updated 07/07/00
Roman:
In Guernsey we have a very popular taxi driver called Roman, a great character, but like a bull in a china shop. Many years ago we had a customer whom we had nick named Nora Batty. Of course the passenger did not know that, and most certainly would not be amused by that one little bit. Well Roman had only just stared as a part time cab driver, and this particular evening he was told by the link controller, known as Rocky for his escapades on a cliff edge as in one of my stories " Right off you go, up to the Last Post pub. pick up Nora Batty for St. Saviours". Off Roman went, now he has a loud voice and where every he goes a whirlwind follows him. So in through the bar doors he goes, straight into the middle of the bar, top of his voice " Taxi for Nora Batty for St. Saviours" he shouts. Well the place went dead pan, this woman walked to wards him, she is built like a box that goes round the proverbial brick out house, her voice would have out voiced any fog horn between here and the North Pole. She glared at Roman uttered some words not printable, got into the cab, by now Roman knew her real name was not Nora Batty, and he drove her home. She was never seen in our cabs much after that.
Anyway, recently i flew back to Guernsey after a holiday in France, and booked a Bluebird taxi to meet me, this company, the biggest in the Island, was where i spent many years operating from, and is run by two very good friends of mine. When i came out of security, i saw that Roman was there to meet me. I could see him waving some board with a big grin on his face, could not see what he had written, but knew he was up to something. Well when i got near to him, on his passenger meet board he had written Taxi for Lord Barney, and in his usual none so soft voice he was shouting" Taxi for Lord Barney". Of course as soon as i was in full view, bearing in mind this airport is full, the aircraft i flew on was full he started then saying, " good afternoon My Lord, let me take your bags sir" and the sods bowing and creeping and doing all sorts of antics. The passengers who had been on the same aircraft as me, most of them visitors, were now poking each other in the ribs and saying "look dear that man at the back of that plane is Lord Barney", they had traveled with someone famous they thought and were all trying to get a glimpse at this so called Lord. What made matters worse was standing at the entrance along side Roman was an equally famous taxi driver in Guernsey known as the ferret who has been mentioned in my homepage once or twice. She gets in on the act and bows and says "good afternoon my Lord, nice to see you back". I was grinning from ear to ear, going every shade of red ever invented.
Then what really pissed me off was i heard some pillock behind me say, he for sure did not get a good look at my face, as he turned to his wife" i am sure that is the famous Lord who fought in the Normandy battles during World War11. Well i could have kicked his arse if i had not been laughing so much, i ask you i wasn't born till a year after that war ended.
In the back of a London:
A driver in the UK who has a London hackney cab sent me this story. He picked up a good looking lady and her boyfriend. They had gone a couple of miles when the driver looked in the rear mirror, he could only see the woman. Her head was right back a massive smile on her face, and he could here her groaning. He tilted his mirror down and lo and behold, there was the boyfriend, head up her dress well in between the ladies legs. For the rather shy people in this world he had not dropped some lose change and was looking every where for it. The taxi driver being a rather laid back character said in a loud voice, "look pal i don't mind what your doing in the back of the cab, but tell your woman to get her stiletto heels of my leather seats.
Morning after the night before:
This story was sent to me by driver from far overseas. He was sent early one morning to pick up a passenger from a block of flats. As he pulled up at the flats this young lady suddenly appeared, half dressed, running like hell still trying to put the rest of her cloths on. She got into the taxi, said " driver get me out of here quick". So rubber burning, pedal to the metal, wake up the neighbors time, off he sped. After a short while, the lady now fully dressed after doing some Houdini acts in the back of the car getting fully dressed, she said to the driver, " sorry about before but i had a skin full last night, and brother when i woke up and saw what i had slept with, hell fire i had to get out of there before he woke up".
Dipstick:
A taxi driver recently pulled into his local garage for some fuel. As he was filling his car up he could not help noticing this driver on the other side of the bay can of oil in one hand filling his engine with oil. What made the driver keep looking was the fact it was taking this chap a long time to put oil in. The taxi driver filled up his car with fuel, went in and paid for it, came out of the shop, and still this chap was under his bonnet still putting oil in. Being inquisitive as most taxi drivers are, he made a detour and passed close to this chap. Well, he could not believe his eyes, for there was this chap, trying to pour the oil down the dipstick into the hole where the dipstick lives.
Muddled:
A rather well to do gentleman was at the main States building in Guernsey recently. After his appointment he walked to the reception and asked the lady on reception if she would order him a taxi. "Certainly sir" , she replied, and with that, quickly picked up the phone, rang the local taxi company and said to the link controller, "Hello Frossard house here, any chax of tancy please". Well the gentleman looked at the lady, looked at me, grinning like a cheshire cat, god knows what he thought, but he shrugged his shoulders, did a little skip and sat down on the seat and waited for his taxi to arrive, or should i say tancy.
Needs glasses:
On a recent coaching trip to Scotland with my wife, we were traveling through the country side, my wife had been fairly quiet. All of a sudden she said to me in a shocked voice, "Good God, they have even got Vegetarian surgeries in Scotland". Well this stunned me, 'you what' i thought to myself, then looked back at the sign as we were traveling on up the road. "You stupid woman" i said to her in the style of expression used so often by the famous Captain in Dads army, " that sign says Vet nary Surgery " I explained to her.
Tears to ones eyes:
This happened to an Australian cabbie, it portrays the dangerous job cabbies do. He was sent to a hospital to pick up and old gentleman. The old feller was a real grump, he'd givin the hospital porter hell, and now turned his venom onto the cabbie, nothing was right, he moaned about every and any god damn thing you could think of. The driver plonked him in the back seat of the cab, cursed like hell at getting an old grump like this one, went to the boot of the car to load up the old fellers suitcases etc. The old grump was still givin him hell, shouting from the car all sorts of instructions and abuse. The driver got really stressed, and for two pins would have strapped this old grump to the boot of his car with the elastic straps he was using to hold down the boot, cos there was so much luggage and stuff.
He got the last strap fitted, and was just about to walk to the drivers door, when you heard this almighty twang. The elastic strap shot up into the air, one end still attached to the boot. It reached its zenith, then came twirling back at great speed, and straight in the direction of the drivers zip. Too late to duck or move out of the way, it hit the driver between the legs faster than that of a speeding bullet. Completely doubled up, with tears rolling down his cheeks, and a voice so high a woman couldn't have reached the octave, he crawled to the drivers seat.
He got the old grump to his destination, still high pitched and with cheeks full of tears, "the worst thing was", he told us, "was seeing that old git sitting in the back of the taxi with a broad sniggering grin".
Follow that Cab:
It takes, in some cases a lot of hard work to obtain a taxi psv licence. This particular cabbie had at last managed to get his, the one thing he wanted was a passenger to get into his cab and say," driver, follow that car".
Shades of Dirty Harry, wheel screetching through Chicago, chasing the baddie. Well it took some time, but then one day it happened. An oldish lady got into his cab, "Driver" she sternly said" follow that car and don't lose it".
YES, he thought to himself, eat yer 'art Dirty 'Arry i'm coming through, he was just about to put pedal to the metal, when he looked up, and there in front of him was the vehicle to follow, a bloody great hearse, doing 15 mph which he had to follow for 15 miles.
The gate:
Reading my good friend George Torode's book, a "Donkeys Serenade", brought back memories of a similiar incident to his wonderful story of the door knocker which happened to me in my teens, and if your reading this 'Ferret' no it wasn't before the Boar War.
One evening i was on my way out, walking to the Bridge to meet the gang when i came across two young lads struggling with quite a big wooden gate. When i asked what they were doing they explained to me that it was their Fathers birthday tomorrow and their friends Dad had made this gate for the kids to give him as a presant.
What a nice thought, i thought, , so i said to them, "well in that case lads would you like me to give you a hand to carry it, it sure looks very heavy"., "yes please Mister" they both replied, so off we three toddled down the road with this wooden gate. The lads realised that i could almost carry it my own so they more or less let me carry it, every time i looked at them, they'd quick make out that they were struggling helping me carry it, little sods i thought.
Well i wished i hadn't offered, 400 yards down this road and were still walking with this bloomin' gate, well i was just about to give up with this after a few more hundreds of yards when the lads said " ok Mister were here, thanks for your help", i suppose now you want me to fit the gate to the pillers as well" i nearly out of breath asked, much to my relief thay said no cos they would have to wait till after their dad had come home from the pub before they could come back out and hang it.
The next day, totally forgetting about last nights curfuffal i was in the butcher shop where i was working and i was serving this lady when another lady came in with her husband and was served by the other butcher there.
The other butcher said to this couple, "you don't look your normal happy selves to day", " too right we don't" snapped the lady back," my husband spent weeks making a nice new gate for our cottage and some hooligans pinched it last night" she angrily continued, " if i get my hands on them i'll give them what for she finished" Well by now i was all ears, surely it couldn't be the gate of last night, " if you tell me where you live" i interupted, "i'll keep an eye out for it when i do my meat delivery rounds". Well i didn't know where to put myself when she told me, her cottage was only a few feet away from where i first met the boys, and when she described the gate, yep same gate, the little "toe rags" i thought.
The lady thanked me very much for keeping an eye out on while i was on my delivery rounds and her and her husband left the shop, just think of it i was thinking to myself, the ladies thanking me for looking for a pinched gate that i helped to move in the first place, mind you i kept very quiet about it thats for sure. When i passed the house where the lads stopped last night, sure enough there was this nice new gate sitting in between the brick pillars, but the lads were not daft, they had painted it before fitting it overnight for their dads birthday presant and had even stuck a house name plate on it. Needless to day i kept mum about it all, and told the lady next time i saw her in the shop that i had tried very hard to find the gate but no luck, i could feel my eyes doing a Claude Greengrass after telling so many porkies.
Brake Lights:
Some years ago on one of my link shifts a driver called me up and said," can you tell 'Car 28' that one of her brake lights is not working". This i did, the answer from the female driver came back " is that the rear brake lights. "
Who yer for:
One of our local hotels had, this particular evening, a big function on. At about 11:30 pm all the people started coming out, some had booked taxies others were there waiting for unbooked taxies to pick them up. Now a rather simple minded person decded that he would take on the responsibility of finding out who the taxi was for and he would go in and find them for the driver, which was of course a good help, however because he now felt very important he got a bit carried away. I turned up on speck, i had no particular booking to look for, he suddenly raced over to me, got very excited, " who you for, who you for ", "It's alright mate " i said i'm here on speck, " off he ran , shouted back at me, "i'll just go and find them for you won't be long, they can't be far".
Nicknames:
Not many people who have passed through the taxi/minicab trade have escaped without earning a nickname somehow.
In Guernsey there have been many drivers who's nicknames are now legands, many of the older minicab drivers in Guernsey will remember these with fond memories, or otherwise. There was "Whoopee" "Hissing Sid" "Kojak" "The Captain" "Swampy", no not the English version, "Clockwork", "Tokyo Rose" "Pinkie" "Hercules" "Sheepshager" "Bald Eagle" "Pegleg" "Gunner""Jobless" "The Rabbit""Exsasperated""Honest" and many more . To day a lot of the drivers who are still driving the taxies have earned nicknames, if you are in Guernsey, and travelling by taxi, maybe one of these next characters will be driving you, see if you can work out who's who. They are "The Ferrett", "Biggles" "Popeye" "Catweasal" "Nookie" "Skippy" "Chicken George" "Thermal" "Thrush" "Goldfish" "Rocky" "Wafer" "Seagull" "Pixie" "The General" "The Rabbi" "Scorch", "Von Bunglett""Gervs" and many more, a lot of these of course are the stars in my true stories , Happy Hunting.
Bacon Time:
One Boxing day some years ago i was driving in the vale, i had picked up two passengers
and was mobile to there destination, it was quite dark at this particular time. As we were
rounding this corner we were confronted by two dark shapes.I hit the brakes and
stopped,one of my passengers leaned out the window and shouted " get out the way you
pillocks", well this really made me and the other passenger laugh, 'cos the passenger
had not quite yet worked it out that the two black shapes were two pigs that had escaped
from their farm.
The police were called, and one poor unfortunate policeman had to round them up, while the
others stood there in histerics.
Answer:
A lady American taxi driver gets very fed up of men asking her the same question time after time, "whats a pretty girl like you doing driving a cab. So now she always replies, "Well i really wanted to be a hooker, but i got fat, so now i drive a cab".
Directions:
A few weeks ago i was driving in St.Andrews, suddenly i saw this lady put up her hand. Quick as a flash i hit the brakes, as all good taxi drivers do when they see punters hailing them, pulled up along side the lady and her husband. She gave me a funny look, then continued to point to the trees showing her husband this particular bird. Well, i felt a pillock to start off with, an even bigger one when i suddenly realised that i was not driving the taxi, i was in fact driving my own private car. The lady by now was looking quite worried, i mean some strange person in a car had screached to a halt along side them for no reason at all. So i thought very quickly, i used the electric window button and rolled down the passenger side window, and, in the broadest Irish accsent i good muster said to the lady " would yer be koindly telling me the way to St.Peter Port please", and then had to endure a full 10 minutes while her and her husband gave me instructions that even a blind man could have followed, they even drew me a map.
Left Passenger:
This happened to a Mini cab driver some years ago. He had been sent to the airport to
meet some passengers on a flight, met them, since it was raining told them to wait in the
airport reception whilst he took their luggage to the Mini cab, and loaded it into the
boot.
He had gone a couple of miles when a cold shiver shot down his spine, he had driven off
with the luggage, but had forgot to pick up the passengers waiting at the airport
reception.