Days Without Alcohol 67.
I was doing more press for the tour today before heading down to the Drill Hall for the last two episodes of Banter, series 3. I was going to be on Talk Sport at lunchtime and they were good enough to send me a cab, but I knew straight away that I had got an eccentric driver. He arrived 20 minutes early, while I was about to do a phone interview with someone else. "You're really early," I told him. But he seemed disappointed that I wasn't ready to depart immediately. "What time are you on?" he asked. "1.30," I told him.
"We'll need at least 45 minutes to be sure to get there," he replied anxiously. It was 12.10. The cab was booked for half past. There was plenty of time even if we left at the proscribed time. "Well I can't go yet," I told him, "I have to do an interview and eat my lunch." He seemed cross with me.
But when I got to the car at 12.30 as had been arranged he was as nice as pie. He was an older driver, and when I commented that there didn't seem to be a seat belt in the back he said, "Do you really want one?"
I sort of did - after all, I had no idea what kind of driver he might be and in any case accidents can happen to anyone - the last cab I had been in, someone had practically driven into the side of the car I was sitting in, when he came on to the roundabout with seemingly no interest in whether other vehicles were already on it. "Isn't it the law?" I asked.
"I'm a pensioner," he told me, "And I've found that no-one stops me about seat-belts. As long as I am in a 30 mile an hour zone I don't bother." It didn't fill me with confidence. He told me I could find a seat belt behind the seat if I pressed a button and released it. I decided to do that.
He was, it turned out, going to be one of those drivers who wanted to chat and initially I was worried he might be a bit boring, but actually I decided just to go with it for once and we had a sprawling and mainly interesting chat about the way London had changed, how Pam Ayres was his favourite comedian, how the Labour government had made in a mistake in 1949 by immediately stopping rationing of sweets, meaning everyone went crazy and bought all the sweets in the country. I don't know how old the guy was, but he was talking about post war Britain quite knowledgeably, so I think he must have been in his seventies.
He told me about how at school, he and his friends had managed to come up with a scheme where they managed to get two cakes from their local cafe, even though by the rules they were only supposed to have one, but they beat the system which brought all the cakes to the table and allowed you to pick, even coming up with a scheme where their crumbs did not give them away, by switching plates with their parent and then stealing the same cake as the parent had had. It was a sweet and slight story from at least half a century ago. The cafe owner eventually became wise to what was going on and changed the system so that the cakes were on a separate table and you were only allowed to pick one.
Although my initial reaction to this man had been to give him short shrift, I am glad I let him talk at me (he wasn't all that interested in listening back). I suppose I spend enough time boring people with the minutia of my life that it's only fair that I listen back sometimes!
