A strange trio, odd situation perhaps,.. Glenna, Susan and myself, with Jack being fostered by a professional minder.. just up the road from Susan’s mother’s house in Bishops Stortford, we allowed to see him perhaps a couple of times a week, he apparently not at all put out, enjoying the company of the other children, the powers that be, hardly thinking Susan capable of looking after him,.. as said previously, as the father.. not even considered…then that is England, a matriarch society, a few men left who do not cling to the female skirt.
There are those gone fully the other way, openly, right to the top of government and society, perhaps now a prerequisite for any serious consideration in the twenty first century, only a faint smile remaining at any mention of Lord Byron.
In Romania they bang them up…in prison, discipline and values have not gone rotten here, may be a poor country, but they cling to what little they do posses.
For whatever reason, decided to move myself, went out and bought another old cab.. so I had two. Cornered Rodetski in the café, put it to him, he would like a ‘cheaper” cab, cheaper than he was paying, when he did pay, that is... thought could overcome his reluctance in this aspect . So, it was two cabs, Rodetski and myself…Two became three, three became five ,five became twenty two.
They were good days in the trade, early eighties. I finished up with drivers no one else wanted because of their reluctance in the cash department. For whatever reason they did pay me more or less, I, running something like a club for destitute taxi drivers so far as they were all concerned. Certainly Romeford Dave regularly painted the alternator silver and said he had bought a new one, trying to charge me the $50. Certainly he, Alan and Billy Kelly would put all the money due to me in the Granby fruit machine over a period of two days and one night, they taking shifts to pull the lever.. or one would go out working to get more money to feed the insatiable machine. In a more desperate moment Alan bandaged his arm up ..not the one he pulled the fruit machine lever with, saying he had been unable to work. Wednesday night most of the fleet parked up in a long tidy line outside Walthamstow dog track, invariably the gang would all file despondently out, having done their bollocks . It meant running about on the motor bike catching up with them at their favorite hide outs.. or going into the betting shop before they did my money. Sounds like hard work.. a very friendly atmosphere ….It paid.
Stopped doing my own repairs. found a Mr. Salih, a Turkish man and his three son’s in law…In a archway in Bethnal Green, must be several hundred railway arches doing cab repairs
In that first flush, in the first year, with a few cabs, things going so well, decided top take Susan for a holiday.. by plane , disregarding her petrified looks.. it took very little to frighten Susan , she had never flown previously …charter flight to Yugoslavia on the cheap . I had not had a holiday for years, mainly because I did not work sufficiently, hardly concerned me one way or the other, there was, however, this wind of change, my last trips abroad had been those to see Mark In LA, a long time ago.
Became quite determined to do something, go somewhere. Glenna rather upset at my not intending to take her along. Hardly saw myself handling the situation of a rather large black lady and a rather diminutive white one all dancing about together in Yugoslavia. So it became a matter of suitably bribing Glenna, everyone has a price…a consolation prize, if you like,
Remembered my Father coming down to Stony Stratford during the war, where my mother, Doris and myself were all shoved out of the way.. He brought a couple of pairs of kippers.. my mother, who was not enamoured with country life, screamed very loudly at him, she, "not wanting his consolation prize for being stuck in a dead and alive hole!!" first of all hitting him with the kippers, then a chair and finaly the kitchen table, saw him in hasty retreat into his lorry “down the roads again” burning up the diesel to Coventry.
Hardly wished Glenna to see my offering in that light, stepped carefully. Must have come up with something suitable, cannot recall what that something was .
Yugoslavia appeared rather tense, everyone at the airport carrying a weapon of some kind. The weather, quite glorious, hot. Susan apparently fully recovered from the silent months. She, looking good, dancing the nights away, the local gigolo’s queuing up for her.
Her birthday ….think she was 38.. The dining room held a couple of hundred people reminiscent of Butlin’s. It was alright, ordered up a birthday cake. In the evening they wheeled down this really quite huge cake, all the faces smiling and clapping.. happy birthday and all that jazz, Susan quite taken back, so was I , come to that. A very happy period, I became all romantic.. Can anyone imagine .. Peter ..Romantic..! must have had a touch of the Sun. The Churches made a big impression , far from the coldness of the C of E mob. We went in one of them ..suggested, off the top of my head that we became married there, do not know how we actually did not get married in that church, what finaly stopped us, we so carried away especially as I have never been one for churches since my escapade in Canterbury Cathedral when I was ten ..still that’s another story..
Rather a twist of fate I should get married just up the road.. ten years later…… to someone else, in a place called Romania. No, Susan and I never did quite make it…… which was perhaps fortunate.
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