Too Easy

Twice this week I’ve jagged dream jobs. Last Sunday at 10.35pm in Kings Cross the radio barked into life - CABS NEEDED AT DOMESTIC. Initially I considered it too late to go flying out to the Airport for the chance of an average $18 fare. However as it was pretty quite around town I thought, bugger it, nothing ventured...

Thanks to the Eastern Distributor I rolled into Domestic within fifteen minutes to score a $100 fare to Berowra, way up on the northern perimeter of Sydney. Call me lucky. Even better the passenger was a really informative woman who’d just spent the weekend at a Spanish monastery in the West Australian bush. Hit the link to this unique story.

Then this morning at 2.30am, heading through Rozelle after a pretty ordinary shift, the radio issued a general call for cabs to a Balmain hotel. Arriving within two minutes I found 20 patrons and no cabs. Oh well, I thought, some local jobs to pay my gas bill.

A woman boarded then summoned two more and a fella heading in the same direction. One got out early in Abbotsford, a ten minute detour which caused some tension. After which I was directed to Parramatta via Gladesville and Homebush Bay. Bingo, maybe a $50 job in total and saving my night. But then at Gladesville it all went haywire.

‘Stop the cab !’, barked the really drunk fella. ‘I’ve left my house keys in the car back at Balmain. We’ve gotta go back’. At this point the meter read $38. To cut a long story short we went back to Balmain, he screwed around trying to waking up a mate to retrieve his car keys...it was friggin’ painful but the meter was ticking so I didn't care. All up the fare was $114 and I finished one hour late, tired and happy...

However the best encounter in last night’s shift was not over money, though it led to a healthy tip, but bagging ‘Bloody John Howard’. I picked up a passenger in the City, around forty years old and fired up on booze. Shortly after heading off the ABC radio news carried a lead item on David Hicks.

• Him - ‘Bloody John Howard ! He could have got Hicks home by now’.
• Me - ‘You mean Daewoo ?’.
• Him - ‘What...?’
• Me - ‘Hicks changed his name to Mohammed Daewoo’.
• Him - ‘Bullshit’.
• Me - ‘True story, he officially changed it by deed poll’.
• Him - ‘Daewoo’s a fuckin’ Korean car, he’s not that stupid !’.
• Me - ‘I dunno, he might be the most stupid bloke in Australia’.
• Him - ‘Yeah, but he’s not dangerous. There’s blokes up there in Kings Cross more dangerous than Hicks. There’s murderers and rapists walking around free and he’s been locked up for five years and he never hurt anyone !’.
• Me - ‘Do you reckon he’s more stupid than those Bali heroin smugglers ?’.
• Him - ‘Well, possibly, and Howard could have helped them too, but public opinion was against them. Now that everyone wants Hicks home, Howard starts posturing with this fake concern’.
• Me - ‘Yeah, he certainly watches the opinion polls. He also came late to the woeful germing party’.
• Him - ‘Absolut....what ?’.
• Me - ‘You know - the world’s too hot, we’re all gonna die ?’.
• Him(laughing) - ‘But what did you call it..?’.
• Me(laughing) - ‘Gerbil worming’.
• Him(laughing) - ‘You’re mad ya bastard. Here’s an extra ten for making me laugh’.

And he climbed out chuckling, a happy man. Too easy.

Comments

[MikeFitz]

I just learnt today that Dawood is the Arabic version of David. It is sometimes written as Daud or Dawud.

So David Hicks changing his name to Mohammed Dawood now doesn't sound quite so crazy. He just wanted to fit in with his new mates. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was called Mohammed something. (There was Mohammed Tom, Mohammed Dick and Mohammed Harry for a start...)