In the wee early hours, one night in the late
seventies, during the Local Mini Cab days, the Link operator
asked for any Cabs heading North. One driver called up and said,
"i will be clearing at Lancresse shortly" ,
"brilliant" replied the Link op, " when you are
clear , pick up from an address at Lancresse, passenger for
St.Peter Port, "Roger" the driver acknowleged.
Very shortly after, the Link op called again to this same driver,
"where are you now", the driver replied, "dropping
my passenger off shortly, be at the next job soon".
"Okey " the Link op "said, "get there as
quick as you can, cos the lady there wants this man out of the
way before her husband gets home"
The driver quickly replied, " I will be there in about 2
minutes, my passenger will be there in 30 seconds, he's the
ladies husband".
This is another story from many years ago, it was also , and
still is very much a talking point in many a Cabbies fire side
chats.
One evening the drivers on this particular link were not getting
any reply from their controller, call call as they might , no
answer. One by one the drivers were heading towards the control
office. Well as they got there so they could see many other
taxies all parked at this control room, so in they went to see
what was going on. As this one particular driver walked into the
already crowded office he heard this female voice shouting,
" yes yes, oh my god yes yes, more more". As he walked
through the door there were all these drivers, shouting and
cheering louder and louder as the female got more and more
excited. The link controller had moved away from his desk , as he
put it, " if i had sat there much longer i would have
snapped something vital as it was pressing against the
drawer" . Passing through the area just at that time was one
of the big bosses of this taxi firm, seeing all the cabs parked
outside he parked his private car and stormed into the office.
" What the hell is going on here " he bellowed, a
deadly silence came over the office, you could have heard the
proverbial pin drop, which was suddenly shattered by the female
voice " yes yes, oh my god don't stop now , yes yes".
The bosses head span around so fast that they swore blind it did
a 360 degrees spin around his shoulders. The boss quickly
realised that the link was jammed by the microphone in the taxi
being stuck open.
"Get me the name of that driver now so i can ring his boss and get this bloody taxi found". The link operator looked at the boss and said" sorry cock, it's your driver, he's the only one on shift that is not down here at the office", well the look on the bosses face said it all. " Where was he headed,", asked the boss " i'll kill him when i find him", he carried on, " well a female rang up and requested his taxi, and all she would say that the run was going North", the link operator explained to the boss. So off he leapt into his private car taking a couple of drivers with him. They decided that they would start looking around the common first, being as that was a local lovers area. Sure enough they didn't take long to find him, for there, peering above the tall gorse bushes was this well lit taxi sign bobbing up and down like Bugs Bunny on a pogo stick. " The pillock didn't even have the sense to turn his light out" said one of the drivers. The boss stormed towards the car, thrust open the cab door to grab hold of the microphone to release the button, when suddelnly he changed his mind, for there , stuck under the thrusting buttocks of the now very blushing female was the microphone, button well stuck down. Mind you it very quickly got unstuck after , they reckon the driver wen't every shade of red ever invented, and more. As one driver quipped some time later, " it brings a whole new meaning to the word bum run" .
Way back in the very early minicab days they had a passenger who was nicknamed World War 111, she would give the driver hell if he was late or if anything else went wrong. It got to the stage that drivers would do their utmost to avoid picking up this woman. This particular day the minicabs were running very late, the woman had been on the phone several times already, giving the link operator some serious earache. 35 minutes later than the job was due he managed to find a car free, " for pities sake get down and pick up World War 111 as fast as you can, the phone is melting in here" the link operator said to the driver. Few minutes later back on the phone comes World War 111, she's ranting worse than an Orangatang with toothache, in fact as the link operator said later, " i would rather have tried pulling the Orangatangs tooth out than face that lady at that moment". So he called up the driver, "Bravo , for gawds sake hurry up and pick up World War 111 , the old bat's driving me crackers" he told the driver. No reply from the driver, "BRAVO" the link operator shouted, " still no reply," BRAVO" he screamed again, "have you picked the World War 111 battle axe up yet", the lady in the Mini cab said" are you Bravo, is that me they are calling World War 111", "not me madam" replied the driver" praying for a miracle,the lady then said, " well the link operator is getting no answer from any other driver, and i bet not many cars have got Bravo written on the dashboard."
This old house:
A driver was sent to a Private Estate in the castel to
pick up some passengers. The driver had a job finding the house
as there were several houses with no name plates.
He called up his link operator and asked if he knew where in the
estate this house was. "Yeh, no problem" came the
reply, it's the tatty old house on the right hand corner, with
weeds high enough to hide a herd of Rhinos, make sure if you get
out the car" he continued " that the bloomin' pigmies
don't jump up and scare the s---t out of you".
Well unfortunatly the drivers passenger had come out
when the driver had first asked for instructions, the driver
could't of course shut the link operator up, and was desperatly
trying to find the on off button on his radio, but before he
could the passenger asked if the man on the radio was talking
about his house, "oh no " the driver said, " he is
talking to another driver somewhere out the Forest.
Of course the link operator kept calling this driver to see if he
had recieved these instructions, "that driver he is calling
is not answering is he" the passenger said, "no said
the driver " still trying to shut down his radio without the
passenger seeing him " that driver is more than likely out
of his car"," well" said the passenger" it is
a strange firm that has two cars on their fleet with the same
callsign".
The driver went ever shade of red ever invented, he
had suddenly remembered that stuck on the dashboard of his cab
was his callsign, the one the link operator had called, called
and called, to see if he had recieved his instructions for the
tatty old house.
Can you imagine the face of this particular Mini Cab
boss when he was on the link one evening in the middle sixties.
The minicab boss was really busy, he had a lot of work to cover
and was struggling to run on time. So he started to chase the
minicab drivers a wee bit to get them to sort the work out.
He called up one driver and said over the radio , " Bravo,
where are you now Fred, " doing 70mph coming over the Chene
Hill Boss, towards St.Peter Port, be clear soon". Now bear
in mind that the local speed limit is 35 mph, and Guernsey's
roads aint too wide.
Hmmm he thought, then the Boss called another driver over the
air, " Whiskey, where are you George" the reply came
back , " be with you soon Boss, i am just overtaking Fred on
the Chene Hill ".