Lady Cabbie in Dorset

We had a call from a very well-spoken woman a couple of days ago. She asked H how much we charge to go to Heathrow airport from our locality. He duly gave her our price-I should mention here that we are one of the cheapest for airports in our area.

Well-spoken woman then asked H, 'What sort of cars do you have? Are they comfortable?'

I was present at the time of the call and so heard what was being said. It was at this point that I snorted. Why? Well, because it makes me mad.

It's always the wealthiest people that want the bargain basement prices for an airport...and they NEVER tip. But at the same time they want to be driven in a Rolls Royce. We have Peugeots, which are good work-horses. They are reliable, comfortable and good on motorways. But we don't claim to provide executive vehicles...that's not what we are about with our bargain prices.

There are guys out there that do specialise in executive vehicles but they will almost always charge more. And so they should because their vehicles will cost more to run than ours.

So it really makes me irritated when these people phone wanting a bargain price but in an executive car. They want their cake and eat it.

I haven't felt much like blogging since January. I'm glad to say that our son is fine, albeit with a scar on his back. But he has bounced back and is pretty much back to normal.

The taxi business is plodding along but January and February are notoriously slow months in this trade anyway. Roll on the spring.

Well it should have been the busiest night of the year for us in the taxi trade. But it didn't pan out that way.

Our 15 year old son was stabbed in the street by a nasty little weasle on the saturday night and was rushed to hospital. I spent that night in A&E with him. He had to stay in for two nights overall as he had to have an operation-the wound was only half an inch from his kidneys and it was bone that prevented the blade from penetrating his spine and paralysing him for life. As a mother, I can't describe how that makes me feel.

But my boy is made of strong stuff and thankfully he is home now and although sore, is making a good recovery

For us there have been financial implications. We are self-employed and so if we don't work, we don't get paid. The days spent at the hospital have meant that I personally haven't worked at all. It also meant that there was no-one around to answer our taxi telephone number so we had virtually no bookings at all on New Year's Eve. This is unheard of in the taxi trade. Our son came home on the afternoon of New Year's Eve so H and I hit the streets that night but for us it was very poor business-wise. We managed to get some ASAP's (As Soon As Possible's) but most people were understandably sensible and booked their taxis in advance. We know for a fact that we missed in excess of 25 calls on the 30th of December alone. But because we could not answer the phone for three days, we had no bookings to speak of.

In the grand scheme of things, our son's welfare is the most important thing without a doubt. No question of that. And we are so relieved that he will make a full recovery. But we need to pay the mortgage to keep a roof over our family's head and to put food on the table. So the actions of that disgusting excuse for a human has had far wider implications than probably even he would have realised.

And the best bit? The police have stated that our son will have to be 'arrested for affray' as soon as he is up to it. We are astonished by this. Our son and his friends were jumped on by two men who parked their vehicle in our (no-through) road and lay in wait for them. As my son tried to push his attacker off him, the man stabbed him in the back.

So basically my son has a hole in his back and is lucky to be alive at all (let alone that he isn't paralysed) but he will be charged with affray (street fighting) the same as the man that stabbed him.

Talk about a stab in the back from the law. Makes me sick.

I had a fare the other night to collect a man from someone's house and take him home to a nearby village. I could tell as soon as he walked out that he had had a few.

While I was driving. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was peering at me which I have to say did make me feel uncomfortable. He also made a few complimentary remarks about my appearance (damn, I must get some of those beer goggles myself!). While this might sound nice, it can in fact feel vaguely threatening from some men, especially if they have been heavily drinking.

The first rule in these situations is to obtain as much information as possible from the customer in case you need it in the future so I started a conversation with him, asking him about his job etc. He was in fact quite conversational and volunteered a great deal of personal details, including the fact that he was a long distance lorry driver for a large local factory.

When we got to his home, I requested the fare showing on my meter and he paid without any trouble. However instead of getting out, he lunged towards me for a kiss. I anticipated his action and was able to lean back away from him and so deflected it. I calmly reached for my radio and said, "Car 2 clear, heading back to base" which told the man that I was in direct contact with the office. It seemed to work because he then started to get out of my cab and headed into his house in a wobbly fashion.

When I got home, I told H what had happened. He actually became quite upset about it and seemed very worried about me. I was touched by his concern and while I was basking in the warm glow of his protectiveness, I pondered whether he was more worried about me being a lone lady driver or he was jealous of another man trying to kiss me....or even a mixture of both.

Then he ruined the moment:

"I shall definitely have to get a Black Cab now. That situation just couldn't arise in one of those. You will have to drive it in the evenings for your own protection".

Altruistic motives? I don't think so.

I opened my emails and discovered that I had one from eBay, which was a reply from a seller who was auctioning a Black Cab. I had apparantly asked him some technical question about his cab and he was giving me the answer.

Now I knew that not only had I NOT asked any sellers any questions, but I hadn't even logged into eBay for at least three weeks. It didn't take me long to work out who was behind this.

So I asked H, "Why did you use my eBay account to ask some seller about their Black Cab on auction, when you have a perfectly good eBay account of your own"?

His reply?
"I thought if I did it in your account you would take the hint and bid on it for me as a nice Christmas present".

What could I say to that?

What a good day we had on Boxing Day.

H was pre-booked to take a guy from a village near our town to Tetbury in Gloucestershire as he wanted to meet his family for lunch there. We asked if he minded if I came along (no he didn't) so once we dropped the customer off, H and I were able to go off and have lunch together. This was of course very pleasant for us both but also meant that H didn't have the boredom of trying to kill 3-4 hours on his own in a town in which nothing was open (it being Boxing Day).

The customer was a young man in his thirties and was extremely easy to be in company with in the cab. H quoted him a fixed price for the job which he happily accepted. But when we dropped him back home, he gave H a £30 tip saying as he did so, "Thank you both for making it such a good day out for me". We thought this was extemely nice of him to say so and along with his generous tip, we felt appreciated. What a contrast to the old dame (see last blog entry titled 'The wealthiest are the tightest...').

We had not intended to do any more work on our return home as we had done so well from the Tetbury job. But our phone would not stop ringing. So we began to take some bookings. We quickly realised that there seemed to be few-if any-other taxi's out and about. Not wishing to sound mercenery or anything, but Boxing Day is tariff 3 so we decided to milk it as the demand was there.

Just to explain for those not in the know-there are three tariffs on the meter:
Tariff 1=daytime rate.
Tariff 2=between 10pm and 7am & all day Sundays.
Tariff 3=Christmas Eve after 6pm, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve after 6pm, New Year's Day.

We could not believe how busy we were in the end. We made several journeys each to Wincanton and back (as the races were on) and amazingly we both had full cars both ways. This is a taxi driver's dream...it's not often this happens. So to drive backwards and forwards with fares on board in both directions is fantastic.

Later on I personally had a fare to another neighbouring town, then to my astonishment H radioed me to say that there was a young lady waiting there to come back to our home town. Both ways again. Jammy.

Of course people are more generous with tips at night too. A few bevies seems to loosen their grip on their wallets as well as their tongues!

So all in all a good night followed a good day but I was knackered this morning. However it was definitely worth it.

H has point-blank refused to collect a certain lady customer of ours in the future. And I don't blame him.

This elderly lady lives in a village on the outskirts of our town. Her house is...well, think stately home size. Seriously wealthy, she has never had to do a day's work in her entire life and can boast of mixing in royal circles. We have had the pleasure of collecting her from our local upmarket supermarket since we began our business two years ago. The fare from the supermarket to her home runs to just over £6 but she only ever offered £5, which was a legacy from the guy that used to have the business before us. For that discount fare, we are expected to carry all her shopping both into the cab and to her front door. And NEVER a tip for our trouble.

We tried to shake her off recently when she asked a jewellery shop in town to call us for a cab. We tried to be clever and said that there would be no cab for at least two hours...to our astonishment, the old dame was prepared to wait for us rather than call another cab company-just to save herself one pound!

On that same day, she waffled on to H about how she was having her three-piece suite re-covered. She accidentally dropped her receipt for this in H's cab and it revealed that she was spending £600 on re-covering the suite. This from the woman who seems reluctant to pay the correct fare for her taxi rides. What a slap in the face.

But she really took the biscuit on Christmas Eve. She phoned for a cab to collect her from her home and H assumed that she was coming to the supermarket as always. But when he got there, he discovered that she in fact wanted to go to another town which was double the mileage. He put the meter on and on reaching the other town, it read £12. She started to climb out of H's cab and at the same time thrust a fiver in his hand.

At this point he had to explain to her that the fare owing was more than her usual £5. Her reply? "Oh, why is that"? H explained that it was double the miles than usual so she flopped back into the car in a petulant fashion and made a great show of rifling through her purse and looking through the change. Unable to find enough, she thrust her purse at H and asked him to find the fare amongst her change. H could see immediately that there wasn't even remotely enough to cover the amount needed so he said to her, "You don't have enough change in here to make up the £12 fare. What can we do about it"?

Sighing deeply, she reached into her handbag, pulled out a SECOND purse, opened it to pull out wadges of notes and said, "Oh, I suppose I will have to give you a note now".

Presumably, this tight-arsed woman made such a show of rooting through her small change in the hope that H would say "Oh never mind, I'll take the £5". But why should he? We work just as hard as say, the person that is re-covering her suite so why does she begrudge us our fares? Does she think we work for fun? Does she question the prices of the food in the upmarket supermarket? No. How ridiculous that she expected to travel twice the distance for the same amount of fare that she usually pays.

She has shot herself in the foot now because we will no longer take any bookings from her ever again. We will be 'unavailable' everytime she calls. Every other taxi firm will charge her the full fare to go to and from her home and the supermarket, so she had better get used to it.

The wealthiest people are always the least generous. I'm not just referring to tips here either...they always seem to expect us to drive them for virtually nothing but will happily tell us about the vast amounts they have spent elsewhere. It's insulting to us when we are just trying to earn a living.

We just don't want customers like that.

This is the first chance I have had to blog for days. It's the busiest time of the year in the taxi trade so we have been working day and night to make the most of it because come January and February, things become slack.

Note:

I was saddened ro hear on Christmas Eve that there was an explosion in a taxi office in Lincoln which killed (I think) three people. What a horrible thing to happen on the day before Christmas. My sympathies go to the familes of those killed.

Went christmas shopping today with my mother. It's nearly impossible to buy many of the things I required in our home town (or nearby) so a trip to a larger town was necessary. Mum was only to happy to accompany me as any sort of shopping trip keeps her pleasantly amused.

I'm not much of a shopper as a rule. Especially at christmas. So I thought it was very brave of me to tackle Yeovil. As we didn't arrive until lunchtime, we headed straight to this great chinese place there where you pay a paltry sum and in return you can help yourself to as much chinese food as you can scoff. This put me in a good humour so I was able to cope with the crowds of people and cheesy carols blaring out so much better.

H and I have two teenage sons and I find them more difficult every year when it comes to knowing what to buy them. So when I walked into Woolworths and spotted DVD's of the tv series 'Life on Mars', I thought "Bingo, ideal for son no 2". He had adored this programme when it was on tv and I was proud of myself for my flash of inspiration.

I waited in a long queue with the empty boxes but when I got to the front, the assistant coolly announced to me that they were out of stock. I felt my good humour evaporating and began to recall exactly why I find shopping so tiresome. Disgruntled I made my way to HMV and to my rapturous joy, they had it in stock. Thank you HMV-I will go to you first next time.

The rest of my shopping was fairly straightforward, I'm glad to say, with things on my list found along with other things that came under the banner of inspiration (that is; not exactly planned beforehand but needed to fill out the boy's stockings).

As far as taxi work goes, this was a day off for me although I was the one that drove Mum and I to Yeovil.

And she gives rubbish tips!

Why do men that have had a few drinks think they are irrisistable to women?

We had a call to say that two guys from a local restaurant/wine bar wanted collecting and taking to the other side of town. So I duly went along at the requested time and waited outside the restaurant. Almost immediately a large guy in chef's whites came out and got into my cab...then did a double take when he realised it was a lady driver (I've seen that look of astonishment many times!).

His mate hadn't yet come out so Chef made himself comfortable in the front seat, turned towards me and in silky tones said, "what a pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting a lady driver".

I need to mention here that this guy was HUGE. I'm not fattist, I can assure you...I'm no Kate Moss myself and I like a man to be solidly built. But Chef was absolutely massive. And he clearly had personal hygiene issues. The strong stench of body odour was overwhelming, which coupled with a powerful smell of 'unwashed' clothing made me nauseous.

We waited about five minutes for his mate to come out which Chef made full use of by proceeding to chat me up. Even when his mate got into the cab and we set off to the address they gave me on the other side of town, Chef continued to chat me up using silky tones and leaning towards me.

Embarrassingly for me, every time I changed gear my hand had to run along the side of his leg. Maybe he enjoyed it...I certainly didn't. But to be fair, the guy was so huge there was just no-where else for his leg to go. He couldn't have moved it even if he wanted to.

Once we reached their destination, his mate got out which left Chef to pay me my fare. This he did and as is my norm, I thanked him. He looked at me with the most lecherous expression on his face, leaned even closer towards me and said, "No, thank YOU. The pleasure is all mine". I fixed a polite smile to my face as he shunted his bulk out of my cab. Then I gagged.

The smell lingering in my car was horrific. Mortified at the thought that subsequent passengers might think the smell was coming from me, I was forced to go home and spray 'OUST' liberally inside my cab. Then I drove around town a couple of times with both windows wide open. But I still felt sure I could smell his odour several days later.

I'm sure Chef was probably a really nice guy and I certainly didn't feel in any way threatened by him. But his utter self-confidence, given his size and hygiene issues, was impressive. Maybe it was alcohol that made him this way.

But I have never wanted to eat in that restaurant since meeting Chef.