Soulla' s Londoners

Rain Rain Go Away..

The last few days its has been pouring in London. With the rain comes the end of sitting outside (what the cold has failed to achieve the rain finishes off in 3 minutes!). For me the start of the crazy unstoppable rain also means my resort to taxis. Whereas I usually have plenty of patience and I am happy to wait for a bus in high heels at two o clock in the morning, once it starts raining I start acting without thinking and pretty soon I am walking ever so fast with my hand stretched out and desperately looking for a taxi!

• Of course when you are looking for a taxi desperately it means that half of London is also looking for a cab just as desperately. In which case the following shall happen with mathematical precision:

• No free taxi will be seen in the streets of a city usually packed with cabs;
• You will not be able to get through to any radio taxi booking lines; and
• when you do get through they shall tell you to wait for an hour (in the rain, in heels) until they can send you a cab..

But then the cab does arrive...

And you go in and its warm and dry and above all if you are in London, the cab driver is up for a chat! I remember when I was younger that I was very embarrassed by my dad's tendency to ask any taxi driver a million questions and chat with the cab driver like they have known each other for years. In a way I didn't understand my dad's need to chat for such a long period of time with a person he did not know until three minutes ago.

Fast forward to when I first started working in London..

My employer is kind enough to provide a taxi for its employees to take them home (or out if that's where you choose to go) should an employee need to work after 9:30pm (it used to be 9:00pm pro credit crunch but cost cutting means that it is now considered safe to travel using public transport between 9:00-9:30pm whereas before it was considered a gray area).

After working repeatedly until 12 o'clock in the night and not really talking to anyone other than my co-workers (who are in any case too stressed to have a proper chat) and after enduring one gray day after the other, I found myself looking forward to my long chats with the taxi drivers who take me home. Back before the smoking ban they would even let me have a  sneaky cigarette too and chatting while smoking became even more reminiscent of chatting with friends.

Facts about taxi driver chat

• For the past 10 years taxi drivers have addressed me as young lady (reassuring confirmation that even though the years have passed I am still young! Woo hoo!). The day a taxi driver calls me madam or anything older sounding I will become depressed.
• Within the first two minutes of any discussion the cab driver will ask me where I am from.
• Once I have informed said driver that I am from Cyprus they become very excited. They probably have a house in Pafos. They hate the other Brits in Cyprus though and consider themselves an exception of Brits on holiday. 
•  If they do not have a house in Cyprus they always ask me which part of Cyprus I am from. Amazingly even the taxi drivers in London have become politically correct. It has been years since any taxi driver has asked me whether I am from the Turkish or the Greek part. Almost always they want to have a discussion about the Cypriot problem. Depending on my mood I give my biased/unbiased/sentimental view on the issues.
• The taxi driver is almost certainly going on holiday to an Asian destination within the next two weeks.
• The taxi driver always has kids who have the most qualifications one would be able to imagine (doctor, dancer and volunteer at the Red Cross all in one).
• I always ask where the driver is from. I always ask about their countries and enjoy listening about far away places (my favourite one to date being Kashmir - it sounds magical: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir).
• Taxi drivers are usually very into food and ask for good Greek restaurants in London. I never have any good recommendations. My and my friends' kitchens are the only places I have had decent Greek food in London.
• Saturday evening I was driven home by a taxi driver who was a chef at a Greek Restaurant in London. He was Indian. No wonder why Greek restaurants aren't good in London. I did though get a recommendation for good, cheap Indian restaurants in London (http://www.khansrestaurant.com)!

Educating Soulla

So as you can imagine I have had plenty of chats with all sorts of Londoners who had only one thing in common. They were taxi drivers. I have met many people. Found out about lots of faraway countries. Learned about civil wars. Informed the taxi driver population of London about the Cypriot problem and gave out good Greek recipes all in the back of a taxi. I think these London taxi drivers have educated me a little, in addition to saving me from hours of walking in the rain...