Taxi Tale 5 -Some people you just ‘HAVE’ to forgive.

Some people you just ‘HAVE’ to forgive.

A ‘Taxi Tale’ from Glenn…………..

This taxi tale is about a ‘spewer’, this is what we call someone who is sick in the car, and again I think we put a lot of effort coming up with this terminology.

Now over the last twenty years I’ve had about twenty to thirty people being sick in my car, it’s not really something I actually keep count about, but this particular one really sticks in my mind. And when someone is sick in a taxi there is a cleaning charge, which is anything up to fifty pounds.

It was on 26^th March 1998 when this person was sick in my car, now you may be thinking ‘god this guy holds a grudge remembering the date’, well, the reason I remember this date is that I picked up my new car that day, well new to me, it was a three year old blue Vauxhall Vectra. You know what it’s like getting a new car, the smell, everything shiny, trying to find out what all the buttons are for, I was like a big kid.

I drove from the car dealership to our taxi office, and when you get a new car you do tend to drive like Morgan Freeman out of Driving Miss Daisy. When I got to the taxi office, they fitted a taxi radio and a meter into the car; this took about hour and a half. When it was all ready for work and I stopped showing it off to other taxi drivers, off I went to pick up the first person to travel in my new car.

The passengers got into the car, one in the front and one in the back, again with my Morgan Freeman cap on I drove out of the road and turned left, one hundred yards up the road I came to a roundabout, turned left, and that’s when I had my own version of The Exorcist. The person sitting in the front threw up everywhere, all over my new shiny dashboard, over the gear stick, over the carpet and also over themselves. I pulled over into a nearby bus stop and just sat there looking at the mess all over the place, ‘my new car’, I thought.  I just couldn’t believe it, I turned towards the passenger, who looked at me, and by the look in their eye they could tell I wasn’t a happy bunny. Then my passenger opened their mouth and began to speak, “I’m sorry daddy” my six year old daughter said to me, damn those heart strings!!!!!!!! I gave her a cuddle and drove her straight home, cleaned her up and then cleaned the car up.

My three year old daughter who was sitting in the back had great delight telling her mother about what just happened. What made her sick I don’t know but a little bit of advice here, never give your child pickled onion crisps before you go on a journey, the smell was there for days.

Still to this day they laugh about it, and I still tell her that she owes me fifty pounds, to which she responds with a kiss on the cheek!  I’m paying the bill off a kiss at a time. Who would have daughters?