Please keep your troubles to yourself.

 I know a lot of people, most people know around 300 people or less. I know between 2 and 3000 people because of my work. I once was asked to show an American lady around Dublin and every few minutes someone would come up. "Hello John" and have a few words with me.After the fifth or sixth time she asked me if I was a film star? I just said I know a lot of people.

A Philipena girl I picked up and in conversation I asked her if she knew xyz ? Yes I do, Do you know Pqr ?

Yow the hell do you know them ? she said.

I just replied that I know a lot of people. Years later I got to know one of these girls better. Her husband had threatened her and kicked her out of her house. She owns the house. Her mother looks after their daughter and she fled to Ireland.Over here she looks after elderly people in the home. She is a wonderful kind and gentle person.This year she has gained a visa to be here.

Have you got problems?

Her sister has developed leukemia and she has 4 kids.

There is no treatment without money.

Her wonderful husband just fucked off and left them there to fend for themselves.

His children cannot go to school as there is no free education.

We help them as we can with money.

But if you came into my taxi to moan about your problems

Just fuck off

Lost mobile

I really never thought that this would happen again. 

Once upon a time I found a wallet with around £1,600 in it Irish and English money.

I tracked the owner down and rang him. "Take some money out to cover postage and post it back to me please"

After much discussion he told me to open the wallet flat and cover it in cardboard and send it to me by registered post as a book.So I took out £10 and went to the post office. I had enclosed my name and address and phone number with instructions to ring me when it arrived.

It cost me £13 to send it and to this day I have not received a simple thank you.

An Indian gentleman on hearing my story said this.

"Some people do not believe in God, and they do not give thanks.

Some people do not believe in Kismet. What goes around comes around.

There are others who do not believe in Reincarnation.

But my friend some day you will be passing a Chinese shop and something will catch your eye. It will be a waving cat and you will buy it and bring him home.A week or so later it will dawn on you where you saw him before."

It will be that stupid doctor who lost his wallet.

Stupid in the present world and useless in the next"

Well last week the word came that an American visitor lost their fone.

I went to the airport and parked up for a couple of hours. I had to pay €10 for recovery fee as well.

Detailed plans were made for its recovery to California and DHL were chosen for around €100 including insurance.

The call came today and the owner is delighted to have the mobile back and she is going to give us €100 "Reward" 

That would cover the courier not to mention driving over and back to the airport and time wasted.

The other part that is a thorn in my flesh is that she is extremely wealthy and my wife will not let me tell her that more like €200 would cover all expenses.

Anyhoo (As they say in Canada) I still don't see why we should be down money.

Something bad in the paper caught my eye

 In the Times a few weeks ago there was a tragic story which had a happier ending and another one which did not work out well at all.

Mental illness is something where treatment and diagnosis is the absolute key.

A boy showed unusual behavior as a young lad and the doctor fobbed it off, the lad got worse and as he became a teenager he became violent and struck his mother. It became so bad that he was taken away in a van with 2 strong nurses holding on to him. Through the following years he became worse, though little or no medical help was given.

As he deteriorated he was moved to a secure mental institution where he was kept in solitary confinement to keep other patients safe from him and vise versa.

Now when his mother came to see him he was so sedated that he hardly knew her, on other occasions he would plead for help. 

Then one day a knock came to her door, it was a Garda with bad news.

Her son had died.

When she got down to the hospital her son was laid out in his coffin. His face had an angelic smile.

The mother cried with relief and grief, her sons expression said it all.

The daemons inside him had been banished at last, a gentle happy smile on his lips.

A doctor  in a white coat came over to give his condolences.

"He just slipped through the cracks"said the doctor

No treatment just sedation.

How many more are there like him ?

The other story in the UK was heading the same way and they brought a court case against the local authority to provide care at home for their son, and they won, he was receiving inhuman treatment.

Creeslough

 In a small town in Donegal people were going about their business when disaster struck.

An explosion at the local store has left 10 people dead. One of the dead was aged 5 years old and she went into the shop to buy her mother a birthday cake.

It seems at this stage that it was a gas explosion, but they are still examining the scene.

God bless them all and say a small prayer as the funerals begin.

There is a donations box at every post office.

Monday might be a big day

 My son and heir is sitting the taxi PSV exam on Monday.

He has failed it a few times but he is getting over 80% at the moment in the tests on line.

When he takes over I will devote my time to other things.

A taxi driver I knew once who had allowed his licence to lapse tried to pass the modern exam 8 times and failed it before he decided to try something else. 

Tragic I say, with his experience.

So today I had a lucky escape, not in the taxi.

The fluorescent light in the computer room stopped working, so I took out the ladder and had a look.

But when I started to dismantle the fitting WATER came out! I drained the fitting and you could see that the water had shorted out the light I could see that the fitting almost started a fire.

Wow.

So tomorrow its off to the electrical wholesalers. 

You know, thoughts wing there way back to me,2 stories from my previous life.

An elderly lady asked me to look at her portable phone which was Kaput.

So I diagnosed a worn out battery and replacement batteries were £6.50

She blew a fuse and told me that her nephew had fixed it for £2.00

She was lucky her assistant was there when it went on fire, portable phones need rechargeable batteries .

She listened to me after that. 

On another job I gave the lady of the house a price for a security system, she rang me and told me that her husband had decided that they did not need a security system as they had burglar proof windows.

We were busy anyhow and a few weeks later the call came in."Please come ASAP"

It turned out that the Gurrier who robbed the house threw a gas cylinder through the bay window.

The husband was more upset about his model car collection being taken than he was about her jewelry being taken that the next time I was there they had divorced.

The Beatles Story: In Their Own Words | Part One

So for something completely different.

The Beatles were a watershed in popular music in the 60s

So I found this and I hope you enjoy it.

In one part Paul talks about a tune coming into his head. He hummed it to everyone and they all said that they had never heard it before, weeks later while on holiday in Portugal the words came to him and it became the biggest hit that the Beatles ever had. Wow!

I can't get the computer to drop below the clip.

So enjoy 

John McDonagh

 A New York taxi driver came to Dublin and preformed his one man show.

Although I had been to the dentist and had had 5 teeth extracted I went to his show.

John had a blog and when I went to New York I appeared on his radio show where we chatted about how easy NY is to navigate(Ist Ave 4th Ave etc) in comparison to Dublin. The show covered a vast array of subjects. A bit like Joe Duffy on speed. When I went back to my hotel the porter had listened to the show and I was a celebrity.Anyhow John drove a taxi for 40 years and the show about those years is really slick.

He explained all about the Yellow Cabs and the medallions. Like a taxi plate the medallion was issued by the city by auction. If you had $1& 1/4 million you could buy one and have 2 drivers working the car.

But the numbers were limited and the pay for the drivers was dropping every year.

John told us that the horses in Central Park were looked after better than the cab drivers.

Then one day UBER arrived and the search for a cab was solved. Drivers were no longer at the mercy of the garages. The got out of bed, hopped into their on cars and turned on the app and hooray.

The Russian mafia owned the plates and they were not happy to see the price of the medallion fall to $20,000 and still falling.

Here is a link https://playbill.com/article/nyc-cab-driver-to-reveal-tales-of-the-road-in-new-off-broadway-play

Bur if you google him he is all over the place

Just so you know taxi licences were limited  in Ireland and got a value of more than £90,000 until a taxi driver took the government to court as they had created a monopoly. The cost went down to £1,500 which is when I bought my first taxi. 
 I don't know where the show goes next. But it is well worth a visit