What Fresh Hell…?

Those of you that know me personally know that I work the nightshift five nights a week driving a taxi.

At this point I usually take this opportunity to plug my book, yadda yadda.. so if you haven’t heard of it, click here.

You know, after six years of working nights you think I’d be used to doing this but shall I tell you something? It’s a bit weird.

Here’s the main reason.

Meals.

Living with normal people that sleep at night, the first meal I eat each day is usually what you guys eat for dinner (or tea if you’re northern).  After I finish my shift, the last meal I eat is usually a bowl of cereal, because, quite honestly, it’s the morning, and you eat cereal in the morning. End of.

And no matter how hard I try, I can’t break this habit.

It’s like my stomach is the only part of my body that doesn’t work nights.  It still works days.  I can’t explain it.

So – the point of this post:

I got home the other morning and got out one of my favourite breakfast cereals, that I now eat for tea (or dinner, if you’re posh).

Ah, good ol’ Alpen.  I’ve always seen it as a bit of a luxury.  A bit of a posh treat. It’s one of the more expensive cereals you can buy.

When I was out of work I certainly couldn’t afford to buy it.  There was one point, when I was absolutely on my arse, when I couldn’t even afford dodgy rolling tobacco off the bloke in the pub.

I’d raided all my ashtrays for dockers to try to scrape together enough to make just one roll-up to keep me going till tomorrow.

Oh by the way – the non-smokers will probably be thinking “You shouldn’t be able to afford luxuries like smoking when you’re out of work – get your priorities right.”

Yeah, well fuck you! This is a smoking page. And if you want to read my blog, then I insist that you light up.  Go on.

Right now.

Your fresh air is not welcome here – if your eyes ain’t stinging, you ain’t doing it right.

I’ve popped a fag under the keyboard for you.  And a match.

Please tell me you actually believed me for even the tiniest sliver of a moment there 😉

Okay, I was messing with you.

Addiction is a serious matter if you’re addicted, a trivial one if you are not – especially when it regards smoking, it would seem.

Case in point – back to my own discarded cigarette end gathering.

I managed to get enough together to make two thirds of a roll-up – still not enough to fill one.  I looked around, thinking I could add something to it so I could make a full roll-up.

Next thing I had ripped a tea-bag up and managed to mix the tea leaves in with the tobacco.  Tea tastes nice, it might add a nice hint of tea to my cigarette.. I rolled it up.

Here goes…

It tasted like bonfires.

It took the craving away though – that was the idea, though the execution was unexpected.

My argument about smoking when being out of work is valid though. Trying to quit smoking when you’re looking for a job at the same time? No thank you.

The last time I tried to quit smoking I went to one of those Smoking Cessation Meetings.  I almost got chucked out when I started criticising how it was run.

We all shuffled into this tiny room and sat on chairs.  The lady running the meeting got us all to contribute to a whiteboard listing why smoking is bad for you.

She went through the different ways the NHS could help you quit, patches, hallucinogenic drugs (seriously!) etc, then started calling the meeting to a close.

Was that it?! I put my hand up.

“Yes?”

“Yep, OK you’ve gone through the list of reasons it’s bad, and what to dose us up with, etc.  But something is missing. I don’t *want* to quit.  I like smoking.”

I felt like I was trying to start a revolution – perhaps I was!  Perhaps we’d all shuffle out shouting rude words and wheezing, carrying broken chair legs as weapons, with neckties tied round our heads like Rambo!

“Well, Mr Price – we can’t really help you unless you want to quit.  Why are you here?”

“Because I want to want to quit, but I currently don’t want to.  Does that make sense?”

There were a few nods and mutterings of agreement round the room.

“No, Mr Price, I don’t really understand, you either want to quit, or you don’t.”

“You’ve never smoked, have you?”

“No, Mr Price.”

“Then I don’t think you’re qualified to be running this meeting.”

It was like a teetotaller running an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Then I left.

I remember how much being out of work was absolutely shit.  It knocks your self-esteem.  It’s depressing.  You can just about afford to smoke, but not Alpen.

Which apparently the best thing if you’re letting life get you down.  Look at the side of the box again:

Hang on!  Worth getting up for?

Who came up with that one?  How did that get through the marketing department of Alpen and end up on the side of a cereal box without someone holding up their hand and going “Hold up, lads… what’s this?”

Look again – what’s written underneath?

…but then you know that

What the hell is this – mind control?

The most patronising thing I’ve seen for a long time.

I’m now being told what I should know by a box of cereal.

It’ll be running Smoking Cessation Meetings next.

Don’t even get me started on those pictures on cigarette packets!

Dave

Awkward Spanish Lesson

Readers of my book How To Annoy A Taxi Driver (UK, US) will recall that one of my pet peeves are foreign people that deliberately converse in their native tongue for my benefit.

The paranoid part of me assumes that this is so that they can talk about me or taxi drivers in general, me being tarred with the same brush.

Indian students are the exception to this, which I think is very respectful indeed.

Tonight, two young ladies climbed into my taxi and girl A opened the conversation with this:

A

It won’t be more than £5.00 will it?

Me

I don’t know, where are you going? (am I psychic? no.)

A

The Old Bus Depot Flats

Me

It will probably be about that.

So off we go.  On goes the meter…

A

God, it’s £3.60 already, that’s new…

B

(warningly) Dianne…

A

Well…

The girls then broke into fluent Spanish, with a very strong accent.  I’m not sure whether they actually were Spanish, as when they were speaking English, they sounded local.

The conversation continued in Spanish for the duration of the journey.

Now, my knowledge of Spanish is minimal.  I did a tiny bit at college, and I always make the effort to learn a few phrases and words for when I’m in Lanzarote – the locals like it, you make a good impression, you get better service, you’re remembered the next time you use their restaurant, bar or supermarket.

In short, you cease to be a generic pig-ignorant Brit abroad, and become a fellow human being that has at least made an effort.

By the way, I tried this at a street-side cafe in France once.

Image by Archibald Ballantine

The conversation went like this:

Me speaking French.

Me:

Bonjour!  Un Bouteil de Evian, et un boiteil de Stella Artois, sil vous plait?

Waitress (Snottily, in English)

Only THOSE beers! (pointing grumpily at a menu)

Me: (pointing at the menu, and speaking in English)

 A bottle of THAT then!

No tip for her, the snotty cow..

Anyway, back to the Spanish speaking passengers.

I didn’t understand too much of what was being said, and I won’t attempt to quote them, but my mind sort of translated it to this.

A

£3.60 pethethetheth £5 sminki pinki tenuros taxi driver.

B

Money nobo squintero Taxi Driver £3.60 novello proboscis – molto molto kin agrophos conman.

A

Bono estente bell-end pighardia scorchio £5 facilos taxi driver action-pumpo!

And so on, I got the jist of it, the old tar-brush was out, my ears were well and truly smoking etc.

And of course I just drove along as if I had no idea of the conversation.

Actually, when people do this, my ears prick up, to see if I can understand the conversation.  If they’d just spoken in English in the first place, I’d probably just have ignored it, like I normally would any conversation in the taxi.

The meter flipped over to exactly £5 about 100 meters short of their destination.

B (To me)

Para Aqui… (Stop here)

So I stopped.

In my mirror, they exchanged a look between themselves which looked like “Fuck”

A (Handing over £5)

You understand Spanish?

Me (eyebrow raised)

More than you assumed…

Awkward. I admit, I let them assume I understood it all – and why not?

They hurriedly left the vehicle without a further word in any language.

Usually if I’m in sight of a passenger’s destination I’ll let the taxi roll rather than kicking them out.

But not this time.

Damn, that was fun!

😉

Slow night.

As if it was so quiet on the taxi rank, that a snail had time to creep up my taxi from the ground, then set off up my windscreen to mock me!

Hilarious.

“Why is it..?”

I had a couple of chaps in my taxi a couple of weeks ago that I had to educate.

“Where to, please?” I asked.  I’d picked them up on Queen St, Morecambe, at around 2am.

“Did they not tell you in the office?”

Oh here we go – you’ve forgotten since you ordered your taxi and/or you’re so pissed you can’t remember where you f*cking live – or something like that..

I said “I always like to check with the passenger, out of courtesy.”

“Can you take us to Red Bank Farm, Bolton le Sands.. how much will it be?”

“It will be approximately £15, maximum.”

“£15?! It won’t be that much – more like £10.” they said.

I said “Well it’s £10 minimum – to the nearest point in Bolton-le-Sands, £15 maximum, to the furthest point – It’s better to tell you the most it will be, so that you know you have enough, or need a bank, etc”

“How come you don’t know exactly how much it will be?  Haven’t you been doing this job for very long?”

Are you being f*cking serious?

“Because I’m a taxi driver, not a computer – do you want me to take you or not?”

We hadn’t even set off yet.  Off we went.

“We rang your company up yesterday afternoon and asked how much a taxi is to Morecambe.  The lady said ‘about £7’  When the taxi driver got in he put the meter on – and when we got there it was £8.  Why would that be?”

“Well where in Morecambe was it?  The Centre?”

“No, further along than that.”

“Well there’s your answer – your ‘quote’ was an average price.”

“Well, when a customer rings they should know exactly how much it is – it can’t be that hard surely.”

“No, it’s very simple – if you give your exact start address, then the exact end address, did you do that?”

“We said Morecambe.”

“Well, it’s a pretty big place – I think £7 was a very good average price really.”

I’m starting to get a headache.  

If this guy was any more anal he’d be trying to bum me through the back of my seat. 

He says “I have a fuel card and I get Diesel for £1.15 a litre, how many miles is it?”  and so on… etc… ending with:

“How do you sleep, charging that much?”

For f*ck’s sake!!!

“I tell you what it is, sir..  The Council set the fares – we don’t.  If you don’t like the prices, don’t get taxis – walk – it’s free to do that. I only get half of what you’ve just paid for this journey, which is why I spend ten hours per shift, five nights a week doing this job.”

What a cock.

Great.

Review: The Squirrel That Dreamt Of Madness

Better Than Fifty Shades

Okay, not the best title for a review, but perhaps you will see what I mean by the end..

Those familiar with the cult classic Withnail And I will recall that a good deal of the film contains the internal mutterings of “I” (Paul McGann) to great comedic effect – I recall the scene in the pub toilet where “I” is reading the grafitti:

[voice-over] “I fuck arses.” Who fucks arses?
[aloud] Maybe *he* fucks arses!
[voice-over] Maybe he’s written this in some moment of drunken sincerity.

I was reminded in some parts of these paranoid thoughts. In fact most of the book felt like an extended scene in Withnail & I. That is very definitely a Good Thing.

There are many words of wisdom, very helpfully italicised.

I attempted to write a childrens story once “Keith and the Baby Dragon.” I ran out of steam quite quickly because I found writing with the level of surrealism I was going for was very taxing. But Craig has managed to keep up the stamina I lacked, and filled an entire book. That is also a Good Thing.

I think that’s why I enjoyed it so much. I was brought up on a healthy diet of Python, Milligan, Reeves & Mortimer, and The Mighty Boosh, so I found this style of writing very easy to enjoy.

I am unsure how much of this was based upon the author’s experiences and how much was fiction, but in my experiences as a Taxi Driver (How to Annoy a Taxi Driver) I can attest to the fact that people are very strange indeed!

In summary then, strange, delightful, touching and very enjoyable!

I almost forgot… what is the difference between this book and Fifty Shades?

I read about halfway through Fifty Shades before the writing equivalent of listening to Les Dawson on piano made my want to set fire to my Kindle, then sniff myself to death on the probably highly toxic ashes.

The Squirrel That Dreamt Of Madness, I could *not* put down. 😉

Dave

Adele, Cramp and Parmesan Death

This one rambles and jumps about a bit – but please read on. It will all make sense in the end..

By the way, some of it is about Vomit, you’ve been warned.

Today I awoke to the stabbing searing terror of my left calf convulsing in cramp.

“Hey folks! Do you know what time it is?! That’s right, i-i-i-i-it’s Cramp O’Clock!! Don’t hit that snooze button!!”

So I managed to get myself to a standing position without screaming, that usually sorts it. It did.

I had a revelation today. A moment of clarity. Well, several, but a couple of them were just inspired connections brought on by caffiene and chocolate I think, but more about that later.

Last night in my taxi I was on a rank, slowly making my way up to pole position outside one of Lancaster’s nightclubs.

Sorry to be specific here, but have you ever had a bit of bile try to force it’s way up, and you fight it back down by swallowing it? That happened. And it didn’t go well.

A girl tapped on the passenger window at that very moment to ask if I could carry five people in my taxi.

I was in the middle of winding the window down when my eyes started streaming.

My eyes were threatening to pop out.

“GLUG!!” I managed to say.

“Sorry?” she replied.

“I’M GONNA BE SICK!!” I rasped, turned away, and spat out of my window.

I turned back.

“Sorry! Sorry..” I croaked – but she had gone. Good – I couldn’t have fitted them all in my car, in any case.

It took me about ten minutes to recover completely. I drank a litre of water trying to sort myself out.

I wanted to write a funny Facebook status about it, as is my thing – “Death by Parmesan” or something like that. But it was busy, so I didn’t get round to it.

Lee Evans once likened the aroma of Parmesan cheese to vomit. As a result, Parmesan is definitely an acquired taste. I vividly remember as a child freaking out because the Spaghetti & Meatballs that my mum and dad had bought me at a restaurant smelled of sick, and I refused to eat it. I screamed the place down, if I remember..

But why is this? Why are vomit and parmesan so closely related, in a smell sense? Are there any biochemists reading that can help here?

Revelation Number One:

I remember being told by a college lecturer that cramp was something to do with the muscle being starved of oxygen. Lactic acid is produced so the muscle goes into a spasm and freezes up. When someone dies the heart stops and no oxygen flows. Lactic acid. Cramp. Rigor Mortis.

Hmmm. Lactic Acid. Lactose? Lactate. Milk. Cheese.

Parmesan Cheese.

Cheese is milk that has cramp.

Vomit smells of Parmesan which smells of Vomit. QED.

Have I gone insane, or does that make sense?

Back to my day, anyway.

I got up, went downstairs, and made a strong coffee. I drank it while eating the chocolate that I’d abandoned last night after my Parmesan Death Incident. Nice. That ties up nicely.

I’m told that starting the day with a chocolate breakfast is a bad thing. Being overweight, I’m a diabetes risk apparently. I hope not, because coffee and chocolate is the spinach to my internal creative Popeye. Or brain, to put it another way.

If you’ve ever met me after a high caffiene and chocolate intake, you can’t shut me up. I am on one, creatively speaking. That’s why I’m writing this.

What happened next? I drove to work – well, to be specific, I drove my car to where the taxi is parked that I drive. On the way I passed Adele on a Stick.

Okay, that really deserves an explanation.

A large part of Morecambe has recently been made into a 20MPH zone. I get this, there are schools, and kids. Kids on BMXs already own the roads in this area, riding out into the road without looking. In groups usually.

ET, but with twats.

I wrote about that in my book, How to Annoy a Taxi Driver (Only 98p on Amazon – very reasonably priced and a funny read – plug over.)

There are a couple of devices that have been erected on poles in the area. As a car approaches them, it displays their speed, and either a happy face or a sad face, depending on whether they are above or below the non-enforcable speed limit. The police don’t prosecute under 30MPH.

At 3am, when the roads are clearly empty, this machine scowls at everyone passing. She’s never happy to see me.

As I approached Adele she piped up with 19 and smiled at me. 🙂

I hate machines telling me what to do. At a previous job, a desktop computer once told me that I was “Not Authorised to Shut Down this Workstation” – “Really?!” I squeaked. Power switch off. Job done.

So I gently accelerated my car to 21, and of course she scowled at me. 😦

Adele on a stick.

Revelation Number Two:

Anyone care to recall the name of Adele’s two albums?

19 and 21. QED.

Conclusion

My main moment of clarity then, is that this stuff pops into my head under the influence of coffee and chocolate, which are apparently bad for my body, but good for my creativity.

Oh, and I love Parmesan cheese. Funny, that.

And Adele is pregnant.

Congratulations, love. When the baby inevitably pukes, I wonder if a penny will drop… 😉

Dave

Drunk Girl

Just had a car full of drunk girls.

Not *these* actual drunk girls. On this occasion 😉

The one sat next to me was babbling shit to herself. She was wasted. She suddenly turned to me and asked “Mr Taximan, what did I say to Lorna before I got in your taxi?” “Lorna?” “Yes!”

Here we go… I replied:
“You said ‘Lorna, are these your wellies?’ She replied ‘What wellies?’ Then you said ‘Sorry, I meant to say sewing machine.’ Then all these tits fell out of the sky..”

Her face slowly became confused, then horrified, as she seemed to believe me.

At the end she burst out laughing.

I said “You won’t ask me next time, will you?” and smiled.

That was fun 😉