My name's Mike and, at the time that I'm writing about, it was 1989 and I was 36 years old. I'd worked in a factory for 15 years before I decided to try cab driving at the weekends as a means of earning a little extra cash. I worked three nights as a private hire driver before taking my hackney test. I'd lived all my life in my licensing area so I only needed to revise the roads a little bit before taking the test and I passed it straight away ( to be honest, it only took a display of confidence to convince the half dozen town councillors that made up the hackney committee that I knew my stuff ). A medical and a police check and I could join the big boys on the rank and legally pick up punters off the street but I soon found out that having the badge and being a cab driver were two very different things and why so many new drivers didn't last long.
I could carry on boring about the subject for hours but, instead, I'll get to the point.
It was my first saturday as a hackney driver and it had been really good. As a private hire driver, the work usually dried up before midnight but now, as a hackney, it was just taking off and, now, at just after two in the morning, I was working our local nightclub.
I watched a young couple come out of the club and pause before approaching my cab so I had plenty of time to observe them. They looked to be in their early to mid twenties and were both rather thin and short. She looked to be about five feet two and he couldn't have been more than five feet six. He was wearing grey trousers and a blue shirt whilst she was wearing a very short, very tight black lycra mini skirt and a silver top. Her legs were painfully thin and milk bottle white and her straight dark hair was cut to chin level and looked to me like a small helmet.
They looked completely harmless so, when they approached and asked me to take them about five miles, I replied "Hop in".
The guy told me their address and they didn't say another word either to me or to each other all the way to their house which was on a small, fairly new estate of tiny, red brick 'starter homes'.
I pulled up alongside a wildly overgrown hedge and the guy immediately jumped out of the car and called out "We're paying for this with a hairy cheque" and, with that, he disappeared from view behind the hedge.
I'd never heard that expression before, or since, that day so I was a little confused but my confusion evaporated the moment that I turned to his partner who was still sitting in the back of the car.