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.
28
Moortown – Doing a Runner and
Other Ways of Abusing Taxi Drivers
One of my friends is a police officer who does a fantastic job on
her beat in making the community a safer and nicer place to live.
She once told me just how difficult it is for a beat bobby to catch
a villain intent on running away, unless inebriated literally to the
level of leglessness. ‘The problem is the amount of gear we have
to carry’, she complained. ‘By the time I’ve attached my stick,
spray, handcuffs, whistle and all the other paraphernalia we have
to carry, then put on my stab-resistant jacket, hat and boots at
the start of a shift I weigh a ton and can hardly break into a trot’.
Private hire drivers just wear ordinary clothes, though in later
times my particular company did begin issuing uniforms (when
I say “issuing” I mean selling them to the drivers at a profit
having made them compulsory.) But inside the cab is likely to be
money, sat-nav, ‘phone, wallet, and various electronic gadgetry
for which the driver is responsible. So when a customer does a
runner to avoid paying it’s nearly impossible to do anything at
all about it, because it would mean leaving the car unattended,
often in dodgy areas, and then chasing some yob who is likely to
be half your age and racing through ginnels much like diarrhoea
through the large intestine; come to think of it this is not at all
a bad analogy.
So when this happened to me for the first time in the middle
of a night shift half way through my second year in the job, I
confess the only surprise I felt was that it had never happened
before, when I was in a position of such vulnerability. These
particular customers were in their late teens at a guess, two girls
and two boys, picked up from a twenty-four hour supermarket
around midnight and asking to be dropped off on one of the
dodgier estates in West Leeds. With a level of intelligence I
would not have expected they sensibly arranged for the girls to
be dropped off first, then when I stopped outside their supposed
address they simply opened the rear doors and disappeared into
nowhere.
What was I to do? I couldn’t leave my car unattended and chase
them for fear it would be standing on bricks when I returned, even
had I been able to catch up with them. Call the police? But then
what? Even if a miracle happened and a patrol car came to my
rescue, and then the unthinkable happened and they caught the
lads, what would happen then? The best case scenario, and a pretty
unlikely one, was that I would be paid my fare, but would have
lost half an hour or more waiting for it. By that time I could have
completed another two jobs, so the exercise would have incurred
a net loss, however much I would have enjoyed the satisfaction of
seeing them caught. So I simply cleared and looked for the next
job, and put it down to experience. But having realised how easy it
was to do this I was astonished that in two years of driving it only
ever happened to me twice.
What’s more I was able to have the last laugh over this
particular incident, because amazingly some three or four
weeks later I went to a pick-up from the same supermarket
and encountered the same group of youngsters. I couldn’t
believe they would call the same cab company having pulled the
previous stunt, but there they were, two girls and two boys in
whose mouths the eponymous butter would not deign to melt.
Fortunately they didn’t recognise me, and this time I jumped out
of the car in time to grab them should they try to run off. I rather
enjoyed what followed.
ME: – ‘Not your lucky day this is it?’
YOUTH: – ‘Wot?’
ME: – ‘You don’t remember me do you?’
YOUTH: – ‘No idea mate.’
ME: – ‘I’m the driver you ripped off a few weeks ago –
remember now?’
YOUTH: – ‘Oh fuck…’
ME: – ‘Well there’s two ways we can deal with this; I drag
you off to the police station round the corner and let
them deal with you or you can pay me the fare you
owe, and if you pay me double, and a bit extra, I’ll
take you home.’
Youth: – ‘OK mate – will £20 do it?’
How I was going to effect the process of getting one or more of
them to the local nick and then convince the police they had
avoided paying their fare weeks previously when I had never
reported it I don’t know, but fortunately they never called my
bluff, paid the fare up front (about double what it would have
been) and sat meekly in the car while I explained how nice most
of us drivers were and how we didn’t deserve to be treated like
this. Amazingly I think we parted almost friends, and certainly
there was no hint of a grudge in their language or demeanour.
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.
27
Headingley – The World of
Casinos and Bingo Halls
My first introduction to the sub-culture of the three casinos that
operated in central Leeds at that time was as a day shift driver,
with the 5.20 a.m. lottery of “Napoleon’s”. This always seemed
to me a particularly apposite name for an establishment whose
driving forces were greed, acquisitiveness and the exploitation
of ordinary people’s vulnerability. On a day shift the first task
was to provide life support for my cab at the petrol station so
that it was no longer running on fumes. The second was to see
how many cars were waiting for work in the plot covering an
area replete with hotels, clubs, lap-dancing establishments, the
main railway terminus and Napoleon’s. If there were fewer than
six it was worth heading there with all possible speed, slowing
only for the speed cameras on Tong Road, to try to pick up a job
taking the casino staff home after their night’s work. Because
buses were not operating this early the casino block booked a
number of cars for their staff, and each one would be allocated
a reference number. When the staff came out each driver would
call out his number, and the relevant passengers would climb in.
Some of these jobs did not pay particularly well, just a couple of
drop-offs to local areas, but some went well outside the limits of
the city, and would provide a very satisfactory start to the day’s
work. Of course the lottery element involved in allocating work
of varying value fuelled the ubiquitous paranoia of the drivers about who had scooped the best paid jobs, but in reality it was
probably completely random – whoever was dispatching cars
had far better things to do than see who was driving each vehicle
and then make an assessment of how much favour to bestow on
whom. I had my fair share of “shite” and more lucrative trips,
for which, perhaps poignantly, there seemed to be a dearth of
adjectives in the cab driver’s thesaurus.
Night shifts were different, though, because jobs almost
invariably involved taking customers home rather than staff,
and by the time I had completed a hundred or more jobs from
the casinos to various residences I had a pretty good idea of
the sort of clientele they attracted and the kind of losses people
would sustain during an average visit.
The first question, naturally, that one would ask once a fare
was on board was how successful their evening had been. It
may, of course, have been part of a general ploy to be as meagre
with fare and gratuity as possible, but of all the people I ever
picked up from a casino I only recall a handful who claimed to
have had a good evening and made anything like a profit on the
night’s venture; almost inevitably the tale was one of frustration,
disappointment, woe and even anger.
Many losses were, of course, quite modest, and provided
good value for money in terms of a night’s entertainment; these
customers took their losses with a mixture of good humour and
Stoicism. But there seemed to be an equal number that were
of an altogether different nature, who brought into the cab an
atmosphere of anger and resentment. At times almost palpable,
it was sometimes focussed on the management or staff of the
casino, but more frequently it was directed inwards, at their own
stupidity and lack of self-control. Many of the journeys from
one of these establishments were almost literally down the road
to an area of the city where few people would choose to live
unless they were martial arts experts or else armed to the teeth.
Some gentle probing not infrequently revealed that many such customers earned enough money to rent or buy property in a
much less volatile neighbourhood, but their gambling addiction
consumed a significant percentage of their disposable income,
as well as demanding proximity to the means of gratifying it.
There were also some comical stories of trips from casinos;
there was a student who, at the start of term, and with a bank
balance loaded with several thousands of pounds to pay for
the cost of a term’s lodging, food, books and general spending,
had gone into the casino on a Monday evening. By the time I
collected him in the early hours, he had managed to strip his
bank balance naked – though thankfully still kept enough petty
cash in hand to pay his fare. On enquiring what he would do
now he had no money he replied that he would think about that
in the morning, but seemed unruffled and Micawber-like at the
predicament in which he had landed himself.
You might be tempted to think that compared to the heady
world of televised professional poker, and the gambling of large
sums of money at the serious casinos of a major city, the humble
bingo hall on the edges of the densely-populated council estate
would be strictly minor league; you would also quite probably
be mistaken.
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.
26
Kirkstall – Students
Leeds is a city with a significant but incredibly varied student
population, some of whom move there in order to achieve a first
degree and some of whom regard this objective as an optional
but by no means essential by-product of their first time away
from home. The division is, to some extent, dependent on
which university is attended, one being of the old-fashioned sort
with a strong traditional academic base and the other being a
former Polytechnic, a scenario played out in many British cities
since “Polytechnics” were allowed to rename themselves as
“Universities.” Of course it would be a gross oversimplification
to label all students of one as academic underachievers out to
have a good time and little more, and the others as serious,
conscientious and clean-living young people seeking only
academic excellence, but in broad terms my experience certainly
suggested that such a distinction could be made to some extent;
at least that was the case when it came to using private hire cars.
Students were one of those groups of people I expected to
see on bicycles, jogging to lectures or waiting at bus stops at
respectable hours of the day if they were going out to socialise,
rather than ‘phoning for a cab. Perhaps this image was cultivated
by all those episodes of Morse, featuring an Oxford where even
the professors meandered between the dreamy spires perched
precariously on contraptions masquerading as bicycles that
looked as if they had been handed down from father to son for the last six generations. Maybe the hilly terrain of West Yorkshire
didn’t really lend itself to any form of self-propelled transport,
but I recall seeing very few bikes around the city, even on the
university campuses.
Surprisingly the use of private hire cars to travel around the
city made rather a lot of sense. A return cab fare from halls of
residence to the city centre might be somewhere between £10
and £13, but if shared four ways would be more economical
than the bus, and usually more reliable.
My favourite journeys were from a halls of residence
complex labelled “The Brewery” – a place where the eponymous
“piss-up” was successfully arranged in dozens of locations on
a daily basis. I gather the building was once home to a famous
beer manufacturer, but whether it was this dubious heritage or
a sense of irony that justified the epithet at the design stage is
now a matter of conjecture.
I enjoyed many surreal experiences as a night shift driver
in relation to student residences, but one of the more comical
was undoubtedly the ritual of speaking to my wife each evening
somewhere between ten and ten-thirty, when more often than
not I was driving to or from the Brewery. One of the practices
we have adopted, to the amusement if not incomprehension of
many, and to “oohs” and “aahs” from the more sentimentally
inclined, is to speak to each other every night if for one reason
or another we are apart, usually around bedtime. My wife’s
bedtime almost invariably coincided with the time of night the
students were about to go out to the clubs and bars of central
Leeds, and calls took place in transit between student residences
and the fleshpots of the big city. Whilst my headset kept my
hands free and one end of the conversation private, of course my
end was public property. So there I would be, wishing my wife
a good night’s sleep and sweet dreams and telling her I loved
her (another daily ritual) whilst for the customers the night had
only just begun.
This exchange gave rise to some interesting conversations
about everything from faith to sex and marriage, particularly
with the girls. In ascending order of how difficult things I said
were to believe it went something like this; that I was a former
clergyman who still believed in a God you could talk to and have
a relationship with was just about credible. This was especially
so if the evening had begun an hour or two previously in the
student residence bar, where the drinks were much cheaper
than in town, leading to many students becoming somewhat
lubricated before venturing out. That I had been happily married
to the same woman for the best part of 30 years and was still so
absolutely in love with her that I could never imagine being with
someone else was pushing credibility up to, and perhaps slightly
beyond the limit. That I had only ever had one sexual partner and
only intended ever to have one was on the level of asking them
to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, and that I firmly believed that developing a sexual relationship with one person
was far more satisfying than sleeping around was sufficient to
have me committed to the Funny Farm. Nevertheless countless
conversations with female students finished with something
akin to “Ahhh, how sweet.” After that I tended to be regarded as
a somewhat avuncular figure to whom all sorts of confidences
would be entrusted; this in turn brought out in me the instinct
of a parent with children of similar age, and most trips into town
ended with my admonition to my charges to “stay safe.”
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.
25
Swinnow – Night Shifts
With almost a year’s experience under my belt I thought I
knew my way around pretty well, but whereas day shifts had
involved taking people to and from work, shops and health
centres, these rather run-of-the-mill venues were far less likely
to be frequented in the wee small hours. Only a few venues were
held in common, and this was true also of Friday / Saturday
nights compared to weekdays; in fact it was something of a
surprise to discover that each night shift seemed to have its own
particular pattern. There was always something different round
the corner, and in spite of now being considered something of a
veteran in the business, I was still capable of being surprised by
some of the more extraordinary behaviour I witnessed.
I think it was a Tuesday evening a little before midnight
that I was called to a pick-up from a respectable bar in the more salubrious end of town, and Sandra emerged to occupy the front
seat of the cab. Sandra was one of those women whose age is
almost indeterminate – could have been in her twenties or her
forties, slightly overweight, with nondescript hair of a vaguely
blonde hue and modest make-up that looked like it had been
applied in something of a hurry without the benefit of a mirror.
But two things were immediately obvious about her; firstly
she had had a little too much to drink, and secondly she was
cross – and cross in spades. ‘We’re going to Swinnow, love’, she
remarked in a tone that made it clear that her ire was directed at
some individual other than myself. ‘But we’ve got to pick up my
old man first.’
The ‘old man’ was, for some unarticulated reason, in a
bar at the other end of the city centre, a venue noted for its
association with the seedier side of life. Fights were almost
nightly occurrences, and illegal substances were available for a
modest price. Sexual favours were also on sale for a reasonable
consideration, but the chances were you could just pick someone
up for a night’s bedroom gymnastics so long as you weren’t too
fussy.
I decided the safe thing to do was not to try to make
conversation, and in any case she was soon on her ‘phone calling
the recalcitrant partner so that he would be outside waiting
for us. I could identify the equally inebriated individual from
the sheepish look on his face and the sense of foreboding at
the unpleasantness to come written on his features and in his
posture.
No sooner had he climbed into the back of the car than it
started. The first volley of verbal musket-shot directed from
the front passenger seat had no sooner made its mark than an
answering tirade of alcohol-fuelled abuse flew in the opposite
direction. I never was able to work out what the row was
about, but with the possible exception of performances in the
kindergarten we call the House of Commons I don’t think I have ever witnessed quite such an amazing episode of two people
shouting at each other at the tops of their voices without hearing
a single word the other was saying.
I managed, during a brief pause for reloading of weapons, to
extract the address for which we were heading and set off with a
certain amount of apprehension on the fifteen-minute journey,
fearful that the verbal exchanges would graduate into a fist-fight
with all the risks that would entail. Once we were on our way
the war of words resumed with renewed vigour, and I decided
to hope for the best and drive slightly faster than normal.
The route out of Leeds city centre took us on an inner ring
road which, for reasons I never really understood, was classified
as the M64, so the rules of motorway driving applied. The volume
and level of abuse steadily increased until their vocabulary of
profanities seemed to be exhausted. Where to go from here?
It was around this point that the gentleman in the rear of the
car hit upon the novel idea of “upping the ante” by opening the
window and, with a casualness clearly calculated to engender
reciprocal incandescence, tossed his phone out of the window.
The effect on the woman was to spark an eruption the equivalent
of Vesuvius in full flow. It became clear that the ‘phone had been
a costly present from a happier era in their relationship, and
he had just demonstrated, in the most dramatic way he could
imagine, in just how little regard he held her.
If you can imagine a human earthquake and volcano all
rolled into one you will have some idea of what happened
next. Removing her seat belt she erupted in a rearwards
direction preceded by a torrent of language that would have
caused a navvy something more than slight embarrassment.
Fortunately I was able to keep the car in a straight line and
shout loudly enough to read the proverbial riot act to them
both. The fighting subsided almost immediately, though the
verbal exchanges remained just as vitriolic.
After a couple of minutes the man asked if we could go back to pick the ‘phone up, and I was thankful to be able to
explain that this would involve breaking the law, as well as being
exceedingly dangerous. An expensive lesson, but perhaps one
they both needed to learn.
..................
The verbal volcano subsided and general sulkiness –
a tactic I am far more familiar with, being one of the nation’s
leading experts – took over. There was even a certain meekness
apparent by the time we reached their home. She stomped off,
making abundantly clear whose responsibility the taxi fare was,
and in what now felt like an oasis of tranquillity we had a short
conversation: –
‘Do you ever have that kind of row with your missus?’
‘No, not really.’ (mainly thanks to the longsuffering of my
wife we have a row about once a year just to keep our hand in)
‘We’ve been happily married for 28 years.’
‘So what’s the secret?’
‘Apart from being married to the most incredibly wonderful
woman in the world, perhaps also that we’re Christians.’
‘Do you think that makes a difference?’
‘I think so.’
I recommended a local church I knew that would be perfect for
them both, he thanked me and went his way. I have no idea what
happened to them both, but this kind of informal way of sharing
my faith was pretty common, and I often wonder if over the
course of those two years I contributed more to the Kingdom of God than at any other time in my life.
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.
24
Burley – Personal Fuel Surcharges and
other means of making a bit extra
At least one section of the “notice wallpaper” with which the
drivers’ office was decorated was permanently devoted to the
retribution likely to be visited on those who were willing to
line their pockets at the expense of hapless customers. A typical
example ran something like this: –
ANY DRIVER CAUGHT OVERCHARGING WILL BE
DISMISSED IMMEDIATELY. NO EXCEPTIONS.
These bleak pronouncements of certain and terminal
retribution for miscreants almost always followed the same
pattern; printed in large capital letters, accusatory, intimidating,
all-inclusive and usually containing at least one error of
grammar, spelling or syntax that served to encourage the
moderately literate to take them with a pinch of salt. One such
notice adorned the door from the area drivers were allowed
in to collect keys to the main offices where they were less than
welcome: –
NO DRIVER’S ARE ALOWED PASSED THIS POINT
UNLESS THEY HAVE PERMISON FROM THE
MANAGMENT. NO EXCEPTIONS.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Some words, like “warned”, “dismissed” and “exceptions” were
such common verbal currency that those who typed the notices
had learned the correct spelling, but someone in the office
with a GCSE in English language would probably have been a
worthwhile recruitment move.
Such auguries sometimes rivalled the descriptions of the
plagues that befell Egypt at the behest of Moses, portending
dismissal from the bosom of the company as if it were on a
level equivalent to being evicted from a plane half way across
the Atlantic with nothing more than a large handkerchief and
a bit of string for a parachute. No shift would be complete
without encountering at least three or four pronouncements
of this nature, provided courtesy of another piece of rain forest
or on the datahead.
Most of these threats, if not entirely empty, were as likely to
be carried through as the promises in a political party’s election
manifesto; containing the broad thrust of the intentions of those
who ran the show possibly, but likely to represent little more
than a vestige of practicality. For one thing it was technically
impossible for the company to dismiss a driver since they all
worked for themselves; the worst damage that could be inflicted
was a refusal to allow access to company vehicles, radios and
dataheads. If the management felt particularly vindictive they
might make the odd ‘phone call to other companies to warn
them against taking on this particular individual should he
materialise on their doorstep; not that that was likely to make
much difference in anyone’s recruiting process.
On the odd occasion when draconian action was taken
and drivers were removed from the company’s books by far
the most common cause was because they had been trying to
charge customers too much. Of all the complaints made by both
customers and management against private hire drivers this is
by far the most common. At a conservative estimate at least 50%
of private hire drivers indulge in this practice, some to the tune
of 10% and some far more. The absence of meters, of course,
makes it easier to be creative about fares, and customers rarely
ask to see the car’s trip meter and compare it with a fare chart. In
any case those who habitually overcharged invariably suffered
a sudden bout of acute but temporary amnesia just at the point
when they should have reset their mileage. I was frequently
treated to stories of overcharging by customers keen to tell me
that they knew what the fare should be and “don’t try it on.”
Of course on one level this practice did no direct damage
to the company, but indirectly it had the capacity to cost them
a great deal. In an age of diminishing brand loyalty private
hire companies tend to lie in the relegation zone of the lowest
division in the league. Customers who were overcharged would
frequently take their business elsewhere, and a drop in the
customer base led to a fall in the quantity of drivers wanting to
work for the company and a consequent fall in rental income.
Conversely a private hire firm that could establish even a modest
reputation for employing honest drivers was likely to be on the
receiving end of a steady flow of new custom from victims of
previous sharp practice.
I resisted the not infrequent impulse to add a bit onto the
fare of customers who made my life difficult, or as one of my
colleagues put it, ‘include my personal fuel surcharge.’ To be
truthful this was less out of any sense of moral principle and more
out of a fear that once I started such a practice I would probably
find it difficult to stop, and would one day find myself having
to account for it on the carpet of a director’s office.
Some of the stories of passengers being overcharged made
me angry, particularly when they involved elderly folk or those
on a limited income who had no option other than to use cabs.
Many accounts, though, were hilarious, and caused me to
wonder about the place on the evolutionary scale of the brains
of some of my fellow drivers. The most vital ground rule if you
intended to add a few quid to the fare was to pick carefully the
customers you victimised, and particularly to make sure they
didn’t know what the fare should be. One woman I picked up
quite regularly to take to a bingo hall a little over two miles from
her home had been using the same company for ten years, took a
cab at least twice a week, and knew the fare to all the destinations
she frequented. She told me one day that the new driver who
had picked her up a week previously had tried to charge her £2
extra for a trip she made every week. She presented him with
the normal fare, and added to it a mouthful of choice verbal
abuse and a whack with her not insubstantial bag, reported the
incident to the company and asked not to have that driver again.
One of the more jaw-dropping attempts at overcharging I
heard about was during a night shift towards the end of my time
in the business. I was fortunate enough to pick up the manager
of one of Leeds’s manifold nightclubs catering for the student
market at the time of night when work is quite hard to find. It
was a good fare – out beyond the boundaries of the city, and
worth a good £12, but reachable in no more than fifteen minutes
at that time of night courtesy of the M621. Not only was it a
decent fare, but the customer was sober, engaging and interesting
– attributes that were all at a premium after midnight – with a
wealth of entertaining anecdotes. It was the kind of job you really
appreciate in the middle of a quiet night shift. He paid happily,
added a small gratuity in appreciation of my promptness, making
it even more worthwhile, and then told me about his previous
driver, whose stupidity really beggars belief. Having completed
the same trip he announced the fare as £26; he had picked on
the wrong customer. Instead of arguing about the fare he told the
driver to hold on a minute and called the company office on his
mobile ‘phone. Having been put through to the night manager he
simply asked why it was that for a journey he made two or three
times a week at a cost of about £12 his current driver had asked
him for more than double that sum. The manager promptly
asked to speak to the driver, told him not to collect a fare, and
return to Base immediately. The customer had a free ride, and
the driver lost both his fare and his livelihood.
I had no sympathy with him whatever – or others like him;
not only was he giving the rest of us a bad name he succeeded
in exhibiting amazing stupidity in his choice of stooge. It also
made life for the honest drivers more difficult. Almost every
customer I collected had at least one story of extortion at the
hands of a private hire driver they wished to divest themselves
of, and I always knew that the subtext of such conversations
was either a plea not to rip them off or a threat of non-payment
should I try.
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.
23
Lower Bramley – God Bless
Like respectable Edwardian families, who were inclined to
have them institutionalised, most of us have a relative who is
embarrassing in company. The draconian options open to our
ancestors are no longer available, so we have to find other means
of marginalising their potential effect on respectable company.
Those who plan and govern major cities are faced with a
similar predicament; there are whole tracts of land that are an
embarrassment, usually featuring a fairly wide, but entirely
predictable array of local authority housing. These are the estates
that survived the great sell-off of council housing during the
Thatcher era, or failed to benefit from them, depending on one’s
perspective. The generally preferred means of coping with these
substantial bunions is a combination of denial and disguise, the
latter largely being a means of facilitating the former.
My own head was removed from the concrete desert
when my neck was yanked effortlessly by the force of sheer
necessity. It was simply not an option as a cab driver to avoid
this reality since so much of my work took me into the kinds
of urban landscape I thought had become extinct during
the slum clearance programmes of the post-war era. Most of
these dwellings were erected long after the Orwellian “flying
aspidistra” semi in the plush suburban districts that had been
the domestic staple diet of almost my entire life. My maiden
foray into one of the labyrinthine, arthritic byways that wound its way through a bewildering and depressing topography was a
jaw-dropping experience; how did people go about constructing
anything like a decent life in these surroundings? Row upon row
of once-identical buildings containing any number of dwellings,
sometimes configured together like one of those wooden puzzles
given as a gift on Christmas Day, dissembled, and laid aside
after an hour’s futile manipulation. The original uniformity of
appearance was distorted only by the largely, but by no means
universally, cosmetic scars, some inflicted by time and weather,
others by frustrated or malevolent residents, visitors or the
local criminal fraternity. The parts of the landscape set aside for
what was comically called recreational use were adorned with
the discarded detritus of broken-down domestic appliances
and redundant technology – fridges, washing machines, video
recorders, cassette players and the like that had once lured
underemployed credit cards from reluctant wallets. Whilst
on one level this provided plenty of hardware to function as
makeshift goalposts or cricket stumps, any sporting activity
would be the equivalent of a game of hopscotch in a minefield.
Were there any youngsters with the inclination or courage to
venture onto the putative recreational areas they would often
have had to brave not only the dangers of abandoned appliances
but the likelihood of coming to grief on a used hypodermic
syringe.
Some of the damage suffered by homes designed to give
ordinary people a decent and wholesome habitat almost
beggared belief. A tiled roof once the accomplished product of
a skilled artisan that had somehow been crushed from above;
craters in gardens that would not have done injustice to the
reputation of a decent Luftwaffe bombardier, and holes in walls
that might have been inflicted by a medium-sized wrecking ball.
It was these bloated blotches on the landscape that I, like so
many others, had previously been cheerfully ignorant of, that
now caused me a sense of profound shame. How could such
streets and blocks of housing and the people who inhabited
them be so unknown to me when I had lived within a few miles
of them for the last six years? Where was the Christian presence
that might have made some kind of difference to the erosion of
morale and hope that surely must be the by-product of being
brought up and trying to secure some kind of an education in
this setting? I surveyed one particular street whose principal
feature was a rather large pylon, and wondered why anyone
agreed to live there. Let them try to put that in a respectable
private estate where house prices were steadily rising and
provided one of the most popular topics of conversation, and
where most residents knew at least one city councillor; the
mountain of mailbags of protest from Yorkshire’s ‘Disgusted of
Tunbridge Wells’ (perhaps the ‘Horrified of Harrogate’) retinue
would have resembled Kilimanjaro.
Quite early in my venture into the world of minicab driving
I was directed to what I was sure must have been an incorrect
address, as none of the houses looked as if they could possibly
be inhabited other than by small rodents; most had windows
boarded up, hardly any front lawns had seen the business end
of a lawnmower for some years, and even were some kind soul
to make the attempt at such a feat they would have to clear
enough jetsam to fill a Cornish beach. A major excavation with
an industrial digger might unearth an eclectic mixture of weeds
and the odd blade of grass in the last throes of terminal illness.
Even if the address on the screen was correct, I surmised,
there was surely no one living in this kind of estate who could
possibly afford a taxi. Just in case there was someone around,
however, I decided it might be expedient to reverse down the culde-
sac to which I had been directed, steering carefully through
the slalom course of discarded white goods and builders’ rubble.
The further down the narrow road I drove the more it resembled
the East End of London in the blitz. Just in case I really did have
a customer I entered the code on the datahead that rang the
intrepid commuter to announce my arrival. I prepared to lock
the car doors and prepare for as rapid a departure as the worn
piston rings in the old Skoda would allow in the event of an
all-out assault by the living dead who must surely be the only
possible inhabitants of such a desolate landscape. It was far more
likely that I would shortly be radioing Base to report a no fare.
I hadn’t been waiting more than 30 seconds when with a
screech of protest what appeared to be the only door still in
proximity to its frame was yanked through about 30 degrees –
just sufficient to allow the egress of what were surely the only
survivors in the devastation that surrounded me.
Sarah looked like a woman in early middle-age, but I
suspect she was younger – a year or two either side of 30;
slightly overweight, with a careworn face etched with the pain
that was the inevitable companion of survival in her kind of
world. Her light brown hair was interlaced with prematurely
grey streaks and had probably not been styled for many a year,
but her smile was engaging, genuine and generous; in fact she
was rather attractive. Most of her clothing, from her threadbare
jacket to shoes that I suspect had holes in the soles that more or
less matched those in the uppers, would have failed to grace the
shelves of a charity shop. Her voluminous bag, like most such
receptacles, was a living example of Murphy’s Law of women’s
fashion accessories – the amount of paraphernalia carried
will always expand to fill however much space is available.
Nevertheless, whatever else it contained I knew what little cash
it could boast would be regarded by most people as pitifully
inadequate for the acquisition of enough food to feed a family –
before the taxi fare was paid – and the worn but anorexic purse
would not be replete with the array of plastic most of us regard
as essential to survival in the modern world. But as I was to
learn Sarah was actually a fairly typical customer.
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.
22
Rodley – Time to Take Stock
It was that time of year when Spring finally breaks free of the
shackles of Winter – even if only to succumb periodically at
any point up to the end of May. April was giving notice to
quit, and the air was rich with the scent of nature reasserting
its immortality. Much the same was happening to my mental
health. The psychological injuries I had previously sustained
had given me some idea of the trauma experienced by those
involved in serious road traffic accidents and unprovoked
assaults. My life had never been threatened physically but my
sanity had; even the odd suicidal thought had crossed my mind
on more than one occasion. I had come out of the operating
theatre, done my time in intensive care, and was now officially
off the danger list.
Easter had passed by in a blur. This of course was nothing
unusual for me, but the manner in which it had passed was,
to put it mildly, unfamiliar. I had made a special effort to be
in church on Easter Sunday – something I managed on most
Christian Sabbaths, though rarely before the service started.
But Good Friday had merited its epithet this year only in the
sense that it had been exceptionally profitable, and there was
something about the triumphalism of the familiar hymnody of
Easter Day that seemed strangely hollow.
The period from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday had
hitherto been a maelstrom of frenetic clerical and ecumenical hyperactivity with little or no variation in pattern for the last 20
years or more.
Thursday evening generally witnessed a respectable and
insipid re-enactment of the Last Supper, with small cubes
of bread and individual glasses of sweetened, non-alcoholic
communion wine that assuaged the thirst of the sensitivities
of traditional nonconformity rather than connecting with one
of the most dramatic episodes in the gospels. The real Last
Supper featured large chunks of roast lamb and an almost
limitless supply of decent red plonk, and took place against
the backdrop of looming disaster and certain, agonising death
following the spineless betrayal of a friend. Too much of that
kind of atmosphere would have been considered inappropriate,
and very likely put the good churchgoing folk off their late night
cheese and biscuits.
Good Friday had always provided the opportunity to do
something with other local churches, the argument being that
if we could not work together on the occasion on which we
remembered the death of the Saviour of us all, how could we
even pretend to claim a common heritage and purpose? For at
least one day of the year we laid aside petty resentments over
recalcitrant former members who were now part of another
local flock, allowed theological disputes over the correct
quantity of water to use in initiation rites to lie dormant, and
almost reached the idyllic state of wanting all churches to do
well. Typically this exercise in ecumenical camaraderie took the
physical form of a march down the local high street. We would
pass bemused onlookers exhibiting modest levels of admiration
at our courage and perhaps just the tiniest trace of guilt that
they were out shopping on such a sacred day; over the years the
guilt seemed to diminish and the bemusement to morph into
incomprehension about the whole exercise. We would walk
more timidly perhaps past diverse hostelries hosting the sort of
people I had always convinced myself were not having nearly as good a time as they appeared to be, and was certain that they
knew nothing of the deep joy of the faithful such as I.
Everything culminated, of course, in the triumphant
assertion of each Easter Sunday that “Christ is Risen, He is
Risen Indeed” never again to die, the gift of God to assuage
sinful mankind’s guilt and provide a guarantee of eternal life to
all who believe. Perhaps it was familiarity rather than a loss of
faith, but it seemed to me that the power of that simple message
to change lives, indeed to alter the course of human history, was
largely lost in the background. Thoughts of Sunday lunch and
the anticipation of plans for the Bank Holiday assumed centre
stage after the second verse of “Thine be the Glory”, or five
minutes into a sermon reinforcing the same eternal conviction
with varying degrees of certitude.
I had to face the harrowing truth that along with the dismantling of my selfconfidence
and professional reputation my carefully constructed
spiritual hermitage had also fallen around my ears, and now lay
like so much rubble at my feet. I stood leaden-footed, exposed
to elements that had previously battered unavailingly on the
walls of my carefully constructed house of faith. Leaden-footed
I might have been, but it would be erroneous to mistake lack of
movement for any kind of stability. I realised just how efficiently
I had worked to keep the arguments against my faith at bay
using a combination of pseudo-spiritual semantics and recalling
memories of the few occasions when the presence of God had
seemed so palpable as to dismiss doubt as so much chaff to be
blown away by the wind of a single line of a familiar chorus.
The quest to delve into my soul to look for the remains
of a belief system amidst the rubble was neither an academic
exercise nor a leisure pursuit. More than six months had
now passed since I had relinquished a pulpit in favour of the
driver’s seat of a private hire car. Whether out of a sense of
puritanical masochism or because I had still failed to learn my
lesson I was meeting leaders of different churches to look at the
possibility of returning to ministry by the autumn – a process
called “settlement” in my denomination – that usually takes at
least three months. There are doubtless clergy who have lost
their faith in a God who has become anything other than a
metaphysical image and who are still able to trot out Christian
dogma quite happily with fingers crossed behind their backs; I
have never been one of them, believing that St. Paul was stating
the bloody obvious when he commented “If for this life only we
have believed in Christ we are of all people most to be pitied.”
It was time to ask hard questions about how much of the faith I
had spent almost all my adult life propagating I still believed.
