Taxi TV

If there’s one thing I like about cabdriving, it’s listening to other cabbies. Every cabbie has a stock of stories about life in the city, late night people, love and lust and all of the other sins. It’s a never-ending drama full of bit players and the occasional star.

“Every single shift is different,” said Gerard Donaghy, one of three cabbies invited onto an evening talk show a couple of years back. The host, no slouch at telling stories, just sits back and lets them go at it. It’s marvellous reading, and it must have been great television. The transcript is full of marvellous phrases, pungent and provocative.

...being a cabbie is, kind of like, you don't have to travel the world, the world comes to me...
...you become, like, a Liberal Socialist Communist Buddhist...
...late at night you get a bit aroused...
...I thought I'd turn on the interior light. Well after that, I turned it on, there was a massive loud scream. Very loud scream....
.... it went off in the back seat and it was all up the side of my ears and down the back of my shirt. It was on the windscreen...

Marvellous material. I wish that I could record some of the stuff that goes on in my cab. Have a button I could push to save the last half hour of security camera footage. Most of the time it’s talking about the weather, or listening to girls talk about boys, or boys talk about the footy, but every now and then there’s a few moments you’d like to bottle up and keep forever.

Which is why I keep a blog, I guess.