In 1989, I was working in a factory and, although the pay was good for where we lived, there was little money left over at the end of the week for those little things that made life so enjoyable so my wife and I agreed that, for a short while, I would work part time driving a taxi.
It was the days before deregulation so the number of cabs on the road was restricted by the local authority and, unlike modern uber drivers, I actually passed the local hackey test and had the appropriate police and medical checks.
I worked Friday and Saturday evenings and still had saturday afternoons and all day Sunday with my family but it was a steep learning curve and I quickly realised why so few potential cabbies fell by the wayside after a few weeks as, in those first weeks, I had several runners and aggressive encounters and basically obnoxious people but I was big and stubborn and soon lost my naivety.
In 1990, something devastating happened and it changed my life forever. I won't go into any more detail about it than to say that I felt like everything had to change. We sold our house and bought another, bigger one, just five miles away and I quit my job in the factory.
If you've ever worked on a production line then you'll know that the only way to keep up is to completely switch off from what you're doing and, the moment that you think about what comes next, you're lost so, in effect, you become the automaton that eventually replaces you. The result of this is that your mind wanders; if you're lucky, you have a group of people around you that you get on with and can spend a lot of time talking trivia but, an eight hour day shift or ten hour night shift leaves you plenty of time to dwell on your problems so it was either leave or go insane.
That's how I became a full time cab driver and, although the hours were longer and the rewards less, it worked well for me as having to have a degree of concentration on the road and the chattering of passengers was enough to distract me for most of the time although I'm not sure that the long hours were really beneficial to my homelife. Swings and roundabouts.
The majority of the people that I picked up were instantly forgettable, mainly people going to and from pubs and restaurants and those returning from work or late shopping trips, but some became so familiar that they almost became friends and I was constantly amazed by how open some would be with a comparative stranger but maybe that was why they felt that they could be so open.
To be honest, people changed during the thirty years that I drove a cab, it became the 'ME' society with everyone constantly taking photos of themselves as if the world cared, young women became even more vain, shrill and self obsessed and young guys continued to think that their best football shirt and bell end haircut made them god's gift to women.
I've got dozens of anecdotes about those thirty years; some funny, some shocking, some violent and some just plain bizarre but, of course, the ones I want to talk about are the naughty ones.
It was Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning and our local nightclub was about to spew out the usual motley crew of drunks. I'd work my way to the front of the rank and I was watching for who would approach my cab.
I'd been doing the job long enough to be able to spot an arsehole by their expression and the way that they walked and I was always ready to turn away anyone that looked in the least way dodgy ( better to get the unpleasantness out of the way early rather than in some remote country lane ).
The door opened and a woman stepped outside and paused on the doorstep, looking left and right as if expecting to see someone and this gave me time to observe her quite closely and she looked distinctly out of place coming out of such a meat market. She was about five feet five or six, mid thirties, slim with a pretty face but her shoulder length brunette hair and makeup looked far too perfect to have presumably spent several hours in a sweaty disco and her navy blue jacket and knee length skirt looked more like she'd come out of a boardroom meeting instead of a sticky carpet nightclub.
She looked up and down several times before strolling over to my car with a careful, unhurried stride and, pausing at my passenger window, she asked me if I could take her about twenty miles and, of course, I said "Yes".
She slid into the front passenger seat and her skirt rose an inch or so above her knee and I felt a surprising little thrill at the sight of so little nylon covered leg. She didn't volunteer who she'd been looking for and I didn't ask but she did ask the usual cab questions of 'Have you been busy' and 'When do you finish'. I'd been asked that thousands of times but it never worried me because I knew that it was shorthand for 'I want to talk' so I told her that it had been ok and that, because of the distance I was taking her, I'd probably go straight home after dropping her off.
We shared some more small talk during which she told me that she didn't live locally and was actually visiting her parents for the weekend. We arrived in a fairly well to do area with stone walls that were at least seven feet high and driveways that were at least a hundred yards apart so, even though I couldn't see any of the houses, I knew that they'd be impressive.
She asked me to park away from the house she was going to and to turn off the engine in order to avoid disturbing her parents as she reached for her purse to pay the fare. She again asked when I was finishing and, once again, I replied that I'd be going home after this. She then asked if I'd like to 'come inside for a bit' and my dick instantly saluted that suggestion and I failed miserably not to sound over eager as I replied that I'd love to come in 'for a bit'.
The house had a very steep drive that opened up into a large paved courtyard and the large stone wall outside turned out to be a retaining wall giving the house what I suppose, in daylight, would be a panoramic view. The house was a large, two storey modern house with a double garage but there were two cars parked outside the garage. Those cars were a seven seater people carrier and a two seater sports car which made me instantly suspect that this wasn't the home of two frail pensioners who shouldn't be disturbed but that suspicion didn't make me any less keen to carry on.
She paused at the front door and, once again, in a hushed tone, she warned me to be quite before opening the door and leading me inside. She quietly eased the door closed and we were left in total darkness. I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face but I could just make out the sound of her moving ahead of me and I followed behind with my arms stretched out like Frankenstein's monster as I groped my way along but, even so, I managed to stumble into a small table and started something rattling alarmingly loud.
I felt like a burglar as I stumbled along and, with every tiny step, I expected someone to burst out of the gloom. I reached a staircase and was able to hold onto the banister giving me a sort of sense of security as I cautiously climbed the stairs. My heart was hammering in my chest and I realised that I was holding my breath but it was also both strangely exciting and terrifying.
I reached the landing and I almost jumped out of my skin as my groping hands came in contact with my new friend's arm as she waited for me in silence. She opened a door and we stepped inside a darkened room. She softly closed the door and the sudden glare as she switched on the light was almost blinding and, as my eyes became accustomed to the harsh light, I found that we were in a fair sized bedroom but it was obvious by how basically it was furnished and its total lack of personal items that it wasn't in regular use.
