Still not having many cab driver conversations at the moment – too much travelling with companions so chatting to them instead. Here’s a couple of cab-related things to keep the posts going here.
The mischievious Charles Frith pointed out this YouTube short film – a lovely little love story masterminded by a cab driver.
And then’s Alf Townsend’s new book London Cabbie: A Life’s Knowledge. After 40 years in the business Alf has pleanty of stories to tell!
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I’ve not been doing much sitting in the back of cabs lately, and even less chatting to drivers. I’m sure I’ll find myself being driven around again soon – but to tide us over here’s a cab conversation a colleague recounted yesterday…
My colleague was in th US on business, Atlanta to be precise, and got chatting to his Zimbabwean driver about football (of the soccer variety). His driver was delighted to have a Brit in the back of the cab as soccer was his one-true passion. His view on the game was global but he was most interested in great African players and wanted to talk about how those currently playing in the UK premiership were doing.
It was clearly an unusual treat to be able to talk about soccer with a passenger. This being America, interest in and knowledge about soccer was a rare commodity amongst his usual fares who, if they wanted to talk about sport at all, would favour American Football. For a long time, the Zimbabwean had resisted getting familiar in what he considered to be an inferior sport – but after eventually had decided it was in his best interests to follow the American game.
As my colleague recounted this story, my immediate assumption was that the driver had decided that talking about any sport was better than none – so had taken a “if you can’t beat them, join them” stance to give himself something to talk about with his fares. But, apparantly this was not the primary reason. In fact, the driver had felt that he needed to start taking American Football seriously in order to offer a better service. So many of his passengers wanted to talk about the sport, he felt it was his duty to oblige them.
The only problem now was that the Atlanta driver felt his soccer knowledge was diminishing – something that made him sad. The modern dilema of limited attention…
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