THE FINAL ASSAULT THE END OF AN ERA:
WHY I STOPPED DRIVING A TAXI AFTER 45 YEARS
Hello, my name is Jeff Owen, I started up a taxi and wedding car business many years ago in 1978. When I had to leave a good regular paid job working in a pastry factory in Bryn- menyn, South Wales for health reasons, starting a taxi firm made sense. Then over a period of 45 years I ran my firm and drove many different vehicles.
THE LIFE OF A PROFESSIONAL DRIVER BEFORE THE INTERNET
In this business you meet all kinds of people as customers, and I dare say I think I have met them all! Or at least a fair and broad church selection of them from all walks of life! The good! the bad! and the ugly!
I have been everyone’s friend and supporter of all football teams, rugby teams and helped people with their problems, shopping ,animals and all their family, private and domestics.
I also had to put up with racial abuse, bad language, drunks, drugs, violent behaviour, propositions and prostitutes. I dealt with all members of society and put up with kids and screaming teenagers with a phone glued to the side of their head, swearing every other word and behaving unreasonably. I picked up lunatics on steroids, crack cocaine, green and cannabis, drugs and alcohol, pissed up and very loud and totally off their heads.
I’ve had a gun pulled on me, been knifed in the back, partially strangled and punched many times. My car was wrecked on three occasions. There was no CCTV in taxis then, and communication was much slower.
THE COLOURFUL LIFE OF A TAXI DRIVER
I had to deal with all kinds of situations that would happen suddenly out of nowhere in an instant. Often I didn’t know what way things would go or turn out, with bottles! rocks! and a fist being hurled in my direction! For no reason just by being in the wrong place at the wrong moment in time!
The drunks
I would deal with drunks in the daytime and the early hours of the morning, pissed up and thinking they are Muhammad Ali, the boxer, and wanting to fight the bouncers outside and inside a nightclub or pub and then the kebab shop people and then me, the taxi driver last of all! - throwing their food over my car and punching my side window calling me a f****** b******, and trying to wrench my doors off their hinges, kicking my car punching my windscreen and side windows.
Police eventually arrive if you’re lucky! But not until it’s all over or has got out of hand and they have done something even worse and caused more serious damage. This sort of behaviour is everywhere. Generally, it is the result of a Friday or Saturday night revellers’ antics in the town, where the taxi driver generally suffers the worst part of this.
This behaviour of totally demented numbskulls leaves the taxi wrecked and the driver loses his livelihood to boot! As the driver, trying to have a quiet life and earn an honest living behind the wheel, never asking for any trouble ever, he still pays the price.
HARRY POTTER ATTACKS AND MAKES MY TAXI BUSINESS DISAPPEAR
I picked up a passenger, who looked like an adult version of Harry Potter, on the 27 March 2017 at 4.30am on a Saturday night. I was driving the
44 OCTOBER 2022 PHTM
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