The Collar and the Cab

In an act of pure opportunist self-promotion and in the hope of selling some I am publishing some extracts from my new book The Collar and the Cab on this blog. There are 35 chapters so it will take a couple of months to offer a little from each. 

You can order the book direct from myself or from the publisher by following the link above.

  2
Armley – Give us a Job

So it was that my initial encounter with the world of minicab
driving had taken place the day before the assault of the alarm
clock courtesy of an introduction from this friend who appeared to make a decent living from it. Lulled into an expectation of relative refinement by his congenial demeanour I could scarcely have anticipated the seismic cultural shift I was about to experience, and whether motivated by a sense of fun or a desire not to frighten me off he had deemed it sensible to allow me to discover first-hand what I was letting myself into without prior warning.

 It is difficult to describe adequately the sense of rising
panic I experienced in the next few minutes. To reach the
office complex I had to navigate the treacherous swamps of
this alien planet. A number of natives soon crossed my path; a
mechanic wielding a wrench much like a terrorist brandishing
an AK47; a handful of drivers rendering the verbal atmosphere
a colourful shade of azure as they recounted tales of their most
recent experiences of exploitation and victimisation; a couple of
operators – the people who answer the ‘phone – unable to last
another minute without an infusion of nicotine, having spent
all morning taking calls from people who were in one place and
desired to be in another five minutes previously. Nearly all of
these people I would come to appreciate, and some I would be privileged one day to count as friends, but on that particular day I felt as if I had entered another world, a planet with a jungle full of wild, dangerous animals; big cats running loose, the primate cage door left ajar, and someone had forgotten to replace the lid on the snake pit. Not that there was anything necessarily intimidating about the appearance or demeanour of the human specimens dotted around the place – even the bloke with the large spanner wouldn’t have been physically intimidating in a different context. It was simply the case that I had left behind anything vaguely resembling a comfort zone what felt like half a galaxy away. It was, perhaps, like being dropped in the Amazon rain forest thousands of miles from civilisation with a beach towel and a tube of sun cream and expected to make the best of it.

 I was later to understand why potential new drivers were
about as welcome as a dog turd on the sole of your best pair
of brogues, but the failure of anyone even to acknowledge my
presence coupled with the alien atmosphere made me feel like
beating a hasty retreat before I made a complete arse of myself.
There was surely no way in which I could find a home working
in this environment.
Just as the flight response was delivering the coup de grace to
its more aggressive counterpart and I was debating how to exit
rapidly but with a modicum of dignity intact the member of the
management team who dealt with drivers showed up and almost politely directed me to a rather pleasant glass office at the top of the stairs – things were looking up perhaps. Or perhaps not.