In 2016 I retired from the Ministry of Magic. Well, to give it its proper name, HMRC. But to be honest the MoM sounds much more exotic and I’m trying to hook you in to reading this article as I couldn’t think of a better headline. Anyway, the point is, I bounded out of the grey, uninspiring Longbenton Estate with a jolly air and my hat perched jauntily on the side of my head, bowling down the road towards the sunlit uplands of Retirement.
The sunlit uplands lost their lustre after a few weeks and I thought I’d better do something to fill my days and earn some beer money. Tescos provided the opportunity to do that and I ended up sitting on the tills at Hexham, chatting to people as they went past with their Bran Flakes and cat food (other products are available). I was quite happy there, as I like meeting people. But after some difficulty in arranging a shift change for family reasons, I had to leave. Before I left however, one of my colleagues pulled me to one side and recommended that I might like to drive a school run taxi instead.
At first, I dismissed it (I may actually have said “Pah!” – I like to think so) but I eventually applied, and within days realised that this was going to be fun. I really started to enjoy going to “work,” as they called it, and ended up becoming the World’s Best Taxi Driver.
I can tell by the way you raised an eyebrow there that you don’t believe that I earned that title. But trust me, I have it on the authority of schoolchildren, who are some of the toughest customers around.
I would get up quite early every school day morning, and head off into the countryside in an eight seater taxi with Zoe Ball. I’d be home in time for lunch with Jeremy Vine, and in the afternoons I would come home with Sara Cox. I’d pick up some teenagers to take them to Stamfordham where they would catch their bus to school in Ponteland, and taking them home when the school day was over.
I have never subscribed to the idea that teens are difficult, and the three or four that I have transported over the years were always good company. Sometimes they might not want to talk, preferring to put their ear buds in and stare at their phones, which incidentally is something I like to do too from time to time (although not while I’m driving, before you write to complain). Other times they would be chatty and really funny. In all the years I knew them I never had a single problem with them. We often forget that teens are just people like you and me, or in some cases like the people we used to be.
The bus could be quiet on the first trip of the day, but that all changed when I went to get the younger children. Radio 2 went out of the window (“That’s for OLD people”) to be replaced with a Spotify playlist that I created so they could hear songs that they actually liked.
My first younger passenger lived on a sheep farm. She was usually smiling, often munching on the last bit of breakfast when I arrived to collect her. After lambing season this year, she would encourage me to beep the horn at all the sheep that blocked the way out of her farm and back on to the road to school. And contrary to what my theatre friends always tell me, it’s great fun working with animals and children. A lot of the time she’d be chatting away and I would have no idea what she was on about, but being just four years old she never seemed to mind that.
After that, I’d collect a brother and sister from an egg farm. In the summer I might have to wait a bit for them as they were trying to exhaust themselves by running around the garden. But the energy in that house when I collected them both always gave me a lift in the mornings.
From there it would be on to another farm, picking up two sisters who looked just like each other. The younger one would have a cheeky grin all the time, and come up with non-sequitur phrases such as “Dumb Banana” and “Potato Fairy” at random intervals for no apparent reason. This was an improvement as she hardly spoke to me at all for the first six weeks. Her older sister had four years on her sibling and was tall enough to sit in the front next to me. There wasn’t a single day when she failed to make me laugh at something or other. I think that might be because my sense of humour matched those of her nine year old mind, but it made the trips enjoyable. During the last week, she asked me to make a speech at her wedding because I was “funny.” I told her I would, of course, but I was busy for the next couple of weeks so don’t rush it.
She ran off quite quickly when I dropped her off for the last time, but as I pulled out of the yard I could see her waving to me through the window.
My last passenger was a ten year old boy. His older sister had been on the taxi the previous year and as she liked to sit in the front, he had been relegated to the back of the taxi. But now she had moved on, he sat in the front too. His Grandma would visit him once a week, travelling quite a distance to do so, and I often refused to drive off without him first giving her a wave. He wasn’t keen; its not a cool thing to do when you’re ten years old. But he did it all the same, with a bit of encouragement!
So now my days on the taxi are over. Those lovely children will be going to school with some other driver from now on, and I can only hope he or she realises just how privileged they are to have such a fantastic job.
They will never be the Best in the World though. There’s only one of me, the kids gave me the cap to prove it.
Steve's Journal 