Issue 290 - TAXI Newspaper

More readers than the rest put together! 3 APRIL 2013 | TAXI 33
Two Fingers
AL FRESCO
It’s back to the drawing board after Al’s fictional creation is surpassed by the real deal
For more years than I care to
remember, I’ve been writing a
fictional cartoon story about a
London cabbie ‘hero.’ I have pages and
pages of characters and plots, and
hundreds of story lines. The fun part
about my ‘super cabbie’ story is that all
the characters are named after places
in London, including the protagonist,
Forest Gate.
Forest Gate’s girlfriend is Stepney
Green; her model friend is Chelsea
Cloisters. The slippery villain is Gants
Hill and his sidekick, the garlic
munching Chepstow Villas. I even
used the story as part of my Open
University ‘creative writing course.’ I
passed, not quite with the flying
colours I expected, even after half a
lifetime penning articles for the cab
trade, mainly because I couldn’t
explain my work in the academic style
the examiners required.
Scathing
My Open University tutor was
particularly scathing about my street
name characters. They were “too
parochial,” she said. I said I thought
they were clever, and through them, I
hoped to introduce the reader to the
mystery and fun of London. She
retaliated by saying no one would
understand the references to Forest
Gate’s mates, Bromley Bybow or Bevis
Marks, or the ‘plastic police’ duo of
Buckingham and Crystal Palace who
are always on Forest’s ‘case,’ or the
‘faces’ he dined with in the little green
cab shelter, Upton Park; Hatton Cross;
Paul Spondroad; Brian ‘The Narroway’
(after he’d lost nearly 14 stone with his
guts stapled and his jaw wired up) the
honorary lady cabbie, Maida Vale and
the ‘larger than life’ Rastafarian,
Kingsland Road. When I introduced
the spy element of Rodney Millbank-
Towers, US Major Canning Town and
his willowy daughter, Summers, and
gave Forest Gate some electromagnetic
powers,’ she poo poo’ed my story as a
very weak cross between James Bond
and Marvel Comics, with a dash of
Only Fools and Horses thrown in for
no particular reason.
Well, I needn’t have bothered. I
woke up a couple of weeks ago in the
Ultra High Dependency unit of the
Clementine Churchill Hospital after
yet another fiendishly delicate
operation on my lower spine, to find
MAD MAX MEETS
THE KUMARS
my anaesthetist, Doctor Brunner,
sitting at the end of my bed chatting to
my family. Groggily, I sat up - only to
be poll-axed by a stabbing pain to
my abdomen.
It was Doc Brunner who leaned
towards me and said “did you see that
programme on BBC2 about the London cab
driver driving a taxi in Mumbai?” I
shook my head slowly, and a pain
wafted up from my groin, bubbled
around my belly button and stabbed
me in the eye. “You’ve gotta see it” he
said, “it’s brilliant. I once tried driving in
Mumbai - and it’s the maddest city in the
world. Your mate did a fantastic job!” I
drifted back to sleep and slept fitfully
for the next two days...
“MASON: I DON’T KNOW HOW
THEY DO IT BUT THEY DO IT
WITH DIGNITY AND GET ON
WITH THEIR LIVES
”
When I did finally get my act
together, I logged into my BBC iPlayer
and found the programme, entitled,
‘The Toughest Place to be..’ and read the
notes which explained London Cabbie,
Mason McQueen had travelled for
Mumbai to test his skills on some of
the busiest and most chaotic streets in
the world in what he describes as Mad
Max meets the Kumars. His host is
Pradeep Sharma who lives with his
extended family in a tiny, twobedroomed
house and earns less than
£10 a day for his long and stressful
shift. As Mason takes his life in his
hands to learn the Knowledge,
Mumbai style, he also begins to
understand the plight of millions of
migrant workers who flood into
India’s cities looking for work.
It reminded me that last year I had
applied for the gig, after someone from
the Beeb had called, and asked me
would I be interested in driving a cab
in an Indian city.
Taxi wallah
Thankfully, I wasn’t even on a long
list, let alone a short list and the bloke
they finally selected, couldn’t have
been better. Even the cabby’s name,
Mason McQueen, had a roguish
appeal; and his cheerful, confident
yet vulnerable Cockney charm and
charisma put my skillfully
constructed Forest Gate cartoon
cabbie character, deeply amongst the
non-starters. In a nutshell, Mason
was a star, from the moment he
tugged his lawn mower into
spluttering action, till the moment he
bade farewell to his taxi wallah host!
Mason seemed to take everything
in his stride. He showed a genuine
compassion, not just for the poorest
cab drivers but for the thousands of
homeless families he encountered –
such as the mother and three children
who eked out a precarious living
selling hand-made brushes and who
lived beneath the spans of a concrete
motorway. He respected Pradeep and
his fellow Mumbaikers’ daily prayers
to the Elephant God, Lord Ganesh, he
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stoically tolerated the sweltering
heat, deftly negotiated the
gridlocked roads, carefully
circumnavigated the sacred cows
and even managed to navigate the
blank roadmap of Mumbai he
started off with, all with a jovial
bonhomie and spiritual empathy.
Mason not only showed himself
worthy of being amongst the best
cab drivers in the world, but proved
himself as being a respectful,
genuine fellow traveller on a harsh,
demanding journey.
In the programme’s final sequence
the camera captures Mason
philosophically contemplating the
end of his long, hot day...”I don’t know
how they do it” he says, “but they do it
with dignity and get on with their lives.”
Well done, me old china - you set a
fine example. n
T
tate
Treating
prostate
cancercer
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