I was speaking to one of the longest serving cabbies in Preston the other day, about how revellers always forward their shortage of money predicament on the cabbie .

Basically what they do is... they spend top money in all the bars and clubs, and when they close they go to the kebab houses for their supper, paying the displayed price without barter.

Once served, they head to the taxi rank, accompanied by X amount of pounds worth of takeaway food which they paid full price for, and then attempt to barter with the taxi driver for their fare home.

Terry said he refuses to do jobs on the cheap when the ‘customer’ asks for a reduced rate while holding twenty quids worth of junk food in their hands, and I can see where he is coming from.

Why should the cabbie have to take less than the City Council set price (that’s right, the Council say what we are allowed to charge), while you’ve been paying extortionate amounts for drinks and club entry during your night out?

In the past I’ve always been happy to do an agreed price to strangers, but I’ll not be doing it anymore after hearing Terry’s reasoning’s.

Sure, a quid or two less I’ll go with it, but I won’t be doing 30 quid jobs for a Score (£20) anymore.

On the same night as my chat with Terry, I had two girls wanting a taxi home for £15 for a fare that meters nearly £30.

I told them to head to the Private Hire office and endure a long wait in an office full of others seeking to save money on their taxi home.

They weren’t for doing that and upped their offer to twenty quid.

Now these two girls were, let’s say, very well endowed. They played on this a bit by heaving their chests out with a deep breath while talking to me, almost as a bargaining chip.

Then, with a pleading voice, one says “my friend has big boobs, please take us home for £20”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I told them I wasn’t interested in their boob size either as I was married.

Luck beholds my regulars from Goosnargh, James and Chris rang, they were just across the road from me. I told them to come over so I could take them home, and told the Cleavage Sisters to catch the cab behind me.

James and Chris by this time were next to the two ladies, and they seemed pretty transfixed on a certain something.

The cab driver behind me was delighted that I sent the two buxom ladies to him as I loaded up with my two country boy regulars.

Carrying on from last week’s entry about the tyre damaging road-works us Prestonians are suffering on both Ribbleton Avenue and Fylde Road.

Well, I had to take the cab into the garage because it was running a bit shaky; I only noticed this shakiness when I reached 60mph on the motorway while on my way to pick up my regular customer, Rob Johnson.

Rob was at a ‘going away’ party in Wesham for one of his pals who is emigrating to Australia.

The journey back to Preston was a tad uncomfortable for me as two of Rob’s friends are Blackpool fans, and all they did during the journey was sing jubilant Blackpool songs and anti PNE songs.

Anyway, back to the point in hand.

The cab went into the garage only to be diagnosed with an ‘egg’ on the tyre. This ‘egg’ is basically like a hernia in the human body... a weakness in the wall!

The mechanic said the cause is systematic with hitting a kerb, but I haven’t hit a kerb. What I have hit is what I described last week... a blinking great mess of a resurfacing job on the aforementioned roads.

It is without doubt to me that the tyre damage my cab has received is down to the shoddy job on Fylde Road and Ribbleton Avenue.

Even the other drivers were going mad at the condition of those two roads; most notably Chris, aka Pitbull, who argued along the same lines as me, stating that it was completely unacceptable to leave a road open in such a state.

The owner of the cab didn’t sound too pleased with the cause of the damage when I spoke to her, and I could forgive her for thinking it was down to my driving, but honestly, it isn’t. It’s down to the mess of a resurfacing job being done at present by some guys on horseback wearing spurs on their boots.

Ask any Black Cab driver who is among the slowest drivers in the fleet, and I bet my name is mentioned 90% of the time.

I had some DIY to do mid-week, so I took a couple of days off and tackled the tasks with the help of my 13 year old son, Bradley.

While we were doing the work I explained to him that in the building trade tradesmen would play practical jokes on their apprentices.

He enquired what type of practical jokes; so I gave him the example of the apprentice being sent to a builder’s merchant to buy a glass hammer.

(For those that don’t get it, a glass hammer is as much use as a chocolate fire-guard, i.e., it would shatter at the first strike, so therefore, it doesn’t exist.)

My son proclaimed that anyone who fell for such a trick was stupid and that he would never be stupid enough to fall for it himself.

“Oh really, well let’s see if I can get you with one?” I thought; so on that note I asked him to go down stairs and ask Mrs Taxi for the ‘long stand’.

Off he trotted to go and ask his mum for the ‘long stand’, all proud as punch with his sawing and drilling I’d allowed him to do.

He was soon to return with a red face some ten minutes later after standing around waiting for the ‘long stand’.

Mrs Taxi had told him to wait while she finished doing whatever she was doing; she then went to rummage through the pantry as if she was seeking something.

My son Brad then followed her into the pantry and asked if the ‘long stand’ was heavy, and at that point Mrs Taxi smiled at him and revealed he’d just received his ‘long stand’.

Bradster then came sheeplessly back up stairs all red faced, saying “OK OK you got me.”

Despite his embarrassment, those two days helping his dad build a storage solution in his bedroom will probably put him in good stead for the future.

He learnt how to use a drill and a jigsaw properly, and he also learnt about the practical jokes he is likely to face when he starts his working life.

And on top of all that, Mrs Taxi was well pleased with the results of my labour, just like she was when her new hall, stairs and landing carpets were fitted... ; )

The other day when the M6 was closed due to someone threatening to jump off a bridge, I got a guy in the cab who wanted to get to Chorley sharpish.

He was late for his first day at a new job by a good two hours. The guy was telling me en route to Chorley, that he feared he would be sacked before he even started work, because of how late he was.

I could hear him on the phone to his boss, and I gathered by the tone that he was up the creek without a paddle.

I needed directions off the boss as the lad in the cab was unfamiliar with the area, so I ended up speaking with the boss.

It turned out that he was in Birmingham and was totally clueless of the chaos that Lancashire was suffering because of the motorway closure.

I explained to him that every man, woman and child in Preston were late for something that day, and I told him why.

I urged him to look on the internet in order to back-up my claim about the gridlock, in the hope he would be understanding of my passenger’s situation.

I’ll never know if the lad got fired or not, but I tried my best to explain the extraordinary circumstances why he was so late.

One of my colleagues got stung the other week to the tune of twenty-five quid.

Basically what happened was, he took a well dressed older lady to Blackburn, who at journeys end had no money to pay the fare.

She offered the driver her mobile phone for security, on the understanding that they would rendezvous at a later date to exchange the mobile for the unpaid £25 fare.

The lady did ring to arrange to meet him, but she failed to show up. My colleague rang the landline number the lady rang from to arrange the meet, but she hung up as soon he addressed himself as the cabbie she had ripped off.

All the driver was left with after his journey to the hills in the East, was a basic mobile phone not even worth twenty quid.

It goes to show that appearances can be deceptive. The driver emphasised that the lady roused no suspicion whatsoever, hence he not asking for any deposit up front before he started the journey.

Asking for money up front can be offensive, but both the police and the council sanction its practice as a necessary evil to avoid wasting their time over reported non-payers.

As a rule I don’t ask for money up-front, hence you reading my numerous stories about non payers, but a line has to be drawn with regards to long distance.

If a top hat and tailed judge walked out of the courts straight into my cab and asked to be taken to Glasgow, I’d want to feel some readies in my sweaty palm before I set off.

It’s not so much about distrust; it’s more about things going bottoms-up that would urge me to ask for cash up-front on a long distance fare, regardless of who the customer was.

You might ask what could go wrong with such a respectable client in your cab. Well what about if they lost their wallet or purse and had no means to pay you, or if they were simply confidence tricksters like the well documented king of conmen Paul Bint, who conned rail chiefs into putting him up in a luxury hotel pretending to be a QC in the Lockerbie bombing trial?

There’s a line to be drawn, and after discussion with colleagues over the CB radio, we came to the conclusion that a journey beyond 50 miles would be fair to ask for cash up-front regardless of how they were dressed or who they were.

I’m sure other motorists will have noticed the terrible road works on both Ribbleton Avenue and Fylde Road this last week.

Fair enough they have to dig up the road for some reason or other, but usually they smooth off with a bit of tarmac at the start and end of the road works so drivers don’t have to hit a step of about two inches.

But this time they’ve decided to leave the road surface as it is, after scraping away the top layer of tarmac, leaving a big step for your tyres to smash into.

It’s been an absolute nightmare driving to Ashton or Ribbleton these last few days, each journey meaning you’re going to be vandalising your tyres every time you drive through these latest road works.

Apart from slowing to an absolute stop when approaching, there’s not a lot I can do to avoid the inevitable tyre damage, and don’t think for one minute I could go a different route without a customer thinking I was ripping them off by going the long way around.

I had an old gentleman in the cab who wanted to find a Bed & Breakfast out Longton way.

We set off on our quest to find somewhere to get his head down for the night. On the way he asked me to stop at a florists in Penwortham so he could buy a single rose for his wife’s grave.

The chap told me he had come over from Cyprus to do this touching deed.

During our conversation he told me he was a former teacher, and it transpired he was a teacher at my old school but he’d left before I started there, so obviously I didn’t know him.

We had no luck after trying several B&Bs out in the Longton area, so the chap directed me to a graveyard in Longton. He asked me to wait while he went and had a word with his wife at her grave.

God I was filling up by now; so while he was gone I took it upon myself to ring a hotel in Preston. Bingo, they had one room left.

Upon his return I told the gentleman I’d found somewhere for him to stay in Preston and he was delighted, so off we set for the hotel.

Now my older brothers went to the same school as me, and were taught by this guy in my cab, so when one of my brothers rang me out of the blue on our way back to Preston, I asked him if he remembered the said teacher.

My brother said he did, and that he was looking at a photograph of him just earlier that day!

How incredible is that?

I dually passed my phone to the former teacher sat in my cab so he and my brother could have a chat.

The next job after the Somali family was a Malaise family who are here studying at the university.

I’ve had this family in the cab a week or two ago, so I was sort of familiar with them.

I asked them about back home and their cuisine in Malaysia, and I asked if they eat the same foods while they’re over here.

The lady said she did, she said she cooks proper Malaise food which she described as similar to Indian curries. Well that was it for me as I blinking well love home cooked curries; I put my cheeky head on and came right out with it.

Basically they’re a Muslim family, and at present we’re in their holy month of Ramadan, and I know that Muslims have feasts fit for kings at the end of Ramadan.

So I asked if she’d put aside a nice Malaise curry for me from their celebration feast in a few weeks time.

The lady asked if I was OK with hot spicy food, and I told her I was the biggest spice junkie in Preston, bring it on.

Now I don’t expect owt for nowt, so if she does come good with her curry offer, she can expect her next taxi ride with me for free, as long as it’s to her usual destination and not some far out place.

I’ll keep you posted.