During a visit to Liverpool this week I found myself with an hour to spare, so I decided to get some breakfast, so I locked the car up and went for a walk.

Within a few strides I found myself outside a good traditional Greasy Spoon Cafe; I browsed the price list (as money is most definitely tight) and moved onto the next one, which was literally just around the corner, or 15 seconds walk away. This one was a bit cluttered, too much food stuff on display, I didn’t fancy it, and so I left.

Just across the road there was another one, so I paid it a visit and checked out the price list. Oh dear! Upon reading it I got confused as to where I was... Liverpool or West End London?

So I headed back to the first cafe I visited and bought myself a breakfast for £3.50.

So what’s this got to do with traffic and travel? Well I’ll tell you...the English cafe grub is the diesel that runs the man driving the van. The mid-morning bacon butty has kept this country’s mobile workforce going since the wheel was invented. But not in Preston it seems, not any more.

Where have our cafes gone?  Sure there are some left, but nowhere near what there used to be.

I’ve grafted a living on the roads for 20 years, and I can remember traditional English cafes and chippies for that matter, doing good trade all over the town.

 Many of the premises are now kebab shops or curry takeaways that only open only at night, which is no use to a hungry workforce doing an 8 till 5 shift, is it?

Talking of cafes, that night I was telling Pete about how pleasantly surprised I was, to see three cafes within 20 seconds walking distance from each other. We got talking about the decline of cafes in Preston, and the Market Street cafe in the city centre popped up.  Pete reckons it would be a gold mine if it opened as an all night cafe on the weekends, and I agreed.

Whether the owner would be brave enough to try it is a different matter; but I’m sure many revellers would opt for a full English instead of Kebab & fries, I know I would.

How’s this for a crafty way to not pay your taxi?

Pete got a job out towards Kirkham, which is a decent job to get any night of the week.

The two lads in the cab chatted away with the driver during the journey.

When they reached the destination, one of the lads said he had to go indoors to get some cash to pay for the fare. The lad volunteered his mobile phone as security and left it on the back seat while they supposedly went to get Pete the fare.

As the minutes went by and there was still no show from the ‘customers’, Pete grew suspicious. So he went into the back of his cab to retrieve the phone, and upon inspection, he realised it was actually a plastic display dummy phone like you see in mobile phone shops.

He had been well and truly had!

The likelihood is, the lad who pulled this scam probably works at a mobile phone shop in Preston (hence him having access to display models). It just so happens that Pete is in the market for a new mobile phone and he’s in the process of price comparing between different stores.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if the said conman comes to serve Pete, if Pete happens to visit the store he works?

Pete said he would recognise him instantly when he sees him again, and trust me, he will see him again. Preston isn’t that big, the conman is bound to board Pete’s cab again, and I can tell you now, he picked the wrong cabbie to scam.

I went on the FA Cup tie against Chelsea on Saturday, and despite the result I thought the PNE players made a good account of themselves.

There was a near capacity crowd on that game and I knew there’d be plenty of jobs for us cabbies, come the final whistle. So as soon as the whistle blew I sprinted out of the stadium to my cab, and drove out of the car park before the roads became gridlocked.

Honestly, within seconds of cranking the old girl up and switching my ‘For Hire’ light on, I was approached by three Chelsea fans.

“Take us to the train station Governor?”  They asked. Nice one! What a good start, and this was to be one of many, in fact it was the start of a very long shift compared to my usual duration.

I said “no problem lads climb aboard”, and off we set.

They were a good bunch, we had a good natter about football and they couldn’t believe just how cheap the fare was compared to what they pay in London for a taxi journey of a similar distance.

After I had dropped them off I headed straight back to Deepdale to seek another job, but with the massive 23,000 crowd flooding out of the ground it was always unlikely I would reach it without been flagged down first. This time it was four lads, again, Chelsea fans, and these boys wanted entertaining.

They asked me to take them to a Lapdance Bar, but I said “lads, it’s a bit early for that isn’t it?” So they asked to be dropped off in the town centre instead. Again, the cheapness of the fare surprised these London folk, as they commented about it when I asked for the four pounds something.

Interestingly, my colleague Mark Selley was only saying today that Preston taxis are ranked around the 300 mark out of about 400 boroughs in the country in terms of the price chart. Basically, what that means is, we’re cheaper than over three hundred other boroughs in the country.

Anyway, back to the football... There’s a real buzz around town now since Darren Ferguson was appointed manager. People have become more interested in PNE, and this actually has a positive effect on the town as a whole.

Seriously, with a crowd of 23,000 people at Deepdale, many many businesses in Preston would’ve benefitted financially.

Me as a cabbie had a better than usual Saturday, granted I worked more hours, but I wouldn’t have been alone in benefitting from a capacity crowd at Deepdale. Think of all the pubs, hotels, takeaway food joints, and bus and rail companies that would have done more business.

Top flight football for Preston would be magnificent for the town; almost every home game would be a sell-out I’m sure.

I dream of it as does every other North End fan, but it goes without saying, the whole town should be dreaming of it, as the whole town would benefit from it. So come on the Preston public, less of the apathy and head down to Deepdale on match day, your presence will aid the dream.

Let’s hope Derek Shaw and his new manger Darren Ferguson can get us there!

I don’t think I was too popular among some of the drivers the other night.

Basically I was parked across the road from the full taxi rank waiting for a space to appear.  While I was sat there one of my regular customers came out of the club opposite and spotted me, so he came over to get in the cab. Obviously he isn’t going to ring me if I’m right in front of him, is he? But with him coming to my cab it put me in an awkward position, because if I let him get in, it looks like I’m taking a job out of turn. So with this in mind I told him to walk off down the road and ring me so as to make the job legitimate in the eyes of the other drivers.

Well, he didn’t walk off down the road; instead he rang me while stood in front of the cab, booked his taxi and then climbed in.

I shouted across to one of the drivers directly opposite me to explain, and he waved me on as if to say ‘no problem’.

So I dropped that customer off, and headed back. Pete then said over the CB that some of the other drivers came to his cab asking him why I took that job out of turn, and he warned me that when I get back I’ll be strung up by them.

What more could I have done?

A colleague came to me and asked if I’d noticed the sudden increase in potholes on the roads. I said that I had and that they are worse than ever.

‘Worse than ever’ is a tame phrase to use to describe these things; seriously, some are akin to craters on the Sea of Tranquillity (that’s on the moon if you didn’t already know).

If you go up to the Lane Ends crossroads you can take part in a bit of archaeology, as the historic cobbles from the horse and cart days, have been revealed by the disappearance of the tarmac that once covered them. I’m not exaggerate by the way, they are there visible, a couple of square yards of history on show.

Some of the roads in Preston are in a terrible condition, Plunginton Road being one of them. There, there is a stretch that is like a reversed speed-hump, by that I mean the road has sunk dramatically, so when you drive over it you have to slow down as if you’re approaching a sleeping copper. If you don’t slow down and you go over it at 30MPH, you can expect your passengers’ heads to firmly hit the roof of your vehicle. I’d say that even Blackpool ‘Pleasure’ Beach would be proud of a dip like that on one of their rollercoaster’s.

There was an article in the LEP recently explaining that the increase in these suspensions bashing, nuisance potholes is down to the icy conditions. That’s fair enough, but that excuse only addresses the recently appeared potholes; so what about the many hundreds that have been chewing our tyres for as long as I’ve been a cabbie?

I think Lancashire County Council is going to be very busy in the coming weeks sorting the roads out, and by heck they need sorting.

I was in two minds whether to go out for a pint on Tuesday; I knew Taxi Pete and Trev were in attendance at the Sherwood, and I did fancy that because of the PNE chat we would’ve had. What with all the recent changes at the club.

So, I decided to go out in the cab and have a drive through town and see what it was like. I thought to myself, if there was money to be made, I would stay out and work. If it was quiet, I’d drive up to the Sherwood, have a few beers and leave my cab there overnight.

Well, when I got to Friargate there were no cabs. I thought to myself... “quids in”, that wasn’t going to be the case.

Laughable! I did two jobs in two hours, both of which clocked under £4.

What a mistake! I should’ve just gone straight to the pub and had a good night; instead, I stuck it out for 7 hours for less than £4 per hour.

I’ll not be making that same mistake next Tuesday, no, I’ll be in the Dog & Partridge with Mrs Taxi watching the live music. Apparently it’s a Swing band called the Swingaroo Sisters performing, and I’m told they’re pretty entertaining.

It’ll be nice to get out for a pint for change.

UPDATE... The Swingaroos were great, very different from the usual pub entertainment, but still very good. They're described on their website as "A flashback to the 1940's. Swing tunes, wartime anthems and seamed stockings to get you In The Mood." WooHoo I say, Old Chap.

They packed the place, even a couple of politicians came to watch them and I was told the LEP photographer came down to get some snaps.

During the very wintery weather we had over New Year, I got a bit of revenge on one of my recent non payers.

What happened was, I’d dropped off a fare on an estate that was covered in ice and snow. While I was making my way out back to the main road, there was a familiar looking bloke stood there without a jacket on, shivering with his arm out, trying to flag me down.

Due to the dangerous freezing conditions I was only going about 3MPH so I was able to get a good look at him, and in doing so I realised he was one of my non-payers...to the tune of ten quid I may add!

I looked at him and said to myself “there’s no chance I’m stopping for you ever again pal” and drove past him. I could see him in my mirror; he was bemused to why an empty taxi had driven past him and missed out on a ‘fare’.

I knew this weather would do me a favour in the end, and leaving Runner Man freezing his smalls off was just superdooper. Small graces eh?

The pavements on Friargate are lethal to say the least; on Friday night they were claiming several victims per minute. The scene was one of human carnage; people hurt badly by their falls.

There were quite a few funny falls at first, mainly young blokes attempting to ski without skis and coming to an inevitable heap on the ice. But this wasn’t to be a laughing matter for many, as two ambulances were called to serious falls, one bloke knocked out cold.

The slope outside Bello’s restaurant which is also where the taxi rank is was the most deadly.

People’s legs were whipped from under them by the shiny ice, as they tried to make their way down to the front of the rank.

The scene had gone from humorous slapstick comedy with revellers laughing as they slipped and fell, to one of unconscious people knocked out and lead in the cold.

The cost to the NHS must be well into the millions, all because of these slippery paths and roads. Compare that cost to how much money it would’ve took to send a few blokes out with a wheelbarrow full of grit, a spade and a brush.

Pete said it was pathetic; a ‘city’ centre’s walkways a death-trap, days after the snow fell is unacceptable. I agreed.

Sick of the carnage from Friday night, we cabbies decided to do something the authorities should’ve done days earlier.

We agreed to come to work on Saturday armed with our spades, brushes and shovels.

It took a couple of hours early evening, but between us we managed to clear the deadly ice off the slope at the taxi rank before the 11PM rush.

Do you know what? Not a single soul slipped on that spot after we’d chipped and scraped away a walkway through the ice.

The Landlord/Manager of O’neill’s came out to see what the noise was all about, and upon seeing us chiselling away he came over for a chat. He said that in Southport the pavements had been treated professionally by the local authorities using machines.

No chance of that here, obviously.

Here are some pics of the taxi drivers doing their bit for the community that pays our wages.

The Caped Cabbie... Pete Tyson doing his bit.

Terry, Pete & a fellow cabbie who's name I don't know.

The three lads hard at work.

Here you can see just how much progress we had made.

The walkway through the ice we worked hard at to achieve.