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.
Old skool
I drove into work yesterday empowered by The Prodigy, old skool style. It took my brain to another dimension… pay close attention.
I’m empowered. I rule the bus lanes of Dublin City. I read strange books and lurk in taxi-ranks and I am at your service. I am not a sour taxi-driver, I’m quiet. If you talk to me, I’ll talk back and agree with you, sympathise with you and be interested in what you have to say, as long as you keep popping those coins in the meter.
I picked up a carpet-layer from Bargaintown yesterday, and forgot to turn on the meter until we were halfway there. His tip made up for it because he was refreshed. I let an old guy off two euros… he had the notes but I took his spare change instead even though it fell short. He smiled and said it would come back around, and it did.
—–
To all taxi drivers out there who might chance upon this post-
Be nice. Provide a service that people want and the rewards will return. Fuck the belligerence. Write it down instead. Blog, don’t bitch.
Read all those newspaper articles, listen to Joe Duffy or read countless blogs and you’ll know that we taxi-drivers are a hated breed. They think we all guard our meters like we’re heroin-addicts and use every available opportunity to stiff the poor unsuspecting public. They think we all talk too much about our miserable lives and darken their souls with our sordid opinions, but we don’t. Not all of us.
So you’ve been burnt before eh? Bitterness is a sink-hole whirlpool that sucks all the crud into oblivion. Be careful, for you are the contact lens that’s fallen on the side of that sink bowl, and if you let the greed and the bitterness and the divil himself into your soul, you’re washed away.
You have to cling. You have to cling to the hope that you’ll be scooped up, washed clean and be appreciated for the vision you’ve created.
—–
‘Course it’s easy for me, I’ve just won the lottery. All €18 million of it, but ssshh, don’t say anything. I’m giving it all to an investor who’s just e-mailed me promising me he’ll double it within 24 hours. Woohoo! I just love money! No I don’t. It’s fake and I hate it. I’m hoping that if I hate it enough, it’ll come to me easily and I hate that too. It always has control, always has to be more.
These days we forget the alternatives, the ‘I’ll scratch your back’s, the discounts, the open doors, the free eggs. Bring the barter system back, I say! Fuck the Department of Finance, the credit ratings and the drooping shares, it’s all just imaginary cash and it has us ruined.
It’s about time this country had a recession. It takes a jolt to bring people back around to the right way of thinking again.
