Notre Dame gone

Here we are at Easter and Notre Dame cathedral destroyed by fire.
Tragedy on a grand scale.
Everyone has their own memories of that great city and I remember one Easter being there.
The entire French population took off and blocked the roads onThursday.
The city was empty except for tourists on Saturday.
Then this fantastic drumming sound echoed all over, following the sound I found myself at the cathedral where a large African group were drumming and it went on for hours.

I was a student there learning to speak French, then when I sat my exam I passed and got a job in the international telephone exchange. This was a great place to work as at that time there was no subscriber trunk dialing, a lot of manual hookups.
There was I a guy there who could speak 26 languages,Arabic, Chinese, Japanese all the European languages fluently and he could switch over in a second..
With a talent like that the world was his oyster.
What did he do?
Join the EU or NATO ?
No he worked on and then retired.
What a waste of a brilliant talent.

2 girls walking along the road, I thought the taxi behind me would stop, he didn't and when I stopped and they jumped in my heart sank.
Two junkies on a mission, to buy drugs.
"Turn here mister, then straight on"
Then they were whispering in the back.
I pulled my baton out so that my hand would reach it without effort.
The first  place we went was a no show, then after a few more turns we contacted their dealer.
The driver has to stay back around 50 yards while the deal is going on, its protocol!

So the deal was done and we headed home.
€16 on the clock and one of the girls says
"Mister will ya do it for €15"
I said yes indeed just pay me now and you can jump out when we arrive.

You should have seen the look on their faces. Hurry up I said I have the change.
Money exchanged there was no chance of a runaway passinger.

Another guy who has been in the taxi before, he must be one of the unluckiest people in the world.
I think the last time I had him it was FOC.
He was knocked down by an off duty Garda, she lied about the accident in court and now it looks like she will be done for purgery and her seargent  has come under scrutiny for lying to cover up her actions.
I wish him luck taking on the lying Garda, his injuries are substantial as he was thrown 15 yards and landed on his head.
When he was getting out I wished him luck and I hoped that he might find a good woman to mind him.
"My wife has been in a nursing home for the past 12 years"