My first car was a Cortina Mk 1. My second car was a Cortina Mk 2. Cortina Trap?
People might believe that the best way to get run over would be to ask someone to do it for them. I on the other hand would prefer to stand in the road and just wait and see what happens.
I have never been what you might call a go getter. This is partly due to shyness, and partly because I have never identified what I wanted to go and get. I have always tended just to see what happens next, however I do believe in putting myself into a position where something interesting is likely to turn up. This is maybe why I married Margaret, It is almost certainly why I work with Phil and Denny and it is one of my reasons for being a minicab driver. It is always possible that my next passenger might be a publisher who I could interest in my ideas for a book, he might be a producer who might be interested in the musical, or she may be the next woman I fall in love with.
Zen Minicabbing Lesson 17A : You never know what is round the next corner..........It could be your dreams.
I once picked up a betting shop manageress who was training to be a Psychotherapist. 'Enjoy your life - and the next one' she said as she paid and walked away into the night.
Zen Minicabbing Lesson 17B: You never know what is round the corner - It may be your nemesis
I folded my jacket to make a pillow and lay back on the solid wooden bench. The cell door slammed and the lock clunked with exaggerated purpose as I stared at the bare yellow walls. Too confused to be truly scared, my initial reaction was to feel a womb-like protectiveness, a peaceful serenity.
I thought of Brian nailed to the cross -- and the bright side appeared like a shaft of light breaking through the solid walls, like God speaking to Belushi in the Blues Brothers. Could this mean that I could finally rest and recuperate, learn a trade, and take that course of physiotherapy, and all at Her Majestys pleasure. Would there be campaigns to free The Chalvey One -- I pictured myself as a POW sitting out the final battles in the war against recession; A prisoner of conscience, martyr to the cause, named on priority lists held by Amnesty International, Chris Mullen MP, Ludovic Kennedy and The Cook Report. Then I looked again at the bare walls and all I saw was no way out.
So it had finally come to this. My only crime had been to try to remain honest. I had worked too hard to keep pace with mounting mortgage and loan payments. I had tried to survive the recession, but Id slipped a disc in my back and set off a bizarre series of events that culminated in a police cell in Slough nick.
If this was not the absolute nadir of my entire minicabbing career, if there was any chance that something else could possibly go wrong then surely it must be 'Razor Blade Time'
Zen Minicabbing Lesson 17B: You never know what is round the corner...................... It may be your nemesis.
It was two hours earlier, 6:00 am on the 6 January 1993, when I awoke to the sound of insistent banging on the front door. Like a code I could tell it spelt T.R.O.U.B.L.E. or, considering I was dealing with the Thames Valley Police, T.R.U.B.e.#;=LL..
They searched my room. The white one found interest in my collection of court orders for non-payment of debts. Perhaps I only imagined his mouth moving as he read the documents himself or perhaps it was just the impression given by a face that had the look of a proverbial bulldog licking piss off a nettle. The black one feigned an interest in my pile of Amiga magazines and enquired which software I used for sequencing, though his looks meant he would have looked more at home interviewing Ed the Duck. Good Cop, Bad Cop. Just like TV Mutt and Jeff, Yin and Yang, Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.
The white one made his move: Do you have a Building Society account.....SIR? He was better than the woodentops I had encountered during the drug raid. This evil looking plain clothes DICK could make the word 'SIR' sound like the emptying of a whole bucket of bile. I am sure his mother loved him though it could not have been easy. Mark Twain once said that a cauliflower was a cabbage with a college education but it was surely a borstal educated vegetable which invited comparisons to his ears. I wondered if he had acquired them deliberately; a mark of status in the force.
No. I replied. As you should have noticed from my obvious predicament, I have absolutely no money.
Do you own this house?
Yes, but I havent been able to pay the mortgage for months.
But when you did pay, how did you pay?
With a paying in book.
So you must have a Building Society account?
Yes.
So why did you say you didnt?
So pleased was he with this victory of logic over bleary eyed bewilderment and apparently so convinced that this was the burden of proof he needed for a conviction, that he made his move, I am arresting you on suspicion of fraud. and with his hand on my shoulder he gave me the caution. It might have been the light or perhaps the sleep in my eyes but he looked like a gargoyle while his coloured mate looked like a Top of the Pops presenter. I then accompanied them to the nick
You are entitled to a solicitor. The charge sergeant informed me as he put the contents of my pockets in a sealed bag.
OK. How do I get one?
Why?.... What have you done?
Nothing.
Then you wont need one.
What about the Guildford Four?
I suggest you let us get on so we can sort this out quickly.
OK. Like so many before I was drawn by this idea of having it all sorted out quickly
As I sat in the cell I remembered my wifes advice: If you want to find a job, sell your musical; and if you want us to have a child, you must come to Church with me. Margaret had harangued. As my life turned into a jungle so my wife became an Harangue-Utan. Her Church was not the cosy C of E church we had attended in Chalvey but the Celestial Church of Christ in Cloudesley Square, Islington. A place where serious prayers are said for serious personal gain, serious tasks are undertaken as proof of devotion, and serious deals are struck with God. I had no excuse not to go -- that I would feel out of place being the only white man there would be scant excuse to offer to a woman who was frequently the only black in the company of whites. I believed the church to be a synthesis of imposed Christianity and Ju Ju though Margaret saw it as the antithesis of native superstition.
She had once told me how in Nigeria, she had heard stories of people disappearing. The JuJu men keep their bodies tied up in a dark corner of an empty room and enslave their disembodied spirits to bring them riches. The emaciated bodies would eventually be found dumped by a roadside.
Do you believe this? I had asked
I believe my lord Jesus Christ will protect me.
I entered the church and was showered with water as men in white robes wearing no shoes shouted prayers in the language of the Nigerian Yoruba tribe.
Margaret gave me a lighted candle and told me to look into the flame and pray for a job and a child. Oh God please give me a job and a child I repeated to myself. Personally I believe in succinct prayer, unlike the Yorubas who can fill infinite time with their elaborate praise: Dear God, Father, You are the Alpha and Omega, You are the omnipotent most merciful and all powerful. We all bow down to You, we are hallowed in Your presence, You created the world and all that is in it and we love You Father...Oh we love You and we are willing to obey Your every command, etc. This can go on for twenty minutes before they build up to mentioning what they actually want. This is also usually an extensive list, hence whenever I was forced into praying with Margaret I could usually say my bit, Help all the oppressed peoples of the world, etc, and have time to make a cup of tea and a light meal while Margaret requested some Royal Doulton China and a new paint job on the Belmont.
Luckily the prophet was ready to see me fairly quickly, and as he mumbled through his trance, so a scribe wrote down his predictions and took a note of the tasks I should undergo. These were to bathe every morning using specially blessed soap and to say a prayer before leaving the house. The prayer was: Most Everlasting Father I am going out. Please let Your blessing find me and let Your angels pray for me and guide me. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Quite a nice prayer if you like that sort of thing.
The prediction though was not nearly so nice, and in the atmosphere of chanting voices and incense I had little doubt that it would eventually come true, Even if I said the prayers and used the soap, which I did,.....religiously.
I evaded Margarets enquiries regarding the nature of the predictions and my reason for feeling alarmed. The whole business of praying for ones own material success does, to me, seem worrying and somehow un-Christian, but that January morning in Slough nick I was tempted to wish I had prayed a bit harder.
I was removed from the cell and led into the interview room where my interrogators unwrapped the tapes, put them into the recorder, pressed record and play and started the interview. While there were certainly many things that I might have done wrong, their questions about my family and my building society gave no clue as to what these might be. It is hard trying to establish an alibi when you dont know which misdemeanour you are being accused of.
They then showed me a fraudulently obtained cheque for £1500 made payable to Charles Ford Fasan! Was I mad? I was Barking M.A.D..... Like a Dagenham care order! Like a dog with no nose and the wrong tree.
CONFUSED? Well so was I. It was all starting to wind me up.
I pointed out how they had failed to find the Luton van that had been towed away from outside my house, how they had mistaken me for a drug pusher and that now they had mistaken me for a six foot, nineteen year-old Nigerian!
I told them how there was no love lost between Charles and myself and that I had no idea of his whereabouts, nor did I care.
Why have you put up with this for so long? the black one asked, to which I tartly replied, You obviously know nothing of African culture and the extended family. The insult hit the target. He made no further comment, however his friend was not going to let innocence stand in the way of serious harassment, Well we are going to find him, even if we have to visit you every morning to see if hes turned up.
They persuaded me to give them Margarets address, and with a rare touch of compassion assured me they would say nothing that would prejudice my attempts to effect a reunion with her. The Charge Sergeant unsealed the bag containing my possessions, which included my address book that would have contained Charles address had I known it, yet they had not looked to see. They then showed me the door. It was only a few hundred yards back to my house but I had to say, Its OK. I dont need a car, the walk will do me good. A favourite cop show cliché I know... but it had to be done.....
It was a chilly morning that greeted me, made more so by the realisation that the Celestial Church Of Christ had been right. Not only that, but I recalled how, on the night Margaret had dragged me to my appointment with the profit, my companion was none other than Charles Fasan. The prediction I had received from the Celestial Church was that I would be arrested...Well, I believe you should try everything once, though I draw the line at heroin, sky-diving and Bungee jumping. But being arrested is not something you look forward to.
That night I picked up Loretta (pronounced Loh..weh..,aah) from her house in N2.
' Get your arse indoors ya Li..elle bastards.' She shrieked to her ankle biters as they fought and swore at each other.' I hate em playing wiv em kids next door. Bad influence.
'Can ya take me to Amhurst Park quick.... I gotta make some money tonight
'Make sure your kids always go out with clean underpants' I said enigmatically 'You never know when they may be falsely arrested' I explained why I was so obviously bitter (pronounced bi..her and often drunk with a bottle of light), and she sympathised 'Dont talk to me abaht the filth' she said ' I keep getting arrested me-self jus fa doin me job., I got kids to feed an bills to pay and on top of that a whole loada fines for soliciting which I have to work extra hard to cover. What else can I do? Play the Jewish piano at Tescos? Id never earn enough to pay the mortgage on me ouse, and the bills, and the fines and Id lose the kids'
She had brought her younger sister along to teach her the oldest profession, both of them reeking of cheap perfume and too much make up: the window dressings of their trade. Legs everywhere and tits at attention: ready for intimate inspection, they disembarked outside the Sammuel Lewis Dwellings, Stamford Hill N15 .
I sensed that they both regarded me as a fellow renegade: soul mates in persecution. If nothing else, I was pleased that the day had ended with soul mates and not cell mates.
Zen Minicabbing lesson 40: Never show any sign of regret. If you have passengers on board and you make a wrong turn insist you are diverting to avoid traffic. If you accidentally cut up another car or are involved in any kind of near miss be sure to quickly shout out. 'How did he expect me to know he was going to do that, Im not psychic' or if you end up ahead shout out 'Well that showed him'. If you perform a dangerous manoeuvre involving a black cab be sure your passenger hears you call out 'serves Im right
When the black cab calls you a wanker as he inevitably will, no matter how inconvenient, just smile and say 'Have a nice day'
Never let passengers see you flustered. If you do become involved in an incident that will cost money, a crash or a fine, always tell yourself that it has to happen sometimes and is just an occupational hazard.
I always tell the passengers 'Ive missed a lot more then Ive ever hit
In life there seems to be three stages of regret: the first being an attempt to blame others, the second an attempt to find the blame by your own action and the third is to blame it on fate.
Just before Christmas 92, I twice picked up an independent television producer who was apparently trying to make a documentary detailing a government cover up concerning the disposal of the Zyclon B gasses used by the Nazis during the war. He alleged that the British dumped the canisters in the North Sea and as we speak they are leaking out their deadly contents. he implied that his investigations were putting him under considerable risk the information he was seeking all being an official secret.
I lightened the conversation by telling how I was in the process of risking my own heath in the service of mankind by conducting a one man doner kebab survey, testing the new chicken doner. After a number of well placed anecdotes my passenger told me of a colleague who was looking for material for a comedy script.
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