of my life. The emotion in his voice brought tears to my eyes, and stillness to my soul. Incredible.
I am feeling very sad. I just found a little black cat, dead in the road. It had been run over. No collar. It was in a very bad way, so I picked it up, and laid it gently in the verge. I would hate for its human companions to have seen it like that. I will contact the local vets and lost pet groups later. Right now, I just want to hold my two little beauties close.
Another little life lost, and more lives shattered by the loss. Why can’t people just drive more carefully?
I took home a wonderful, and endearingly inebriated lady doctor, who worked as a locum gynaecologist. She had just been visiting with colleagues from her university days, and they had enjoyed a fantastic night together, drinking, catching up, and swapping clinical stories. Obviously, this was too good an opportunity to miss, so I asked her if she would share her most memorable clinical incident to date.
She had been working a family planning clinic, in a rural area, when she was asked to attend to a patient in some distress. The patient was female, mortified, and reluctant to disclose her troubles. Eventually, with careful and sensitive questioning, the locum deduced that the patient had… erm… experienced an unusual accident, while alone in the privacy of her own home, which had led to an Unexpected Item becoming lodged firmly in an Unmentionable Place. The item was the lid from a roll-on deodorant bottle. The place remains unmentionable.
The poor patient was deeply embarrassed, and refused to go to the local hospital. The locum gynaecologist examined her carefully, and confirmed that indeed, the Unexpected Item was resolutely wedged in the Unmentionable Place. The locum assessed the situation with an appropriately grave demeanour.
The most appropriate course of action would be to transport the lady to the local hospital, and have the Item removed from the Place under anaesthetic. However, this was not an option for our increasingly mortified patient. The locum took pity on her. “I will get this out for you,” she vowed.
Indeed, the locum tried. She tried a whole variety of methods, involving forceps and other dastardly medical implements, manual dexterity, and exceedingly careful manipulation, but to no avail. The Unexpected Item remained securely located within the Unmentionable Place. The locum’s eyes travelled around the room, and lit upon the Mother of all Speculums. (Uninformed men, google “speculum” as an image, and let your minds contemplate the full horrors. Women, stop wincing. Men: we women all know precisely what that this undoubtably male-invented tool of torture does.)
Armed with a considerable amount of lubricant, the locum seized the contraption, and advanced upon the helpless but desperate patient. With great skill, and a spectacular turn of phrase, the locum, in her own words (which made me shout aloud with laughter as she related the tale),
“Jacked her wide open and Got It Out!”
Success!!! We celebrated together the locum’s cunning, persistence, and determination to spare the lady a trip to the local hospital, while I wiped tears of laughter (and sympathy) from my eyes. Brilliant.
Back at Base, I related this tale to my colleagues.
“A deodorant lid? Are you Sure?” quipped a driver. “Why would anyone do that?!”
“Perhaps she acted on Impulse” said our lovely telephonist.
“Poor woman,” I said. “You can see why she would want to keep Mum.”
14th March 2014 saw terrible weather conditions. I had a very full-on night at work, negotiating my taxi safely through the fog. Normally, most of my work would be within the suburbs of Norwich, however tonight, with horrendously poor visibility, I got not one, but THREE “county” jobs.
The first was taking Tyrion, a lovely young male ferret, and his delightful media student owner, to Downham Market, where he is to be debollocked in just a few hours time. The fog wasn’t too bad.
Next, I took a very drunk doorman, who had obviously had a cracking night off, to Lowestoft. By now it was horrible visibility, with some major road closures, owing to the evening’s tragic helicopter accident, which very sadly left four people dead. My doorman customer was, however, in good fooling, and entertained me all the way to his house.
Much of the time he was difficult to understand, owing to the combination of spectacular slurring, and a full twenty minutes of hiccuping. He was very concerned that I had to return to Norwich in the fog, bless him.
I made it safely back to Norwich, only to pick up a group of four offshore workers, who had been due to fly in to Norwich Airport, but had been diverted to Birmingham, due to the weather, and had endured a lengthy coach ride to Norwich. I collected them from the airport, to take them to Lowestoft and Beccles.
Again, our journey was hampered by the road closures, but a team effort got us to where they needed to go. The fog was, by now, almost impenetrable in places, and I was considering staying overnight in Lowestoft, for safety reasons.
The men were very sweet, and the last chap was concerned that I had to try to make it back to Norwich. He was so appreciative of my efforts to get them all home safely, after their looooong coach journey, that he actually tipped me nearly £60!!!
I am glad to be home, safe and sound. My thoughts are with those affected by the weather conditions, and in particular our emergency services, who will have to carry in regardless. And my heart goes out to those poor families who lost loved ones tonight.
sensualtaxi 