Cablog

Greasy

One of the hazards of driving taxis is those idiots who decide to target cabs with rocks, bottles, laser spotters, food, etc.

Late on Saturday night the cab was hit with chocolate cake and vanilla custard, greasy crap requiring much cleaning with soapy water, inside and out. The big surprise was the food attack occurred outside a school with one culprit wearing the school uniform!?

The school has now been contacted, as done with a previous incident also involving an Eastern Suburbs private school. Grrrr...

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Revenge

A recent passenger told of being booked by a council ranger over a marginal parking violation. “I only stopped to drop off a video and returned just as the fucker was printing out the bluey. So I fronted him and told him to shove the ticket.”

The matter went to court where my passenger, a genuine hard man with a previous criminal record, threatened the ranger outside court. That he did so in the presence of a police officer resulted in a second fine, increasing hard boy’s overall cost by ten-fold.

“Doesn’t matter,” he growled. “I got the c...’s home address from the evidence statement when I went back to court. And one day when he least expects it I’ll come calling. In the end he will pay.”

In the taxi game revenge is certainly entertained when drivers are robbed, scammed or dumped upon. Take the recent case of a cabbie who carted a messy drunk across town to have his family greet the hapless passenger with a beating. The driver was charged with kidnapping and assault.

Back in winter I had cause to lodge a report with Marrickville police over a fare evader. A Kings Cross scumbag had jumped in late one night when I was stuck in traffic. He was in shock, he claimed, after earlier spotting his sixteen year old sister and her boyfriend scoring on the streets of the Cross.

From the start I knew he was dodgy so I elected to entertain him in order to establish a rapport and avoid a possible assault. We talked tough and crude and I mentioned my background growing up in the area playing junior footy. He spoke of doing jail time for GBH.

At Dulwich Hill he had me enter a rear lane to a unit block where he said, “Boss, just wait here for a minute, I’ve left me key card inside.” Then he scurried off leaving a set of house keys on the seat. Attached to the key ring was a medallion with the name and phone number of a local gardening service.

I quickly jotted down the number before he returned for the keys and that was the last I saw of him. After waiting for ten minutes I headed to the cops thinking the gardening service details would enable them to take action, somehow.

This was total delusion as the cop treated me like an idiot, especially after hearing that the amount in question ‘was only $35..!?’. “What do you want us to do?” he scoffed. “We’re busy right now with other matters.” In the background three officers in police overalls stood around joking together. It was 3:30am.

He scribbled out a COPS event number and handed me a card without requesting my name or contact details. In short it was a humiliating waste of time and I left there wanting to pay the scumbag a visit one day.

Well, if I was a hard man with a tendency for violence I just might. Instead, sanity prevailed with the event being written off as a cost of driving taxis.

Uplifting

Accumulated fatigue from the election campaign caught up with me last week when I returned to regular shifts. This, plus normal takings resulted in a lack of eagerness for meaningful passenger contact.

So it was a pleasant surprise on the weekend I was hailed in Newtown by a young woman holding an antique horn. I immediately requested she give it a blast and the startling noise woke me from my lethargy.

“It’s a gift for my sister,” she laughed. “It will be perfect for her school history project.”

She purchased the horn after a big win on the poker machines, also enabling her to indulge on a taxi rather than catching public transport to an afternoon party.

“What shall I do,” she mused, “put the money into rent or go shopping? I think I’ll buy some clothes.” This could easily have sounded superficial but there seemed to be a deeper quality at play...

Insult

Saturday night on Oxford Street builds slowly towards midnight when the strip starts jumping with the endless arrival of drunk and excited clubbers. They are invariably aged in their twenties which is why I first noticed an older woman amongst the pedestrian traffic.

What also caught my eye was she was struggling against the flow towards the cab as I waited at lights. Unusually for this place late at night were her two kids, one on the hip and a toddler being dragged by the hand...

Melbourne fans

Don't know what this says about Melbourne cabbies but I'll take it anyway.

Update

Well the annual blog sabbatical is over and I return with an update of my new routine.

Whilst I haven’t been blogging the mammoth task of collating and editing some 600 Cablog stories is now well underway, so I haven’t been entirely lazy. Given I now have a dedicated office and the perfect environment for such a laborious task it was time to finally start the job.

The move to the North Coast is now well and truly bedded down and all is good, if somewhat dislocating. However relocating does not mean one automatically finds an equivalent wage in the country, hence my continuing to work in the city until something better eventuates.

As I explained to a passenger last night, I don't expect to live in paradise and demand the Government support me in lieu of work. It’s a simple matter of one must go where the money is.

To wit, the above passenger was a Sydney office jockey travelling to the Airport, returning home to Byron Bay for 24 hours to care for a sick wife. And with competitive air fares one can sometimes travel for the same price as a train ticket, so country living and city working is not uncommon these days.

Generally I work three consecutive shifts over the weekend interspersed with many breaks and a good sleep at my brother’s home. And being a relief driver I do extra shifts whilst other drivers take holidays.

In fact I’m presently working full weeks, despite having only three weeks remaining on my good behaviour period for loss of license points. To date I’ve kept out of trouble and last night calculated I have some 4,000 taxi kilometers left before recovering my full points, touch wood.

This current period has fortunately coincided with the Federal election campaign where once again I’m operating Cabpoll for ninemsn. The first video interview is up today and can be found here and will appear twice weekly. Otherwise I hope to return to normal blogging after the election campaign.

Finally, many thanks for the reader comments and emails with best wishes over my sabbatical.

Broken

Over the weekend the cab broke down with a solenoid failure in the gas converter. Despite the rain a passing police patrol helped push the car to a safe spot and I waited some thirty minutes for the owner to arrive.

The dodgy part was by-passed enabling the cab to limp home. Whilst that was the end of the shift I wasn’t unhappy as this rarely happens and it was a dead Monday morning, anyway.

Vandals

Last weekend involved some wilful vandalism on the cab. Thankfully this is not a common occurrence but when it happens it’s really annoying.

Four English fellas hopped in on Cleveland Street, Chippendale for Scruffy Murphys. They had been boozing and were really lively, most likely off to watch the FA Cup Final.

Within seconds I was shouting that blown stereo speakers weren't worth the ten dollar fare as the front passenger continued cranking the volume to maximum levels.

During the racket the rear passengers pinched the two front headrests, which I didn’t notice until an hour later when stopped for a coffee.

I reasoned they wouldn’t gain entry to the hotel carrying bulky headrests and would dump them around the drop-off point on crowded George Street. So with faint hope I headed back there.

After checking some rubbish bins I found one intact headrest down the footpath and the other around the corner near Sussex Street. It had been placed under my rear wheel-I recalled a bump on departure-and afer being hit and dragged by other vehicles was pretty mangled.

Consequently the shift was completed without a passenger headrest which an irate drunk insisted was highly illegal. Can anyone confirm this?

Here’s a similar question relating to a friend’s vehicle which needed a registration check. The mechanic identified a busted horn plus an active warning light on the airbag. Instead of fixing the horn, a requirement for rego, he only replaced the airbag, charging some $800.

Later she was told the airbag, which she couldn’t afford to replace and didn’t request such, is not a mandatory function for rego purposes. True or false?

Spotted

A bloke climbed in on Monday evening and asked, are you the blogger? He had been living in New York and was a regular Cablog reader. I told him how there were around 25,000 drivers and 6,000 cabs so the chances of meeting me were pretty slim.

So here’s a big hello to Andrew and thanks for the generous tip.

Speaking of being identified, a while back the editor of the Daily Telegraph boarded with a mate. Upon recognising me, he announced, “Look out, it’s the blogger. Watch what you say.” Fair enough, I suppose.

But mate, was there any need to depict Kevin Rudd in Tuesday’s paper wearing a Collingwood guernsey? Now that’s cruel.

Cavorting

On Saturday night I carried a bloke who works and cavorts bare-chested on a cruise boat featuring male strippers. He was a nice enough fella aged in his twenties who revealed how he had trouble meeting women with whom he could have a decent conversation.

At work he targeted ‘fat chicks’ to dance with as they had ‘the best personalities’. They then referred him to their friends who, thankful for the attention, were generous with the tips.

Unsurprisingly, however, he told how the wildest women on the boats were the older ones in committed relationships, unlike glamorous young singles who tended to be more reserved.

At his home he insisted I wait whilst he retrieved a business card showing a tanned, shirtless young bloke in a cheesecake pose with a bulging six-pack. Across the image he scrawled his name and phone number and asked me to give it to any women in the cab complaining about Sydney’s ‘lack of decent men’.

After two days on the fridge, lover boy's card has been put out with the rubbish. Sorry, mate.