There I was, standing in the street in Wark, Northumberland, on a cold December day, chatting to my fellow taxi driver about the frustrations of his job on a Saturday night in Hexham. The number of people who either don’t show, or refuse to pay, would make you quite cross if you knew the truth, so I’ll spare you those details and head straight for the point of this story.
A Range Rover pulled up, stopping in the street where I had parked my taxi. A young woman rolled down her passenger side window (I realise that makes her sound like a lump of putty, but believe me she looked nothing like that) and she called me over to her.
She had overcome that inherent reluctance of us Brits to talk to strangers, to ask me if I had been in the Sound of Music recently. She had been racking her brains over the last week or so to think where she had seen me and now she had realised.
“You were Max, weren’t you?” she asked. I tried to gauge whether this would be a good or a bad thing in her eyes, but judging by her smile I decided that she wasn’t going to demand a refund so I ‘fessed up.
I was going to go all theatrical and say, in my best John Gielgud voice, “indeed, madam, I have that honour.” But that would’ve been over the top and would probably have invited ridicule form my work colleague, who was listening intently to the exchange. So I just said “yes, I was.” Not very lyrical, but it did the job.
At this, her smile got broader. “Well, I have to say, you were very good and the whole show was fantastic!” My smile then matched hers.
I have to say, at the risk of sounding vain, that made my day. I’ll probably never get as far as The West End or Broadway, but to know that people genuinely enjoyed our efforts at the Hexham Amateur Stage Society show is enough.
I climbed back into my taxi and smiled all the way back to Hexham.
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