Talking To Strangers Again
I've said it before, but it always amazes me how often complete strangers are willing to share their amazing life stories if you just take the time to listen. This afternoon, for example, I climbed into a Glasgow taxi for a fifteen minute journey to Queen Street Station and the driver had me wishing I had a microphone or notebook to hand.
He began by asking me where I was heading and when I mentioned Inverness he then told me about his brother who used to run the local branch of MFI but managed to "jump ship" just before that self-assembly furniture company went bust. He then gave me a second-hand account of of what was happening inside the company in the weeks before its financial plight became public knowledge.
Then, somehow, we talked about the driver's army days. He had spent 17 years in the Scots Guards and saw action in the Falklands war. That included hand-to-hand combat with an Agentinian soldier.
"I was stabbed in the face, " he told me, "a bayonet went from my chin right through to my left cheek. I also lost a kidney in that fight."
After leaving the army he got a job as a bouncer on the door of Glasgow clubs and pubs and was also paid to be the bodyguard to a well-known Radio Clyde disc-jockey. Paid by the D.J.'s father, he said, to protect him fom unsavoury characters when he made personal appearances.
He then gave me his thoughts on commercial radio which, it has to be said, were not entirely favourable...but then neither were his thoughts about Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio.
All that for the price of a taxi ride.
Bargain.
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