16.08.2005 Scabby Cabbies Part 1 |
  Jimmy Jimmy was sitting at the Central contemplating whether or not he should do Dom’s split shift. He knew that if he did, he could send a lot more money back to Malawi and the freedom fight movement. He also knew that if he did, the missus would be upset and start an argument. Tracey thought the kids needed some seeing to, and she was sick of the fact that she always had to do everything on her own. Thing is that he had always told Tracey that he lived for his cause and did not want anything to ever come in his way. Tracey, who was then a student of Middlesex College, had thought he was beautiful and idealistic. Now, she just wanted a husband who would help out once in a while. It was unbearable for her to take care of the kids on her own and with Sjakira, now 4, and Djimo, 2, she could do with an extra pair of hands around the house. She knew JJ was a busy man; providing for his family and also being so heavily involved in the cause of Malawi. They were both torn. Both lost sleep and felt bad for the other one. Jimmy Jimmy put his Benson&Hedges out on the pavement and got up to talk to the boss man. He accepted his shift and walked out to his cab. He was freezing. It was bloody cold and a really bad November day with wind and showers. Not at all like in Malawi. He longed to be back there. He was very upset when his father had sent him over to England just when he was about to finish his degree in Civil Engineering. But that was life, he was supporting the movement, and just had to do his part in the quest for freedom. It was tough though. Dom came running towards him, all fat and sloppy as he was. It made Jimmy Jimmy cringe that a man could take so little care of himself. But Dom was always cheerful and as he had a gambling habit that involved dog track and gypsies, he was always willing to do some extra shifts for Jimmy Jimmy if one of the kids was ill, or he had to go to a meeting in London with the movement. Dom stopped in front of Jimmy Jimmy’s car. ‘Thanks mate, I really owe you one’, he said and smiled with his gold teeth shining dimly in the grey rain weather light. Dom was a small podgy man who wore football stripes to work and had been told off for this more than once. But as Dom would put it: ‘JJ has a course, I have mine, and it’s fucking Chelsea, fucking take it or leave it!’ Jimmy Jimmy respected Dom for that, just as Dom respected Jimmy Jimmy. They were mates, they were close. Too close sometimes, Jimmy Jimmy had thought more than once when Dom had been kicked out by his missus and had to come and stay with Tracey and Jimmy Jimmy. Tracey did not like that one bit, and had said to Dom—firmly—a few times that he couldn’t smoke around the kids’ room and that alcohol was definitely out of order. It was just that Dom felt he really connected with Jimmy Jimmy’s kids and that he could really speak to them when he had a fag in one hand and the old Mr. Jack D in the other. Sjakira and Djimo did not seem to mind at all, and would happily play and chat with Uncle Dom around, sipping on his drink. They used his cigarette smoke for when there was a fire in the Playmobile house. It made it all so much more authetic. Uncle Dom sometimes cried when he was alone in the flat. Djimo had one walked into the living room and found Uncle Dom sitting by the phone howling like a lusty wolf although this wasn’t merry but really really sad. Dom’s fiancée, Kiki, was very mean to Uncle Dom. She had once thrown a plate after him at a barbecue party in the summer and Uncle Dom had run off to the safe shelter of the Elephant Arms. Part 2 – by an unnamed author, straight out of the radius of Bi Hahn’s influential writer circle. The Elephant Arms with its stuffy interior was the secure harbour of many a haunted man’s soul. Men like Perky Jenkins whose wife would drive him up the wall. Men like Timothy Witherall who needed to be near a reliable source of freshly pulled lager and pork scratchings twenty four seven, no delay. Men like Rusty Snails. He and his mates would come here to play darts and to brood over their had deserved pints of Newcastle Ale watching the latest football matches flashing over the family sized television screens popped up in all four corners of the smoky, dimly lit and above all, carpety cosy Elephant Arms. Above all, they would come here to sort out some desperate saddos looking for the extra after office buzz. ‘I’ve had it comin’’, moaned Jizzer, Rusty’s right hand. ‘Kim’s just had that kid taken to care, and now she wants another.’ ‘What’s the problem? At least you have some meat curtains to part and stick your weener in to shoot off a load whenever it tickles your fancy’, mused Rusty. Licking his dry lips, he slipped his fingers into his pockets to let the tips run over the edges of the notes stuffed into his jeans. Fifty Pounds. One hundred and fifty to come if the nifty guys who had placed some orders would turn up which would mean he could take the night off and see his favourite hooker. ‘George, pull us another pint, would ya, mate’, he shouted over to the huddled figure who seemed to melt into the carpeted interior, all brown and dusty like the thick curtains that cut out all the day light that would try to sneak its way into the Elephant. Unsuccessfully. One time, some pissed up poof had tried to pull open the windows, and in split seconds the entire pub had shot up from their stools, raising their mucky fists and their coarse voices. ‘If you want some fucking light and some fucking flowers or some other of your fucking gay and merry delights, you should fucking get your fucking self out of here, before I give you some fucking enlightenment’, John the hool had hissed at the poor fool. The fearful expression of the guy sent them off. Cheerfully, they howled at the sad sod who swung his sad arse off the chair faster than a bolt of lightening to find his way out of the door. ‘We don’t want them people here. Not here. Not anywhere.’ said Perky. They all loathed them and whatever they enthralled: These minging New Labour metrosexualists and their gay-not-gay-whatever-dude impact on England. The light and nicely decorated pansy lifestyle pubs that inhabited this new breed of inbreeds seemed to pop out of the ground faster than mushrooms on a moist cow’s patty after a nice late summer spray, and these Zara Man creeps who would frequent them to relish on reduced calorie fellatuccine linguinus or whatever this crap was called seemed to awash the island once standing up proud against the steady influx of European bullshit. ‘And Tony, the wanker, who was busy licking some transatlantic balls, isn’t doing anything! But there still is hope! England has the best army in the fucking bloody world…’ careened Berto, Georgo’s mate. Knowing each other from school, they went way back, way before they went bust for the first time. The door swung open and Cabby Dom planted himself on his regular stool at the bar, near the men’s toilet. ‘Got anything for me today, Rusty’, he asked, his pancake features unjoyfully drooping like the face of a British bulldog in a prize fight. |
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