After decades on the road, I’ve collected a few rules that have served me well. Rule one: always go inside a cathedral. However dull, tiny or ugly it may seem, it will always tell you something. Even if that something is ‘avoid this town.’ Rule two: pack condiments wherever you go. I recommend Tabasco, soy, sriracha, and salt and pepper grinders – they can save the blandest meal. Lord Byron did this, so you’re in good company. Rule three: expect to be ripped off by the first taxi in any new country, and when it happens, grin and bear it.
Nothing quite beats the terror of climbing into a cab in some remote mountain region, only to discover that your driver is blind drunk
This third rule is vital because it accepts human nature. When you arrive in a foreign land you are tired, disoriented, grimy, and likely grappling with a new currency and language. Taxi drivers know this. That’s why they swarm around airport exits like bees, aiming for the honeypot of bewildered new arrivals. Once they’ve whisked you to the hotel, they’ll smile and say, ‘That’ll be 18,000 Finno-Laotian Dong,’ in Swahili. At this point my advice is: simply sigh and hand it over. Yes, it’s 50 quid when it should be a fiver, but it’s not worth a two-hour strop. You’re on a steepish learning curve.
That said, this philosophy does not apply to David Lammy’s recent experience in the Alps, which makes most airport taxi cons look positively quaint.
If you missed the story, here’s the official version. After a grand state visit in Italy, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and his wife, Nicola Green, arranged a 360-mile taxi ride from Forlì to the ski resort of Flaine, across the French border. The trip was reportedly prepaid. However, on arrival, the driver, one Nassim Mimun, demanded an extra €700. Lammy supposedly refused. A row ensued. Mimun then drove off with the Lammy luggage, which included diplomatic passports and a coded briefcase.
What was in that ‘coded briefcase’? One can speculate, but maybe it was the money we’re paying China to let Mauritius take over the British Chagos Islands. It would be fitting if the world’s most idiotic foreign policy decision – executive producers: David Lammy and Sir Keir Starmer – was scuppered by the world’s most idiotic taxi ride.
At this point the stories about the Lammys’ cab hell diverge. The French authorities have charged Mimun with theft. The Foreign Office says Lammy and Green are the victims. But Mimun alleges that Lammy stormed off without paying. He also claims Lammy became aggressive, striking the seat and shouting ‘fucking French.’ Perhaps the Foreign Secretary was still fuming that France declined his offer to take East Sussex and the Inner Hebrides, so long as Paris also accepts guaranteed Centre Court seats at Wimbledon.
Whatever the truth, it was clearly a hellish cab ride, and we should extend our sympathy to the Lammys. I do, because despite my third rule, I’ve had my share of taxi nightmares.
Nothing, for instance, quite beats the terror of climbing into a cab in some remote mountain region, only to discover that your driver is blind drunk. That’s happened to me several times, and it’s particularly grim if the cab is your only hope of reaching your destination. My rule in this instance is: ask the driver for some of his drink. Then you care less.
Another horror show is the driver who takes an unusual route for his own reasons. This can be as humble as a guy who goes through ten arrondissements in Paris merely to take you two kilometres, while gesticulating in a stagey way and complaining about ‘la circulation.’
And then there was Azerbaijan. I’d booked a driver to take me from Baku to the northeast Caucasus – a three-hour journey. He arrived in high spirits. I soon learned why. He’d decided to turn this unusually long fare into a familial Grand Tour. We visited his grandmother, then his sister, then his cousins, then some friends. Somewhere in the desert we dropped in on a retired accountant.
Eventually I realised I was just the excuse, around the time he introduced me to a folk duo. When I began to look annoyed, he gave me a saucer of homemade jam. We arrived the next day. Yes, the next day. By then I was so befuddled I’d drifted into a sort of Buddhist serenity – possibly the Bardo between life and death – so I tipped the driver with a box of excellent local baklava. I still don’t know why. The man was an artist of opportunism.
All of which might sound damning of taxi drivers. But it isn’t. Because for every chancer, there is a saint.
I remember a cabbie in Medellín, Colombia, who refused to drop me off in a particular suburb. At first I was peeved. Then I saw a gang fight erupt in the rear-view mirror. He may have saved my life. I also remember a Russian driver near the White Sea who came and fetched me just before frostbite kicked in, then took me 50 kilometres out of his way to find vodka to revive me. Then he refused payment. He just liked helping strangers.
Finally, and most gloriously, there are the taxi drivers of Japan. In their pristine old Toyota Crowns, with their immaculate white gloves and swishy automatic doors, they treat every journey like a sacred trust. If you try to tip them, they disembowel themselves in shame.
Which brings us back to Mr Lammy. Perhaps the answer to his problems is this: for his next big diplomatic coup, he should offer Japan the Lake District. Then he’d have to fly to Tokyo. And then, at last, he might have a good experience with foreign taxis.
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