A taxi, an old enemy and Valentine’s Day
The Day After You
I hailed a taxi from the waiting line of black cabs parked outside Marylebone Station. A taxi pulled forward and I got in and slumped into the seat, pulled on my safety belt and looked at the back of the cabbies head as anyone does.
“Might be an idea if you told me where we are going.” the cabbie barked into the passenger intercom. It seems I had picked the usual cuddly, friendly London cabbie.
“Oh sorry mate, I need The Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street.”
“Ain’t be anywhere else is it mate?” he barked back. I heard him laugh as he said it. There was something familiar with the back of this bloke’s head. That scar in his scalp was vee-shaped, it looked really familiar. His voice sounded a bit familiar too. Somewhere, sometime, some place I’d heard that voice.
The cab pulled into the line of traffic crawling along the Marylebone Road. As usual it was bumper to bumper and not moving. We crawled along at a few miles an hour and stopped and started every few yards.
As we slowly crawled along the Marylebone Road a small group of women were walking up the road and towards the cab, they were all holding heart shaped balloons. Every one of them looked like they’d had skinful. They were all smiling and laughing and staggering along in their happy stupor.
“Look at the state of that lot! Bloody Valentine’s Day refugees. Bet they all go home to a cold bed and a warm bottle of Pinot Grigio.” the cabbie growled through the intercom. Just as he finished talking a young woman staggered away from the group and came up to the cab window. We had stopped in the traffic. She started to gesticulate in a drunken ‘wind your window down’ way to the cabbie. She was blowing him kisses and put on a pleading face. I heard her say loudly,
“Come on darling be nice to me, it’s Valentine’s Day.” she slurred through the closed windows and then she planted her lips on the window and kissed it.
He glanced across to her and mouthed ‘Fuck off’. I heard the door locks thump closed as he said it so she couldn’t open the passenger door. She looked at me and tried the same tactic. She flicked a vee at both of us and staggered back onto the pavement. AS she went away the cabbie said into the intercom,
“State of that lot eh? Skirt’s are shorter than my dick.” and he laughed at his own joke. “Those slappers are the sort that bilk you for your fare.” and he laughed again. I just sat looking at the scar on his head, listening to his voice and looking at the women who were obviously harmless and just having a night out.
Then it came to me.
The vee-shaped scar the growling voice filled with sexist comments, it was only bloody Steve Barwell! I worked with him when I was a sparks in the House of Commons, Parliament some people call it.
I tried to get a look at his hands as he turned the steering wheel. Those fat hairy fingers with a small gold pinky ring were unmistakeable. It was him, bloody hell it was him. Thank god he didn’t recognise me. He would have refused the fare, though legally I know cabbies can’t do that. Or can they? It didn’t matter anyway. However he would’ve, he never played by the rules, which is how we fell out. Our enmity started a few years back when we worked together. He was told by our foreman to pull in a cable in one piece as it was part of the fire alarm system, he decided to install it in as many parts as he wanted, so the job was easier for him. I said to him at the time we can’t do that the spec says in one length, the entire length of the corridor, some 150 metres or more. It had to pass through conduits and access holes to go down the corridor.
“We’ll chop it into lumps and put the joins in the wall cavities, they won’t be able to tell. It’ll be an arsehole to pull that in one lump.” he said.
“We’ll get found out.” I said as stridently as I could muster, he was the senior sparks.
“Bollocks. Who’s the daddy?” was his reply, “Just get on with it.” He often said that to me, he made my life a misery almost every day. Every day he would short cut a job to get it done. He couldn’t care about ethical matters, it was ‘job and knock’ as he called it. That way he could go the canteen and sit drinking tea until home time came.
It was my fault, apparently, when his idiot son; who he had wangled a trainee position position with the firm, put a half inch expanding bolt into his own mouth. Alan, his son, sat in the work shed and put a half inch expanding bolt into his mouth and slowly turned the screw so the bolt, well, expanded as the description said. All the lads I worked with sat and watched the idiot being an idiot. No one really liked Steve and they weren’t going to intervene on his idiot son. Steve wasn’t in that day. The bolt slowly filled his mouth with the expanding cage that gave it it’s name. He couldn’t remove it. A trip to the local A&E had to be arranged. Guess who had to take him there?
The long and short of it was that on a test of the fire alarm run one of the joints failed, so the circuit was broken. He stupidly tried to defend himself, he tried push some of the blame my way. The Senior Technical Officer for HM Parliament dismissed him, sent him off site after I told him outright what he had done. It couldn’t be hidden, the test run by the technical team found him out.
He was incandescent when he was sacked. He threatened to ‘do me over’, threatened to do over the site foreman, threatened to ‘do over’ anyone in earshot: That was Steve Barwell, a thug and a sexist idiot to boot.
He must have retrained after that incident, I seem to remember his brother was a cabbie so he had a contact in the trade. I do know the Senior Technical Officer stopped him getting any more work in the electrical trade for his incompetence.
I stared at the scar and the hairy hands, listened to the gruff voice and decided to get my own back on him. He hadn’t recognised me.
“Look mate” I said through the intercom,
“I need to go to Heathrow now. Just had a text through from the boss, he wants me to meet him off the plane. The bird’ll have to amuse herself to tonight.” Steve laughed at that.
“I’ll text her. She’ll get used to it!” I continued, trying not to sound like I was laughing.
“Yeah mate, treat ‘em mean keep ‘em keen eh?” Steve hadn’t changed one iota. He used to say, grunt, that about his wife when we spoke of such things.
What I had said was all a total fiction, I was hoping to appeal to his personality, a sexist idiot. I was just meeting a few friends at Sherlock Holmes, for a Valentine’s Day drink. None of us had girlfriends, so we were sort of commiserating with one another. I’d text one of them and call it off.
“Lovely Jubbly!” he shouted through the intercom “A bloody decent run for a change!”
He waited for a gap in the traffic and did the famous cabbie’s turn in the road, one fell swoop of the taxi and we were facing the other way down the Marylebone Road and heading towards Heathrow.
I saw him rub his hands together. This was going to be a nice earner for him. So he thought. The traffic was no faster going the other way. We crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped. I watched the fare meter tick over and over. He swore and shouted at other drivers, every so often I heard a muffled but distinct polemic against the other road users.
“Bloody idiot!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
“Sodding Pakis, learn how to drive mate, learn how to drive.”
He was constantly winding down his window and shouting at other drivers, he tail gated anyone who had the temerity to be in front of him, he was just being generally unpleasant.
I sat cringing in the back as the diatribe against other drivers continued unabated. Yep, this was Steve Barwell at his best. The days I had to put up with his racism and sexism and bullying came flooding back.
“Tell ya what son” he shouted into the intercom “I’ll take some back roads, get outta this traffic. It’ll put on the miles and cost ya, though.”
“That’s ok.” I shouted back. “My boss is paying, he can afford it!”
“No need to shout mate, it’s called an intercom mate.”
Yep, this was Steve Barwell.
He swerved off the Marylebone Road and took a few back back roads. I watched the fare meter rapidly rolling over and over.
He made it obvious as he drove that no one in London could drive a well as he could. The swearing and pointing and gesticulating continued throughout the journey; women were ‘wankers’ Asians ‘Paki tossers’ young driver’s were ‘dickheads’ and so the journey continued.
We pulled into the main drag of Heathrow, the taxis were bumper to bumper. People were dropping off passengers as and when they could. It was the usual contained chaos.
“I need to get as close to the terminal was we can mate.”
“Okay, I’ll go the main taxi rank mate.”
“Okay, ta.” I replied a hint of a laugh in my voice.
We pulled up at the taxi rank, immediately another black cab pinned us in between the taxi in front and the queue behind.
“This do ya mate?” Steve barked out.
The door locks thumped open and I got out of the taxi, I pretended to fumble for my wallet. I was just stalling for something to say, some cutting remark to say before I did a runner. I knew he wouldn’t be able to get out of the taxi and chase me as the other drivers would slaughter him for blocking them in.
I should’ve Googled ‘Cutting remarks from history’ when we were travelling. I’m sure Oscar Wilde would have one to hand or even Churchill, “I may be drunk Madam, but you are ugly, tomorrow I shall be sober.” That was only one that came into my head. It was hardly apposite for the situation. Too long anyway. My brain froze.
Steve wound down the near side window and barked out
“109 quid mate, please.”
My mouth went dry. I could see him studying me. He was looking at me closely, puzzling in his mind with a ‘I know you from somewhere’ depth of look.
“Ere ain’t you that grass….”
“BARWELL you fucking LEMON!” I shouted like a little kid in a school playground. I turned and ran straight into the terminal as fast as I could. He was hemmed in by taxis on all sides.
I heard him bellowing at me
“YOU FUCKING….you fucking….Christ you fucker!”
I glanced back and saw him get out of his cab. He had opened his door so fast and furious that his door hit the side of another taxi. The driver of the taxi jumped out and remonstrated with Steve, you could see he was as angry as Steve was. In the blink of an eye the other taxi drivers started to open their windows and aggressively wave at both of them to get out of their way. Steve stood staring into the terminal for a few seconds working out of he could follow me. He was diligently ignoring the commotion around him, trying to work out if he could chase after me for his fare.
He couldn’t follow me now. He was blocked in now by angry taxi drivers all wanting their fare back into the smoke. He was stymied by having to swap insurance details with the other cabbie whose taxi he had dented. It was one of those times of pure schadenfreude, it was lovely.
It was going to be worth every moment of the long Tube ride home to the other side of London. I would never see him again, he would hopefully never see me again either. He had never asked where I lived when we worked together, he was that ignorant. It didn’t matter anyway as I had moved from there years ago.
I went down into the Tube with a big smile on my face. I plonked myself into the carriage seat and thought on what had just happened,
“Barwell you fucking lemon” echoed around in my mind all the way home. All those years of bullying and belittling summed up in that vocal ejaculation “Barwell you fucking lemon” how erudite and cutting that was. Perhaps I should’ve thumbed my nose at him too.
The Day After You
I hailed a taxi from the waiting line of black cabs parked outside Marylebone Station. A taxi pulled forward and I got in and slumped into the seat, pulled on my safety belt and looked at the back of the cabbies head as anyone does.
“Might be an idea if you told me where we are going.” the cabbie barked into the passenger intercom. It seems I had picked the usual cuddly, friendly London cabbie.
“Oh sorry mate, I need The Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street.”
“Ain’t be anywhere else is it mate?” he barked back. I heard him laugh as he said it. There was something familiar with the back of this bloke’s head. That scar in his scalp was vee-shaped, it looked really familiar. His voice sounded a bit familiar too. Somewhere, sometime, some place I’d heard that voice.
The cab pulled into the line of traffic crawling along the Marylebone Road. As usual it was bumper to bumper and not moving. We crawled along at a few miles an hour and stopped and started every few yards.
As we slowly crawled along the Marylebone Road a small group of women were walking up the road and towards the cab, they were all holding heart shaped balloons. Every one of them looked like they’d had skinful. They were all smiling and laughing and staggering along in their happy stupor.
“Look at the state of that lot! Bloody Valentine’s Day refugees. Bet they all go home to a cold bed and a warm bottle of Pinot Grigio.” the cabbie growled through the intercom. Just as he finished talking a young woman staggered away from the group and came up to the cab window. We had stopped in the traffic. She started to gesticulate in a drunken ‘wind your window down’ way to the cabbie. She was blowing him kisses and put on a pleading face. I heard her say loudly,
“Come on darling be nice to me, it’s Valentine’s Day.” she slurred through the closed windows and then she planted her lips on the window and kissed it.
He glanced across to her and mouthed ‘Fuck off’. I heard the door locks thump closed as he said it so she couldn’t open the passenger door. She looked at me and tried the same tactic. She flicked a vee at both of us and staggered back onto the pavement. AS she went away the cabbie said into the intercom,
“State of that lot eh? Skirt’s are shorter than my dick.” and he laughed at his own joke. “Those slappers are the sort that bilk you for your fare.” and he laughed again. I just sat looking at the scar on his head, listening to his voice and looking at the women who were obviously harmless and just having a night out.
Then it came to me.
The vee-shaped scar the growling voice filled with sexist comments, it was only bloody Steve Barwell! I worked with him when I was a sparks in the House of Commons, Parliament some people call it.
I tried to get a look at his hands as he turned the steering wheel. Those fat hairy fingers with a small gold pinky ring were unmistakeable. It was him, bloody hell it was him. Thank god he didn’t recognise me. He would have refused the fare, though legally I know cabbies can’t do that. Or can they? It didn’t matter anyway. However he would’ve, he never played by the rules, which is how we fell out. Our enmity started a few years back when we worked together. He was told by our foreman to pull in a cable in one piece as it was part of the fire alarm system, he decided to install it in as many parts as he wanted, so the job was easier for him. I said to him at the time we can’t do that the spec says in one length, the entire length of the corridor, some 150 metres or more. It had to pass through conduits and access holes to go down the corridor.
“We’ll chop it into lumps and put the joins in the wall cavities, they won’t be able to tell. It’ll be an arsehole to pull that in one lump.” he said.
“We’ll get found out.” I said as stridently as I could muster, he was the senior sparks.
“Bollocks. Who’s the daddy?” was his reply, “Just get on with it.” He often said that to me, he made my life a misery almost every day. Every day he would short cut a job to get it done. He couldn’t care about ethical matters, it was ‘job and knock’ as he called it. That way he could go the canteen and sit drinking tea until home time came.
It was my fault, apparently, when his idiot son; who he had wangled a trainee position position with the firm, put a half inch expanding bolt into his own mouth. Alan, his son, sat in the work shed and put a half inch expanding bolt into his mouth and slowly turned the screw so the bolt, well, expanded as the description said. All the lads I worked with sat and watched the idiot being an idiot. No one really liked Steve and they weren’t going to intervene on his idiot son. Steve wasn’t in that day. The bolt slowly filled his mouth with the expanding cage that gave it it’s name. He couldn’t remove it. A trip to the local A&E had to be arranged. Guess who had to take him there?
The long and short of it was that on a test of the fire alarm run one of the joints failed, so the circuit was broken. He stupidly tried to defend himself, he tried push some of the blame my way. The Senior Technical Officer for HM Parliament dismissed him, sent him off site after I told him outright what he had done. It couldn’t be hidden, the test run by the technical team found him out.
He was incandescent when he was sacked. He threatened to ‘do me over’, threatened to do over the site foreman, threatened to ‘do over’ anyone in earshot: That was Steve Barwell, a thug and a sexist idiot to boot.
He must have retrained after that incident, I seem to remember his brother was a cabbie so he had a contact in the trade. I do know the Senior Technical Officer stopped him getting any more work in the electrical trade for his incompetence.
I stared at the scar and the hairy hands, listened to the gruff voice and decided to get my own back on him. He hadn’t recognised me.
“Look mate” I said through the intercom,
“I need to go to Heathrow now. Just had a text through from the boss, he wants me to meet him off the plane. The bird’ll have to amuse herself to tonight.” Steve laughed at that.
“I’ll text her. She’ll get used to it!” I continued, trying not to sound like I was laughing.
“Yeah mate, treat ‘em mean keep ‘em keen eh?” Steve hadn’t changed one iota. He used to say, grunt, that about his wife when we spoke of such things.
What I had said was all a total fiction, I was hoping to appeal to his personality, a sexist idiot. I was just meeting a few friends at Sherlock Holmes, for a Valentine’s Day drink. None of us had girlfriends, so we were sort of commiserating with one another. I’d text one of them and call it off.
“Lovely Jubbly!” he shouted through the intercom “A bloody decent run for a change!”
He waited for a gap in the traffic and did the famous cabbie’s turn in the road, one fell swoop of the taxi and we were facing the other way down the Marylebone Road and heading towards Heathrow.
I saw him rub his hands together. This was going to be a nice earner for him. So he thought. The traffic was no faster going the other way. We crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped. I watched the fare meter tick over and over. He swore and shouted at other drivers, every so often I heard a muffled but distinct polemic against the other road users.
“Bloody idiot!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
“Sodding Pakis, learn how to drive mate, learn how to drive.”
He was constantly winding down his window and shouting at other drivers, he tail gated anyone who had the temerity to be in front of him, he was just being generally unpleasant.
I sat cringing in the back as the diatribe against other drivers continued unabated. Yep, this was Steve Barwell at his best. The days I had to put up with his racism and sexism and bullying came flooding back.
“Tell ya what son” he shouted into the intercom “I’ll take some back roads, get outta this traffic. It’ll put on the miles and cost ya, though.”
“That’s ok.” I shouted back. “My boss is paying, he can afford it!”
“No need to shout mate, it’s called an intercom mate.”
Yep, this was Steve Barwell.
He swerved off the Marylebone Road and took a few back back roads. I watched the fare meter rapidly rolling over and over.
He made it obvious as he drove that no one in London could drive a well as he could. The swearing and pointing and gesticulating continued throughout the journey; women were ‘wankers’ Asians ‘Paki tossers’ young driver’s were ‘dickheads’ and so the journey continued.
We pulled into the main drag of Heathrow, the taxis were bumper to bumper. People were dropping off passengers as and when they could. It was the usual contained chaos.
“I need to get as close to the terminal was we can mate.”
“Okay, I’ll go the main taxi rank mate.”
“Okay, ta.” I replied a hint of a laugh in my voice.
We pulled up at the taxi rank, immediately another black cab pinned us in between the taxi in front and the queue behind.
“This do ya mate?” Steve barked out.
The door locks thumped open and I got out of the taxi, I pretended to fumble for my wallet. I was just stalling for something to say, some cutting remark to say before I did a runner. I knew he wouldn’t be able to get out of the taxi and chase me as the other drivers would slaughter him for blocking them in.
I should’ve Googled ‘Cutting remarks from history’ when we were travelling. I’m sure Oscar Wilde would have one to hand or even Churchill, “I may be drunk Madam, but you are ugly, tomorrow I shall be sober.” That was only one that came into my head. It was hardly apposite for the situation. Too long anyway. My brain froze.
Steve wound down the near side window and barked out
“109 quid mate, please.”
My mouth went dry. I could see him studying me. He was looking at me closely, puzzling in his mind with a ‘I know you from somewhere’ depth of look.
“Ere ain’t you that grass….”
“BARWELL you fucking LEMON!” I shouted like a little kid in a school playground. I turned and ran straight into the terminal as fast as I could. He was hemmed in by taxis on all sides.
I heard him bellowing at me
“YOU FUCKING….you fucking….Christ you fucker!”
I glanced back and saw him get out of his cab. He had opened his door so fast and furious that his door hit the side of another taxi. The driver of the taxi jumped out and remonstrated with Steve, you could see he was as angry as Steve was. In the blink of an eye the other taxi drivers started to open their windows and aggressively wave at both of them to get out of their way. Steve stood staring into the terminal for a few seconds working out of he could follow me. He was diligently ignoring the commotion around him, trying to work out if he could chase after me for his fare.
He couldn’t follow me now. He was blocked in now by angry taxi drivers all wanting their fare back into the smoke. He was stymied by having to swap insurance details with the other cabbie whose taxi he had dented. It was one of those times of pure schadenfreude, it was lovely.
It was going to be worth every moment of the long Tube ride home to the other side of London. I would never see him again, he would hopefully never see me again either. He had never asked where I lived when we worked together, he was that ignorant. It didn’t matter anyway as I had moved from there years ago.
I went down into the Tube with a big smile on my face. I plonked myself into the carriage seat and thought on what had just happened,
“Barwell you fucking lemon” echoed around in my mind all the way home. All those years of bullying and belittling summed up in that vocal ejaculation “Barwell you fucking lemon” how erudite and cutting that was. Perhaps I should’ve thumbed my nose at him too.
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