Kerb crawling

I needed to pull over in my taxi, so I indicated left, and began to slow down. I noticed two angry street prostitutes having a territorial dispute at my chosen stopping point, so I cancelled my intended manoeuvre and drove around the corner instead. I pulled over and switched off the ignition.

Utterly absorbed in my phone, I suddenly became aware of someone walking away from my car. It was the taller prostitute, who had mistaken my aborted manoeuvre for an attempt at kerb-crawling. As she drew level with my window, she noticed that I was female, and simply turned on her heel, to return to ply her trade on the road.

I do feel sad for these girls. They were tiny babies once, full of life, innocence and potential. Being a street prostitute is not a job that anyone grows up wanting to do.

At some point in their lives, something happened to these girls, and a subsequent chain of events led them to try to sell themselves to passing strangers. As one of my own customers once remarked, “Someone put them there.”

It’s a very dangerous situation to be in, and I really do feel for those women whose lives have been so corrupted that they take to the streets.

Wobbly

I picked up a bubbly and very entertaining Filipino lady, who had been living in England for 3 months, working as a carer for the elderly.

We talked about her experience of England, and what a powerful learning curve it is to live and work in a country which has a different first language to your own native tongue.

Her English was good, and I remarked upon it.

“Oh, I am learning,” she replied modestly. “English has many difficult words.”

“Such as…?” I prompted her gently.

“Wobbly!” she enunciated carefully. “One day, one of my colleagues told me that one of our elderly ladies was feeling a bit ‘wobbly’ and I didn’t understand what she meant.”

I laughed, enjoying how she pronounced “wobbly” in her lovely accent. We discussed different contexts in which the word could be used.

Then, she said, “Sometimes I get things wrong, and I make my colleagues laugh a lot.”

“Go on,” I smiled.

“Yes,” she continued. “The other day, a lady at our home had a bad chest. She had a lot of congestion. My colleague said to me, “She might need a good cough”.”

“Ok,” I said, wondering where this might lead.

“But I misheard her,” said my lovely passenger, with a rueful smile.
“I was SHOCKED! I said to her, ‘What? WHAT?? She needs a good COCK?’!!”