Extracts from my first solo book which I have recently published about the two years I spent driving a private hire car rather than being a clergyman. It began life as a piece of auto-catharsis and turned into a project. If I can sell some I can start recouping my costs!


The Collar and the Cab
Follow this link to buy from publisher, or you can order direct from me. Amazon also have it as well as a number of independent retailers.

21
Dawson’s Corner – Answering Bail
and Retail Therapy
 

The area known as Dawson’s Corner boasted only one major
additional feature to the shopping complex that generated steady
if unremarkable income for the Flask of Tea Brigade, and that
was the local police station, serving a significant area of West
Leeds at the border with what most saw as its poor relation, the
city of Bradford. But work to and from this establishment was
a world removed from the haven for retail therapy that was its
immediate neighbour, and almost always significantly more
interesting. The more mundane, though always pleasant jobs,
involved taking police officers to or from the station; the key to
this work was to encourage less than discreet disclosures about
recent shifts both because such tales were generally fascinating
– if sometimes toe-curling – and because it discouraged the
passenger from looking too closely at the speedometer. I have
little doubt that these worthy public servants had far better things to do than concern themselves with the minor violations
of speed limits of their transport, but I often entertained a bizarre
nightmare fantasy of an officer paying his or her fare whilst
simultaneously serving me with a speeding ticket. Not that I
drove excessively fast – I had discovered that stress and anxiety
levels were significantly reduced by keeping to a reasonable
speed, but it would be a little too creative with the verities to
pretend that I abided rigorously by the posted speed limit. In
truth it would have been difficult to earn a good living were I to
have done so, particularly when travelling to pick-up points.
Even more entertaining than transporting officers of the law,
however, were those jobs involving taking people to the police
station as part of their bail conditions, providing a gateway into
what seemed like a parallel universe in which almost anything
could happen.
Before I found myself in the world of taxi-driving almost
the last people I would have expected to find in the back of a
minicab were those without jobs, homes or obvious means of
earned income who subsisted in a hand-to-mouth fashion on the
fringes of anything resembling respectable society. Such notions
are seriously misplaced, and one of the more frequent thoughts
that would go through my head in the course of a shift was “how
can these people afford a cab fare when people like me generally
can’t?” Perhaps this was really a manifestation of the innate
Puritan drive for austerity that eschews such extravagance when
public transport, bicycle or legs are available. On the other hand
it may have something to do with many of my customers having
shares in an alternative economy, and the simple fact that there
were good reasons that compelled so many of them to answer
bail on a regular basis.
The first fare to this particular police station involved one of
those “I’m in a hurry and stuff the consequences for your driving
licence” conversations. The social miscreant, “Dean”, according
to my datahead, sported an ankle tag that clearly caused him no embarrassment whatever and was accompanied by a girlfriend
of the “Stacey” type (“I know it won’t last, you know it won’t last,
but we’ll have a kid together then try something different.”) He
barked his orders peremptorily. “I’m going to Dawson’s Corner
nick and I’m in a fuckin’ hurry. Shit – is that the time. Can
you get there in ten minutes mate? O yeah – we’ll be coming
back again afterwards so can you wait for me?” This sense of
urgency appeared not to be contagious – his female companion
embarked languidly with an air of having seen it all before –
probably with a number of different men. With heavy traffic
and a couple of speed cameras to negotiate I did well to arrive
barely five minutes after the announced deadline, and Dean
disappeared into what was probably for him the equivalent of a
hornets’ nest assuring his girlfriend and myself that he would be
out again in a couple of minutes.

The two minute deadline came and went without event, and
after ten minutes the female companion, who had demonstrated
her anxiety by making and receiving ‘phone calls and sending text messages to friends and family alike with the dexterity of
a double-jointed touch-typist, seemed suddenly to come round
and express at least passing curiosity as to the fate that had
befallen her man within the confines of the “nick.” At fifteen
minutes it occurred to her that the simple way to find out might
be to darken the door of the establishment to make enquiries, so
off she went in leisurely pursuit of Dean while I tried to work out
how I was going to break the news of the waiting time charge.
The “Stacey” emerged quickly with an air of relative indifference
tinged with chagrin that she had been put to the inconvenience.
‘They’ve nicked him, love. Turns out there’s another three
warrants out on him, so he’s in the cells. Take me back home.’
I confess to being at a complete loss to know what I should
have said to someone who had just witnessed the incarceration
of a partner and was exhibiting about as much disappointment
as she would in ripping up this week’s losing lottery ticket.
It seemed as if recording one’s presence at a police station to
answer bail was one of those regular hazardous pursuits like
learning to ice-skate. You know you are going to fall over, it’s
just a question of when and how much it’s going to hurt, so you
might as well get on with it and deal with the consequences as
they arise. Fortunately I didn’t have to attempt any linguistic feat
of interested concern in her lingua franca because she spent the
return journey letting half the world know that “Dean’s been
nicked again”; I was not privy to the responses to this bland
statement of fact, but had the impression that it was received
on much the same level as being told the cat’s been sick on the
doormat. ‘Oh alright luv, thanks for letting me know. Must dash,
I’ve got a cake in the oven.’