The Black Cab Cabbie

He's picks me up from St. Pancras St. Station, thick accent, which I know is not POSH but at the same time it's an accent I cannot exactly place. I'm trying to figure out where I am going, and he and I get to talking. "Where are you from?" he asks. "Brooklyn" I say. "I'm from Brooklyn" I'm from Ohio originally but..

…ah yes, Brooklyn, saying Brooklyn always opens the doors, especially with the toughs, which he is one. He grew up in the streets of London in a rough area. Dad absent, it was just him and his mum. He tells me that he and his mates were young thugs smoking joints at 10 years old on their way to school. They all got nicked plenty he says, which I finally figure out means getting caught and put in jail. He tells me that he personally never went in for very long, but for his mates it was like a school vacation with all their friends present. In fact, inside it was allot easier to get "the works" than on the outside.

As an adult, there came a moment where it seemed like leaving was a very good idea (he didn't elaborate), so he did. He, his wife and his three girls now live in a very peaceful village about 50 miles outside the city. It takes him 50-60 minutes to drive in to work. "It used to be I would step outside my door and before I started my car, I'd pick up a fare and I would be working!" He misses living in London.

It drove him crazy when he first moved to the village. "It was so quiet there! There where all these people going to church on Sunday! I thought, FUCK, this is the biggest mistake of my life!"

Then his daughters started speaking like the natives. "My daughter started saying "Loik" you know "like" but with an "o" in it. I say to her..what are you doing? why are you talking like these people?!..but THEN I realize -what the hell am I doing?! I don't want them to grow up like me! "

Really, he's trying to fit in. "My mother she was a proper kind woman, she hadn't even heard curse words until my brother and I brought them home. The other day I was in a conversation and I said "flipping' and my wife was like "flipping? what the hell is flipping?" and I say I"M TRYING HERE!"

He realizes he never saw any of the tourist attractions while actually living in London. "My daughters suddenly go "hey why didn't we ever see the London Eye?" after learning about it in school, so now I'm going down to London with the kids, to show them all the places I never went to see when I lived there."

His eldest daughter complained when they left the city that she didn't want ot go, but 6 months later the super of their old building got stuck with a needle that some junky had taped under the hand railing and then there was a gruesome murder, so then he asks her. "Do you want to go back now?" "No" She says. But the kids like they are from London, he tells me, "The littlest one says "I'm from London" I say you where 2 years old you don't remember, you are not from London! You talk like your from the country!" One of the daughters was having behavior problems in school but it all cleared up one they got out of the city schools and now she's an A student.

He misses London, he misses living in the city. "Cabbies know all the best places" he's says. But then he's says about the village, "It's quiet there I don't have stress and that's good. I have a picture of Big Ben in my study. I never noticed it before, but one day I was sitting there in the cab and I was looking at it and thought. What a beautiful building! Sometimes you have to leave a place to see these things!"

He said tells me he was going to end up likely in jail, I tell him I think he's traded it in for a better jail, one with three kids that drive him crazy and a wife and a peaceful life. We laugh allot. "I've got me a proper cockney accent" he says. My kid was having trouble with another kid in school and I told him to pop him..and then I thought NO NO what the fuck, I don't want him to grow up like me!"

You know buddy, those kids are going to be ok if they grow up like you.