I drove a mini-cab in the predominantly Jewish area of Edgware, in northwest London, during almost three years in the early 1990's. The owner of the company was Jewish, as were many of the drivers.There were a couple of Pakistani drivers, two Hindus, a few regular Englishmen, one Irishman, and one Mexican.
I was relieved to join them, because the minicab company I had been associated with before, located some few miles to the south in Kingsbury, turned out the owner was a pederast. He was leader of a Boys Bicycle Club... So I was happy to be surrounded by mainly decent folk in my new work environment. There was a drivers' room in the office where we used to sit and while away the hours waiting for a job. We had a coffee-and-tea dispensing machine, and smoking was allowed. We'd nip down the kosher caff for a brisket sandwich and a pickle. New Greens, they called them, these pickles. Crunchier than American pickles, and a darker green in color. The owner of the cafe was from Cyprus and he held a grudge against the Turks who had forced him to leave his island country, as I recall.
So we would sit there in the drivers' room shooting the breeze. Joking and telling tall tales. Everybody got along, save the odd disagreement about who got the long fare and who the short. A couple of the Jewish drivers did seem to always get the lion's share, like when Little Steve ( there were two Steves ) got given the job of driving the plenipotentiary of the newly-resurrected republic of Lithuania around all day, because "a Jewish driver had been requested". Yeah, right. But who was I to complain. I made enough for rent and beer. One of the Hindus used to say "I always get the shit jobs". Well so did I.
But sometimes I got lucky. Sometimes some of the regular clients evinced a preference for a particular driver and would ask for said driver exclusively. There seemed to be a lot of well-off, middle-aged divorcees in the area. Kids had flown the coop and so had the husbands, into the arms of new trophy wives. So these divorced ladies would sit in their nice suburban homes, lacking nothing but with little to do. The high point of their day might be going to the hairdressers or to the local Sainsburys.
Which is where the likes of me would step in. There was one such lady, a Mrs. Gala. She must have been in her mid-fifties at the time. I would drive her once a week to her daughter's home in Sunbury, about twenty miles to the south, pick her up the next day and bring her back. It got so she would telephone me at home the night before to reserve the service.
Mrs. Gala enjoyed her tipple of Wodka Wyborowa and her Silk Cut cigarettes. Oftentimes she would summon me mid-morning for a quick run to the off-license to get her provisions. She would open the front door in her robe with a Silk Cut between her lips, and hand me a fifty-pound note. I knew what to do.
Once, as we were driving somewhere we were talking and I mentioned that whenever I asked my ten-year-old daughter a question she would answer with monosyllables. Mrs. Gala taught me how to phrase a question so that my daughter would be compelled to be more elaborate. Clever Mrs. Gala. She self-published a little green booklet with her rhyming observations on life, a copy of which she dedicated to me. I still have it around somewhere. I looked for it just now but couldn't find it.
I remember telling one of my fellow drivers at the time about the booklet and he said "Yeh. She gave me a copy too. I threw it away". Apparently Mrs. Gala had already bored all the other drivers half to death with her wit.
Well what do you know - it's two weeks later and I have found her little green gem. It was tucked in among my fiction paperbacks. The name of the book is "IT'S FUNNY... BUT"
From drinking alcohol each day
We're told the liver rots away,
While eggs and cream and butter too
Are now extremely bad for you,
Smoking will endanger health,
And gambling deplete your wealth.
So if the things you have enjoyed
You will, from this day forth avoid,
You'll have a longer life to do
The things that don't appeal to you.
That was Mrs. Gala.
Then there was Old Mr. Barber. Originally from Amsterdam, in 1940 he rode a bicycle 200 miles to Dunkirk just ahead of the Nazis, and managed to board one of the flotilla sent to fetch back the British Expeditionary Force. He had been in the diamond business, and by all accounts ( by his daugher's and his, anyway ) after the war had lived in Angola for quite some time before returning to England, where he settled. The walls of his living-room were adorned with paintings made by his dearly departed wife, a full-figured Jewish lady from London, who seemed to have been a prolific artist while in Angola; mainly oil-on-canvas landscapes, portraits of some of the locals, and a self-portrait that I remember.
Mr. Barber was always cheerful when I picked him up. Maybe he'd go to the clinic, or the library, or to do some shopping. He had this little key-chain harmonica on which he would blow the Ode To Joy. I would share in his happy vibe. It was contagious. On Sundays, I would drive him some few miles to the east to Southgate, where we would pick up his daughter Adinah, who was a spinsterish schoolteacher in I'm guessing her late forties at least, with whom I got friendly over time.
Adinah and I hit it off because we were both music lovers, as well as amateur musicians. She had a piano that had belonged to her dearly departed boyfriend, and a guitar. She sang Yiddish folk songs, as well as the Joan Baez repertoire. Ended up we went to many concerts together. Bob Dylan was one such. Or she would invite me to her house, around the corner from her father's, and feed me a nice supper of an expensive soup carton from Marks and Spencer, maybe the Bouillabaisse one, or the Leek and Potato, with warm crusty bread and a glass of Sancerre. She wouldn't partake of this sumptuous repast; maybe a half a glass of wine. It was usually me that finished off the bottle. Thin as a rake, Adinah subsisted mainly on rice cakes. You see where this is going? well it aint goin' nowhere, cos nothin romantic happened. She wanted, but I didn't wanna, tell the truth. Just wanted to hang out. We would travel to the West End on the Underground, enjoy a cheap Chinese meal served by sadistic but diverting waiters at the Wang Key Cafe in Chinatown, then maybe go watch a movie, or walk across to the Southbank Centre to check out what was going on in The Arts.
One day Mr. Barber died of a heart attack in his living room. He had been trying to get to the phone but didn't make it. His cleaning lady found him sprawled on the carpet. Sounds kind of like a movie. Or it's reminding me of a movie. Maybe the one with John Hurt, To Live and Die in Long Island, I think it's called.
Sometimes us drivers would drive down to the airport to pick up people coming back to Edgware. We'd stand there in the arrivals hall holding a cardboard rectangle inscribed with our passenger's name. This one time I picked up a lady coming back from visiting an old friend from school days who had married an American and lived in Santa Barbara, California. She was telling me her friend was inexplicably proud of her two boys, who were clueless lumps of suet, to hear my passenger talk. They were in their thirties and still lived at home. Also she mentioned her friend had developed the risible habit of wringing out her teabags into her cup before disposing of them.
In retrospect, I enjoyed working for Beeswax Cabs. I looked up the company recently. They are still going, though they are Pakistani-owned nowadays.
