Eroticow
This isn’t my story, it’s the Accidental Terrorist’s because fortunately, daytime taxi driving doesn’t spew up many stories like this one.
We sat in the sunroom to eat dinner this evening, and as we ate, he relayed his adventures to me. The fork to mouth repetition slowed more and more as the story unfolded, and I began to feel sick, it’s that good.
He told me about how he’d picked up two men and two women from Bray at around closing time o’clock. Dropping one of the men off along the way, he continued to Ballybrack trying hard not to listen to the conversation being held between the two girls in the back of the car.
“Why?” I asked. ”What were they talking about?”
“Nothing much, it was just riddled with curses but… I know some blokes who find cursing women repulsive and I never understood why until now. It was trashy, really crude.”
“Oh. Carry on.”
“Then she got her tits out.”
Apparently the loudest of the two women, who happened to be the girlfriend of the remaining bloke in the car, opened her top for the world to see. TAT swears his eyes were on the road but I’m dubious.
Then, she began to appeal to TAT with ‘this really annoying whiny scumbag voice’ to stop somewhere so that she could pee. He did – he stopped at a perfect spot on the road adjoining a small green area protected by bushes, and pointed her towards them. Did she use them? Did she fuck. She opened her door, squatted by the rear tyre on a busy road, and splashed her pints back home right there in front of him.
When TAT finally pulled up outside the house, the same girl got out of the car, crawled about on the pavement for a bit while she got her co-ordination back and then stumbled to the front of the car where she turned around, bent over and lifted her dress over her head, revealing every last detailed orifice. She then re-robed, and as she was laughing and walking through her front gate, she yelled back at TAT;
“So do you want to come in for yer hole?”
I dropped my fork when he got to that part. I clapped my hands over my ears and shouted “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” for a good five minutes. The image of this bint saying that to him… my bear, the King to my Queen… I felt like throwing my entire dinner up back onto the plate. It disturbed me to the core.
Die, evil slapper bitch, DIE
Will this girl cry with shame tomorrow morning when the memories float to the top of her scummy mind? I doubt it. Will she do it again? Most definately… why break old habits? Bray is full of these women. They are all over Ireland, giving it away like it was the Ebola virus. AIDS and STDs are on the rampage but they don’t give a shit. Babies are born without a snowball’s chance in hell of making it straight, and are found lurking ominously under bridges and on street corners looking dodgy. Village of the damned.
Won’t they please legalize prostitution?
These people are in serious need of precaution and a cleaner environment… seriously, some pubs are pure cattlemarkets. The men don’t even bother to dress up, they just leave their farmer’s shirts on. The women wear seriously ridiculously skimpy clothes (okay, okay, I wore greyhound* skirts and sent the wrong messages entirely too when I was a kid, but I grew out of it!) and rub themselves against anything with a pulse. So, all a bloke has to do is walk in the door, and SCORE! his beans are cooked.
Everyone loves sex. It’s our most basic calling, but it’s still very much in the underworld when it should be out in the open! Clean, safe, there whenever you need it. Bring back prostitution and save our small towns. PLEASE.
* 2 inches from the hair
Vagabondage – a blog is born
I meet an abundance of very interesting people in this job.
I met one particular person in the first few days of taxi-driving, someone with whom conversation came easily and made the job a lot easier. We soon became friends… I give her lifts to work, and she supplies me with the most potent and delicious damn coffee I’ve ever tasted.
We swapped numbers, and enquired about each other’s online status, only to find that I’d found myself a bonafide bebo chick. I explained what a shallow and anonymous gig this Bebo lark is, and explained the theories of blogging. I reluctantly handed over my blog address which is something I hate doing – I like to keep the virtual and the real totally seperate for embarrassment purposes, but something in me sensed that this girl had something to say. A genuinely sound person with a dark and twisty edge needed a blog of her own, don’t you think?
So, I turned her. I bit and infected a civilian and now her thoughts are immortal. (Bwah hah hah hah)
Without further anything else, I introduce you to:
Vagab0ndage
Welcome to the blogosphere, Vicky!
Old my arse
For some reason, other taxi drivers on the rank at the Dart station find me very amusing. They like to stand in groups and watch me parallel park which fucks up my concentration and gives me the shakes and ultimately leads to embarrassment. They give me occasional lectures about smoking in my car (technically the cigarette is outside!) and tell me my brake lights need work with much nudging. It’s definitely not a place for a lady.
That’s why today I was extremely excited to find the rank deserted. I pulled up first in the queue and seconds later my rear door opened, but when I turned around, there was nobody there. My rear view mirror told me that there were two little old dears hobbling towards my car however, one supporting the other like best friends.
They were very happy to see me, being that they’d just been told by another cab company that they’d have to wait for 25 minutes in the pissing rain for another taxi.
“Ooooh!! A lady driver!!! How nice.” the lady in the backseat exclaimed as she fought her stubborn legs into the car. I get this a lot, it’s a nice buzz. The other lady plopped herself in to the seat beside me with no effort at all.
“Right.” says she. “We want to go to Monkstown, and then on into Dublin.”
“Certainly, ladies.” *WOO-HOO!!!* I thought inside my little head. Having just come back from the airport, I felt rich. Sundays are good days for me.
I stuck on some music from the ‘Classycal’ folder on my SatNav and took off. The lady beside me was quite attractive with her hair-mac off… she wore a bronze bob and posh sunglasses with sparkly flowery stuff on the sides and had on her Sunday best. She prompted me for personal information which I always give out far too freely and we complained about the weather, all the way into Monkstown.
We pulled up outside an old Georgian house, and I helped the back-seat lady to her feet. I offered to help her across the road and up the steps (heavily prompted by front-seat lady) but to no avail… she got quite annoyed and said “don’t mind her, I’m fine! She’s always babying me!” then waved at me and headed off.
Then there were two.
There was some silence, then…
“Ahh lookit, I’m nearly falling asleep here, have you any dacent music?”
“Sure!!!” I racked my brains, and waited for a stop-light. I then began to scroll down the music folder and play snippets of songs for her approval. Paul Simon? No. The Waifs? No. Blind Melon? No. I cycled through until she stopped me, at Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.
“I love his voice! Yes I like this, keep this on.”
I was confused. Time passed. To make conversation, I mumbled something like;
“It’s lovely of you to have such concern for a friend, you’re a credit to her.”
“She’s my little sister, sure I worry about her… there were eleven of us to start with, but there aren’t many of us left.”
Now I’m really confused. I begin to wonder if the lady in my car isn’t extracting the urine. The lady we’d just dropped off had to be at least 85 years of age, but I couldn’t ask the question. I knew she was itching to tell me anyway, which she was.
“I’m in my ninety-second year” she said with a grin.
Now, there aren’t many statements that will warrant my taking my eyes off the road for more than two seconds, but this one was an exception.
“Fu… I mean… You can’t be serious?!?!” I normally hate the ‘guess how old I am!!!’ statement from a fellow female. It’s a deliberate fish, but this one warranted true amazement.
“What’s your secret?”
She giggled, and said “I have a good life. I’m well travelled, and I smoke 20 a day.”
“Fair play!!!” I stated. “Where have you been?”
“Everywhere… Germany, France, America, Mexico, Brazil, last year I went to Amsterdam and it was really very excellent indeed!”
“I’m sure it was!”
“The only places I haven’t been yet are Australia and China. Sure there’s plenty of time for that yet, I suppose.”
Ninety one years old!!!
I was unable to say another word for the rest of the journey, the woman had me speechless. I dropped her off at her batchelor-ette pad and thanked her for her generous tip as she walked away. She has made me re-think old age completely, blown my pre-conceived ideas right out. Maybe I won’t bugger off to Africa where I’ll no longer be a pain in the ass to anybody! Maybe I’ll follow the advice in a poem my mum told me last week:
When I am old I will wear purple.
Yeah!!! I’m gonna live it up!!! I’m gonna have impressive stories to tell taxi drivers when I’m 91 years old coming home from the pub too, and demand that they play The Beastie Boys while we talk.
I officially, from this moment on, do not want to hear anybody complain about being old, because you’re not. When you’re 93, come back and talk to me, then I’ll listen. Right now, I’m well impressed.
Sirprising
I believe that if you give respect, most of the time you’ll get it back, hopefully with tips! I’m trying to teach this to my kids but there’s no way to explain this in pre-schoolspeak, so I lead by example.
The thing is, I’m having problems. I came home after a work shift recently, exclaiming that men don’t like to be called ‘Sir’ anymore.
“You call them Sir?!” Xboxboy seemed more than surprised.
“Yes, if I don’t know their name, I’ll call them Sir. Not all the time, just sometimes.”
“But you’re not below them!!! Never call anybody Sir… it’s demeaning to everybody!”
“Eh?”
I don’t understand this, but it’s true. Also, instead of calling my mechanic ‘Bert’, a few weeks ago I called him ‘Mr. Byrne’, and he was horrified. He instantly exclaimed “Jeeeeesus stop! Mr. Byrne is my father’s name!”. This is a strangely common occurance among men of all ages… they evade chivalry as though it were an insult. Did I miss something?
Can somebody please explain to me why ‘Chivalry is dead’, or ‘So-and-so is the last true gentleman’, or ‘Kids have no respect for their elders these days’ are all such common gripes of adults today when all they need to do is accept a bit of respect?
My kid is watching me and learning that the word ‘Sir’ evokes a similar reaction to the word ‘Shit’. Such surprise and chastisement her mother gets! Better not do that so.
So what do I do now?
Watch this space
A few weeks ago, the acc. terrorist bought one of those flashy LED thingys that scroll pre-programmed messages for the back of our taxi – he’s a sucker for shiny stuff. It’s pretty much exactly a bit like this one:
You can pre-programme up to 50 messages to display, controlled by an extemely complicated looking remote. I reckon I could get the hang of it! I’m trying to think of stuff to display, though I’ve only mustered up these ones so far:
- Thanks!
- Hang up and drive.
- Turn your f***ing lights down.
- Keep tailgating me, I need the cash.
- Jesus is coming, everyone look busy.
- Remember: Stop Lights Timed For 35mph Are Also Timed For 70mph.
- Warning! I brake for hallucinations.
- Is this a rhetorical question?
I need 42 more. Give a girl a hand?
-o0o-
What a response!!! Here’s the follow-up:
From Thriftcriminal:
- Awww yeah, overtook your sorry ass!
- Seen the film ‘The Hitcher’?
- Mr. Hanky, the Christmas poo, he loves me and I love you, therefore vicariously he loves you, even if you’re a jew.
- Exterminate! Exterminate!
- Make it so!
- Rigormortis makes me hard
From Me Ma:
- Supercalifradgealisticexpealidocious
- Don’t push yer Granny off the bus
- Free perks on monday – neck massage with every ride
From Me Da:
-Danger! Driver has P.M.T. (predictable but accurate)
From Baino:
- Get in, sit down, shut up, hang on!
From Warrior:
- Imagine, it could be you in this car.
- If you can read this then tell me what the previous line was.
- What are you doing looking at this, look at my brake lights… oh too late.
- Boo!
- You are alone, I am alone, give me a tenner to pay for my petrol, you can walk.
- If you stop following me I won’t tell your wife what you did last night.
From Jefferson Davis:
- Get the f**k out of my way!
- Feck off! (Nice and to-the-point, this one)
- Don’t dare skip on the fare
- No lip, just a tip
- Hire these tyres
From Doc:
- I got some bad ideas in my head
- You talkin’ to me?
- Pssstt… what does the yellow light mean?
- Driver speaks no English
- I knew at an early age I wanted to act
- How’s my drinking?!
From John Braine:
- I’m not getting another ticket just for you. So back the f**k off!
From Xbox4NappyRash:
- So it goes ‘Accelerator, brake, clutch… I think.
From La Vepista, herself:
- You are being watched.
- Slow down, cops ahead!
From a bored person: (Whos style I like!!!)
- Don’t make me go Psycho-Bitch on your annoying ass
- You say I’m a Bitch like it’s a bad thing!
- I’m sorry. My fault. I forgot you were an idiot
- Amazingly enough, I don’t give a shit
- Admitting you’re an asshole is the first step
From Moo Dog:
- You’re so close and ugly, I can tell that your Spitting Image puppet would actually be good looking. Ya prick ya.
From Maxi Cane:
- Baby on board… last person to cut me off in boot!
- Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.
- Giving me the finger won’t turn the roof sign off!
- I’m not a real taxi, I borrowed the sign off Michael O’Leary
- Guess who I had in the car last week… your ma!
-o0o-
*CALCULATING…*
That’s 51 messages!!! Fair play to you all. That’s fucking team-work.
Bray Summerfest Airwhatever
Did you hear about the Bray Summerfest Airshow today?
Did you hear about the big planes swooping low over the rooftops and the pretty fighter jets doing loop-de-loops in the clear blue sky and the army with their big trucks and tanks and uniformed men? I bet if you did, you thought ‘Let’s get our asses down there, quick!’ or, ‘Awww, innit a shame we can’t go to see all that great stuff?’ because it all sounded so great, but in reality, it wasn’t.
In reality it sucked.
I started my shift in Bray at lunchtime and drove in first gear to the seafront to see what I could see. Everybody I passed was staring up into the sky like morons – but not me, I kept my eyes on the road and battled onwards and Lo! Just as I was approaching my target I got called upon to pick up Mrs. Boring from Stupidville, without seeing diddly-squat.
When I was finished with Mrs. Boring from Stupidville I got sent up to the Ritz (in best behaviour mode though I can’t see why…) for Mr. Bad-Timing and had to drive all the way out to the airport and back.
When I returned, Bray was one big massive car-park. Cars were everywhere… parked on top of each other, under sleeping dogs, one or two were even parked in little old ladies’ handbags. It was mental. The gardee were everywhere, waving traffic back and forth and making rude gestures at passers by (I gotta say though, they seriously did an excellent job of clearing away every last smear of traffic sludge) so taxi-fares suddenly became extremely awqward.
Throngs of people kept hurling themselves at my car and jumping in regardless of existing passengers and shouting ‘TAKE ME TO THE SEAFRONT PRONTO!!!’, at which point I would take out my BB gun and ask them to make my day and they would slowly get out again.
I was then sent to Tescos to collect two people who had been waiting for over an hour for a cab. A gentleman and his ladyfriend loaded up their groceries and jumped into the back seat.
“Didya see the airshow?!” the gentleman said excitedly – “It was deadly, wasn’t it?!”
“No I had to go to the airport.” I was grumpy. Very grumpy.
“They had this huuuge carrier jet and it swooped right down over our heads and it was deadly!!!!”
“So you said.”
“Do you not like ‘planes?” He was dissapointed at my lack of enthusiasm.
“I bloody love ‘planes, so can you shut up about it now?”
“Right, subject changed. Did ya see the big army tank?!”
“NO!!!!!”
45 minutes later thanks to aforementioned sludge, we arrived at his house and the meter read €27.40. This was a tad cruel seeing we had only travelled the length of a football field, so I waived it and charged him a tenner instead.
“Wow, that’s really kind of you, thanks!” the gentleman’s missus said. Then, as an afterthought as she was leaving the car she added;
“Sorry your job sucks. You should try to arrange to get time off next year!”
Yeah. Some tip. Thanks wench.
Serendipity
Taxi driving is turning out to be a tough job. It’s not the punters, it’s the lack of work. We have to put in serious hours now that the hotels are quieter and people are guarding their money because of this imaginary recession.
It balances out, though. Driving is such great fun around Wicklow, the roads are interesting and there are thousands of undiscovered quirky Wicklowisms hidden down windy roads and behind dense thickets.
TAT found a most excellent quirky Wicklowism on his travels last week!
The Accidental Terrorist and I are best mates. We already feel married, but have been putting off the dirty deed… the knot-tying itself, for 7 years just because nothing felt right. It doesn’t seem right that we should have to sign away an arm and a leg to some swanky hotel and make such a big deal out of everything when it’s just really only about us, and our ickle family. We thought about eloping, threatened weddings in France and even considered Gretna Green… anything to get out of surrendering to the cash-pit that is the buzz-word ‘Wedding’.
Is it really so hard to find somewhere unique and intimate? Apparently so.
We already have a spot, it’s a patch of grass under enormous trees by a river with a permanent burnt patch in the center. I’d love to get married there. This is my tree:
This used to say ‘Happy 21st Kate love…’ (but oh look, the name’s chipped off. TAT he remains so.) and was carved on the day he proposed to me with the ring-pull from his can of Miller. I prayed for that tree and hugged it and apologised to it for carving into its flesh and I think it’s forgiven me. It must have liked the warmth of our campfires for it’s still alive and thinking.
Thing is though, we can’t get married there because it would involve hiking with generators and boxes of lights and boxes of sausages and tea-bags, but we discovered the next best thing! There’s a nudist colony just up the valley hidden at the end of a very long windy road so we’re getting married there instead.
I would so dearly love to link to this place but I don’t think they’d appreciate the publicity, besides, I don’t want you all gate-crashing stark bollock naked.
Yep, we’ve finally set a date to get hitched! We’ve got nine months to get our act together and then BAM! we’re official. Sweet.
I might need help with this. I don’t do the whole ‘organizational skillz’ thing because I can’t think past tomorrow generally. It works for me for the most part, but the idea of sorting out a wedding scares the bejeebus out of me. This might be the wedding blog of Bridezilla for a while, I’m sorry about that but tough shit. Extremely helpful people will get a pass into the nudist colony for a week.
Peior est bello timor ipse belli.
Ooo-er, Bryan!
I get these Phoebe moments from time to time… like discovering that the expression isn’t ‘for all intensive purposes’ but actually ‘for all intents and purposes’. It’s vital that if you want to show off your big lexicon you at least spell it right, so that was a swing and a miss for me for many years.
The latest boo-boo I discovered relates to Bryan Adams.
You know that song ‘Summer of ’69′? Of course you do. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this song but I have only just discovered that I was drastically wrong about the lyrics.
I always thought it was a very kinky song with pretty shocking lyrics… I wondered how he got away with it, but hey, there’s plenty of stuff out there that’s worse. It was only when I picked up a kid and his dad in my taxi yesterday that I realised my mistake. Turns out this kid loves Bryan Adams, and sang me the first few lines of the song which was highly inappropriate I thought, given that he was singing it in front of his dad… that was, until his dad applauded the effort. I was disgusted.
Here’s how I thought the lyrics went:
“Got my first real sex-dream, boy I had a fine old time. Played until my fingers bled… etc.”
Apparently I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Easy pickings
Raining cats and dogs as usual, business tends to be quiet on days like this.
I pulled up at a taxi rank just after lunchtime and noticed that all the other cars were deserted, bar one – a people-carrier into which was crammed at least eight taxi drivers. I knocked on the window and was let into the secret smoky underworld that is cabby conversation. I sparked up a schmergel and listened.
They had the newspaper out and were reading about this rape incidence in Dublin, yet another excuse to be paranoid about foreigners. I learned many interesting things (and heard much racial hatred which I won’t be repeating here) which blew my mind, to give examples…
Apparently forgeign nationals only need to get 30% of the Public Service Vehicle test correct, as opposed to the 70% us nationals need. Also, foreign-nationals aren’t asked for a back-ground check before they enter the taxi-driving business, yet we Irish need full Gardee clearance.
They say that this is to give foreign nationals a hand-up, an easier way to score employment. That’s all very nice and stuff, but these people aren’t thick… with a bit of practice and a year or two living in this country they’d have it down no problem. It’s only the rules of the road and a rough knowledge of city layout… hardly astrophysics!
Besides, isn’t this sort of stuff important? I would have thought a knowledge of roadsigns would be rather helpful for driving? And as for the back-ground check… are they kidding? They’re asking the people of Ireland to just ‘trust’ their taxi driver?
Is it really true that complete foreigners can land in the country and just dive straight into the taxi-driving business, winging it the whole way?!? I can’t imagine having the guts to go to say… Nigeria and start charging poor unsuspecting punters for trips to places I can’t even pronounce, let alone find.
Pure madness.
I feel so sorry for foreign national taxi drivers today. Nobody’s going to want to use them now as they’ve all been tarred with the same pidgeon. They’ve busted their chops trying to learn the ins and outs of the cabbying business so that they can feed their families in this God-forsaken economy of ours, and now they are to us what the Al Quaeda are to the Americans, just because of a stupid head-line and the usual short-comings of our Irish Big Brother.
I’m laughing though. Who’d suspect an innocent looking female taxi driver of evil intent? Nobody, that’s who.
I could have fun with that…
Asking for it
Today’s weather was typically Irish… lashing rain followed by blazing sunshine followed by hailstones, all within 30 minutes on a continuing cycle. The sort of weather where you need to be prepared when you leave the house.
I was driving to work on the N11 today and was roughly at the Greystones turn-off, when a convertible pulled out in front of me. The roof was down despite ominous looking clouds above, and the car’s occupants were a middle-aged ‘chap’ in tweeds (complete with a poncy tweed fedora). His passenger was a younger lady, immaculately preened and wearing ridiculously large Nicole Ritchie type sunglasses. She was the sort of woman who was probably named ‘Totty’ at birth.
The temptation got the better of me.
I got in front of him, and from a safe distance began to wash my windows like a mad bitch. The spray from a window washer travels amazingly well at 100kmph and I got to watch with glee as the lady in the car began to have a canary over my antics. Every time she got her compact out to re-apply her mask, I did it again. I turned her Elizabeth Arden ‘True Beige’ to Crayola and laughed an evil laugh.
Why be so cruel? Maybe it’s because it’s good to mess up beautiful things because they aren’t really all that beautiful to start with. Maybe I was just bored. Maybe it was a bit of both.
