Saturday 27 April 2019

Conversations with taxi drivers: Three

This is the third in a series that started on 6 June last year with a “meditation” that I wrote. Meditations on this blog are longer pieces that have a single theme. I decided to continue with the subject of taxi drivers since I usually have quite interesting conversations with them when I go somewhere. The date shown is the date the conversation took place.

5 April

I caught a cab to the medical centre because I had an appointment with my cardiologist. The taxi driver was obviously not born here and I told him why I was on the road. He listened and then told me about a problem he had had with his heart when he had banged into the open door of his cab on one occasion. At one point he used the expression “mamma mia”, which is Italian, so I thought he was born there but it turns out he is Lebanese. He told me his grandfather used to take the silk off corn (on the cob) and roll it in paper and smoke it. His grandfather (or was it his father?) lived to a great age. He had asked me how old my parents had been when they had died, and I told him.

When we got to Missenden Road he told me that the traffic there now is very bad for cars because of the work that has been done to make the road safer for pedestrians. “It used to be ok but now it’s terrible,” he said. When we were talking about Italy – I mentioned that I had studied it when I was younger – he said that he had an Italian in his family because the Romans had colonised Lebanon. He was a funny guy, very talkative.

9 April

Coming home from the art gallery I caught a cab and the driver had a heavy cough. As we drove past the Queen Victoria Building he said to me, “When I see the statue of the queen I think she is telling people to pick up their rubbish.” I said that in actual fact Victoria had very little power, like today’s royal family, and that the majority of power in the UK lies with the Parliament. I said that the same applies in Australia. He said that this was good, that people were able to have a monarch but that real power resided with elected representatives. He approved of this system of government. I didn’t ask him where he had been born but he had dark skin and was heavyset. I said that the Chinese certainly miss their royal family, and that the Japanese were lucky when, after WWII, the Americans allowed them to keep their emperor. I told him a little about the history of the monarch in the UK. He dropped me at the corner near my building and I paid using EFTPOS.

19 April

It was Good Friday and I had gone to Newtown to have dinner with a friend. In the cab on the way home I talked with the driver, who at first seemed to be a quietly-spoken man. He could have been born in Serbia or Croatia but I didn’t ask. As we turned left from Pyrmont Bridge Road into Bank Street, I mentioned that the Fish Market was going to be moved further down toward Glebe and that the current site would be redeveloped for apartments. He was incredulous, and became animate suddenly, cursing the NSW government for overdeveloping the area. I said they should make the site into a park as so many people use the area. My takeaway from the conversation was that the driver didn’t like apartment buildings.

26 April

I had had dinner in Newtown and got a cab to come home. The driver told me that it was Good Friday for orthodox churches. I remembered that my friend and I had walked past a Greek church in Abercrombie Street on the way to Newtown. The doors of the church had been open and a young boy in a white robe with gold piping was wandering around near the entrance. The taxi driver told me that today was quiet in Newtown and he connected the two things. He said that there was another Greek church down near the train station and that there would be a procession later in the evening. I asked him if he was Greek and he said he was not. He said all of eastern Europe observed Good Friday on this day.

We went along Wattle Street and there was a random breath-testing station set up on the right-hand side of the road with patrol cars, their lights flashing, and witches' hats set up on the carriageway. The policeman in front of the traffic initially flagged the taxi driver to stop but the driver did not. The policeman waved him through with a torch. The driver told me that police don’t usually flag down taxis on Friday and Saturday nights when they are busy, but rather do it during the week when they are not busy, and when they do not have a fare. I told the driver that I had seen taxis being flagged down near the casino and he said that that was the Department of Transport checking IDs and other details. He said that they also do the same thing regularly at the airport.

On Harris Street near Pyrmont Bridge Road there was an ambulance and a police car stopped outside one of the pubs on the corner. I said that it was probably a young man who had got in a fight. The driver tonight was a gentle man with an accent and he drove very moderately, not breaking and accelerating rapidly as some drivers do, like the driver did who had taken me to Redfern, where I had met my friend.

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