Summer in Santiago

Summer Summer has hit. For real. The air is light and balmy, the platano trees are a mass of green and a bird is chirping its little heart out just outside our window.
            This afternoon I went places. I took a taxi. We were stopped at a light; the windows were down and I lay in my seat with my head back and my eyes closed, enjoying the early summer warmth, overlaid with the smells of petrol and hot tarmac. There was music coming from another car nearby, happy boppy summer pop-
           "Look." The taxi driver said.
            I opened my eyes. The music was coming from the next car over - a red Volkswagen beetle; not fire-engine red, but ladybird red, which is brighter and more alive, and behind the wheel was a girl. Her lips were painted a bright barbie pink. Her long hair fell down a high ponytail, tied up with a blue twist, and she was dancing in her seat, shaking that long fall of hair, bouncing her fingers on the wheel, singing and shimmying her shoulders, sending her summer-blue shirt slithering and slithering from one bronze collarbone to another.
            It was a performance, but she wasn't playing to anyone. She was dancing her heart out for herself in her bright red summer car.
            "Look." The driver said again, and his voice was one long sigh. "She even has a flower."
            I looked. There was a flower, a peony tied with a bit of ribbon to the rear-view mirror.
            "Es ella una maravilla." (She is a marvel.) "Una maravilla." He folded his hands on the wheel and watched.
            She was Joy, and in a whole day full of summer, she was the most wonderful thing I saw.

A Singing Taxi Driver

My morning started very badly.  
            You all know the sort of day - the sort where everything goes wrong right from the very beginning. My alarm didn't go off, so I overslept and rolled out of bed on the wrong side. The water in the shower wouldn't go hot and the yogurt in the fridge was past its date and tasted like stomach-aches later at lunchtime.  There were no clean shirts, my trousers needed a button sewn, and when I threw on a skirt instead and pulled my stockings up, a fingernail popped and ripped a ladder all the way from toe to thigh.
            In short, it was a perfect petty morning storm, with irritation running up and down my spine like needles raining down on a tin roof.  It felt so ground-in I reckoned I might fill those needles up with ink and run that funk right into my skin like a tattoo.
            And then I missed my bus. Of course I couldn't get a taxi -  taxis with passengers inside seemed to pause and gloat as they flew past, and when - at last - a free taxi stopped, it overshot, slamming to halt ten yards farther down the street.  I chased it down and stepped inside - and I was drowned, crushed beneath a wave of sound.  The driver spoke.  I couldn't hear.
            "Turn Your Music Down!" I yelled.
            "______!"
Accordions and violins rose and swelled.  My funk was flattened, crushed, beneath music like a fifty-foot monster swell off of an Alaskan surfing shore.
            "TURN YOUR MUSIC DOWN!"
He nodded and the music shrank in size to something more manageable  - a howling north-sea gale perhaps, and we shot out into the street, crossed three lanes of traffic without a single honk, and settled down to cruising comfortably in the inside lane.
The driver twisted in his seat and smiled at me. I hated him at once.
            "Good Mooooorning Senorita!"
And he rolled his rrrrr's.  With enthusiasm.  I hated him worse than ever. 
            "Where, Sennnorrrrita?"  He said, rolling worse.
I told him. He nodded, and turned the music back up.
            "You mind?" He shouted back at me.
Strangely enough, I found that I didn't.  It was tango music: thumping upright piano and accordion, with lots of sturm and drang.  It suited me and my funk right down to the ground.
            "The music's the best parrrrrt of the job!"  He shouted, clashing the gears horribly and braking sideways into a lane full of big orange buses.
            "Herrrrre in the taxi I can sing all day long.  Tango, cumbia, jazz, bossa-nova, opppperrrrrra-"
He rolled his rrrr's again, but the accordion was thumping and I found I didn't mind.  He twisted in his seat to look at me again, and we shot across a rather large cross-street on the red.
            "May I sing for you?"
            "Sure."  I said weakly. I held tight to the door handle.  "It's your taxi.  Feel free."
Flashing me a splendid smile, he turned back to the steering wheel, nudged the volume dial up to maximum, straightened his back, and sang.
He sang Dejame Asi by Alfredo de Angelis, and he sang it in a loud, clear tenor voice, all the way through to the end.  My bad mood melted away like snow beneath a summer sun, and I clapped and shouted out loud in pleasure.
            "Bravo!"  I cried, when he had finished.  "Wonderful!  Magnificent! Would you do another one?"
            "You mean it?"
            "Please."
So he did. He sang El Choclo - by de Angelis again, and then  he sang another one, and another -
He sang me all the way across town.
At the end of the ride, I tipped him the entire value of the fare.  As he nosed back out into the traffic to drive away, I reached out and tapped on his window.
            "Thank you."  I said.  "Thank you." 
And I reached back into my purse and gave him all the money I had in it.  If I miss my bus again this evening, I will be walking home.  That's all right - there's a big moon scheduled, and a clear sky, and I'll do it singing, imagining piano and accordion going at it hammer and tongs, all the way.

That's how my Friday has gone so far.  How's yours?

The Dr Tabubil Files: Taxis and Kangaroos

My sister, the estimable Dr Tabubil, is spending ten weeks on a rural clinical rotation in Cloncurry, a small pastoral town in the Queensland Outback.  It's a fantastic place, and together we have collaborated on a series of guest posts  all about living and working in the Red Centre.  Enjoy!

 Yesterday I took a taxi.  I gave the driver an address, and -

            "You Australian?"  He said.

            "Si."

            He wasn't fooled. 

            "I knew it."  He said.  "Now, you can help me  with something."

            "You sure?" 

            "I have a question:  Do Australians eat a lot of crocodile?  Is it, like, beef, over where you come from?"

            I was, to put it in Australian, stumped.

            "Wellll…" I said.  "And.  Er.  It's not that we - "

            "Do you know the supermarket on the corner of Manquehue and Apoquindo?"

            "Si."

            "In the meat section there they sell frozen crocodile.  From Australia.  And I've been wondering.  Do you guys eat it all the time?  The way we have BBQ and hamburgers and steak for dinner?"

            "Um."  I said.  "We do eat it, but not very often, really.  We mostly eat beef, just like you do.  And lamb.  Mostly you see crocodile up north - where they have crocodiles, but everywhere else you mostly see it in restaurants. It's sort of a tourist thing. You know: come to Australia and eat a crocodile!"

            "Oh." 

            We drove three blocks in silence.

            "We do eat kangaroo, though."  I offered.

            "Really?"  He put on the brakes and turned around in his seat.  "You really do?  There's this movie - with that blond woman - Nicole Kidman, and that man who's in a lot of superhero movies - growls a lot and grows his fingernails -"

            "Hugh Jackman?"

            "Maybe.  So the movie is about Australia a long time ago - in the 1930s - and they drive across the whole country in an old jeep and at one point they see a flock of kangaroos and the man stops the jeep and picks up his rifle and stands up in his seat and - blam!   He shoots a kangaroo.  Just like that.  And he says 'Right. That's dinner.'  Just like that!  So - really?"

            "Mostly we buy kangaroo in the supermarket with all the other meat, but pretty much, yeah.  They're not exactly endangered species, most of them.  Mostly, they're road hazards.  I used to live in the outback- just like in the movie you saw - and at dusk the kangaroos wake up and come out of the bush and go boinging across the road and if you're in a car and one is coming  - bam!"

            "Really?!?!"

             And all the way across town he asked questions about koalas and kookaburras and crocodiles and snakes and spiders, and for some reason, he seemed to get the impression that none of the meet-cute animals in the tourist adverts were  worth the bother of going to Australia to meet-cute in person,  if it'd mean he'd have to put up with some of the smaller, slitherier things I told him about.

Huh.  People are funny like that.

In all seriousness - the snakes and the spiders might give you the visceral wobblies  in that unreachable spot in the small of your back, but as far as genuine outback hazards go, the kangaroo is way at the top of the list.  Kangaroos on rural roads scare the bejeezus out of me.  They've got no road-sense, a hell of a lot of momentum, and they come out to play when you can't see them coming.

Back when she first moved to Australia, my sister Dr Tabubil had a boyfriend who I thought was just the coolest thing on the whole continent.  His parents ran a cattle farm a few hours from Brisbane, out where Dr Tabubil said "there are like, a million kangaroos per square meter," and he drove an ancient ford sedan that was pocked and dented and dinged six ways from Sunday.

            "Every time he drives home"  Dr Tabubil told me "He gets hit by at least two of them.  Per mile.  They just come doinging out of the bush into the road and -"

            "Bam!" I said. 

            It was so exotic that there just weren't any words.

            When I came home to Australia myself, and moved out into the real bush, I got an education.  We had a friend who drove up from Adelaide one afternoon, and when sunset hit, he finished the last 150km at a crawl with his eyes swinging back and forth across the brush on either side of the road - and he got hit by a kangaroo anyway.  I saw the car.  The front right corner was a write-off, and all along one side of the car, from the driver's side door to the rear bumper, there was a long wide hollow that marked the tail of a Big Red Kangaroo.  Eight thousand dollars worth of Big Red Kangaroo.

            Right now, Dr Tabubil is working a rural placement at a clinic in a town called Cloncurry.  Cloncurry is a cattle-and-mining center a thousand kilometers inland from Brisbane, as deep into the red center as you can get. 

            She likes it there.

            She wrote to me:  "The town has less than 3000 people, so it's a lot smaller than where you lived when you were in the outback.  Only seven blocks square.  But  the 'population' doesn't count all the miners and the grey nomads (retirees in caravans) that come through.  Heaps and heaps of them. The practice has 7000 permanent patients, out of the mines and the stations around it, and people will drive  hundreds of kilometers to see a doctor."

            The shire council issued her with a house, and a car, but she's only allowed to drive it inside city limits. Ten months ago, the last locum doctor drove the car five kilometers out of town and hit a kangaroo.

The Olympics on the Radio

A couple of days ago I hopped into a taxi (closing the door very carefully behind me).  The driver was listening to the radio, one of Chile's evening radio-talk shows, and the studio anchor was interviewing - via skype - a reporter who had been sent to London for the Olympics.

The reporter was waxing enthusiastic about the city, about the games, about the slightly excessive security arrangements, and the studio anchor, bored with generalities, broke in with a rather more personal question.

            "I understand you were able to bring someone to London with you.  Did you bring your girlfriend along?"

            "My girlfriend?  No, I didn't bring my girlfriend. I brought my mother!"

            The studio anchor expressed disbelief.  "Your mother?  You didn't take your girlfriend?  What does your girlfriend think about that?  Leaving her behind?!"

            The reporter sounded nettled. "Yes, I brought my mother.  I love my mother.  I adore my mother!  Going to the Olympics has always been her dream, and, right now, I have been able to make that happen for her.  My girlfriend is fine with it.  She is very happy for me.  Very happy for my mother- "

The studio anchor broke in on his happy, proud-son, pro-mother affirmations. 

            "Yes, fine.  So you left your girlfriend at home.  That's good.  That means that I can ask you the question that we, back here in Chile, have all been wanting to ask.  Tell me: are there many prostitutes in London right now?"

            There was an infinitesimal pause, a pause that could almost have been chalked up to long-distance telephone lag.

            "I have absolutely no idea."  The reporter said firmly.  And rather quickly after that, the interview wrapped up.

And my brain is ever so slightly boggled.

On taxis and Being from Elsewhere

"Oh for - !"

"WOULD you - ?"

"Puh-leeeeze!" 

Seven times in the space of two months, I have made taxi-drivers cranky before I've even said a word.  They looked at me with expressions of extreme pain and forbearance, but there was clearly a cultural gap of understanding that left both of us bewildered.

            And at last - twice in the past ten days, the mystery has been made clear.

            On Tuesday last, I climbed into a taxi, shut the car door, gave the  driver my address - and he winced, and turned in his seat and said:

            "A gringo, huh? Yup. I thought so. So can you please tell me, why for the love of God do all you gringos slam car doors so (redacted) hard?"

            I had to sit and think about that one. 

            And I realized that yes, I suppose that I do. I pull the door firmly shut when I get into a car, and I slam it decisively shut behind me when I get out.  And I do it without considering relativity - there is no softer than, or harder than, or any other way to do it - there is just the Firm Shut Door.

            "It may be good manners."  I said, thinking aloud.  "There's not an intent of force as much as there's an intent of sound- an audible signal to the driver that I'm in securely, that I haven't left the door flapping, and that it's safe to drive away." 
            I thought about it some more.

            "Believe it or not"  I said. "I think that we think that it's good manners."

The driver digested this and rejected it.

            "It's like you want to break the latch or tear the door off it's (redacted) hinges or something!  It doesn't matter where you're from, for God's sake - you all (redacted) do it!"

            And that was that.

            When he dropped me at my destination, I opened and closed the door with the slowest, softest whisper of air pressure imaginable, and had to lean closely on the door to make sure that it was closed at all.  The driver gave me a grudging nod through the drivers side window and sped off with unnecessary vim.

            That was last Tuesday.  On the Thursday, as I was sliding into the taxi's backseat, before I'd opened my mouth or even touched the door, the driver threw himself around in his seat and hissed "Softly, softly, for the love of God close that door softly- what is it with you gringos, huh?"

            Which opens a whole different kettle of onions, because clearly I read as 'other' even before I open my mouth. (I need to wear pointier shoes.  More scarves.  Less blue eyeliner.  Do something, anything, with my hair.  Maybe?)

            Ever since, I have gone in and out of taxis with such careful tenderness and solicitude that five out of six times (and counting) the door hasn't shut properly and I've had to go back for a do-over: a sharp wave-off to the driver as he peels back into the traffic, a solid, snicking gringo slam, and wildly un-Chilean thumbs-up to let him know that we're all good now. 

            Unmistakably a gringo at 50 paces.  That's me.

Ignacio!

In the middle of a street, in heavy traffic, my taxi driver slammed on the brakes and threw his head out of his open window and screamed. 'Ignacio!"

            There was a little boy running down the sidewalk.  He was maybe two years old, still unsteady on his legs, running with that forward headlong headlong gait of a baby.  Half a block behind him, a woman was running flat out.  She'd turned around and he'd gotten away. They were her screams that the driver had heard.

            "Ignacio!"  A command. "Ignacio!"  A shout.  "Ignacio, sweetie, darling, come to Mummy - Ignacio stop NOW!"

            Ignacio didn't stop - he was almost at the end of the block, laughing his little head off - he was having a grand time, a fabulous time, and he was running straight toward a heavy stream of moving cars.  I can't remember when I was last quite so frightened.

            "Ignacio!"  my driver yelled. "Ignacio, come and look at my pretty taxi!  Look at the pretty taxi!  Stop-" and then, in the next second, with a shouted curse, he was out of the taxi, his door swinging, and he flew down that sidewalk and scooped Ignacio up in his arms just as the child put his first pretty little foot off the curb and into the busy street.

            And then the mother was there - a moment too late - and she was shaking, and the driver was shaking and Ignacio was crying because the adults were shaking and all the good times had gone away just like that.

            The driver came back to the taxi and sat down heavily in the drivers seat, and he just sat there for a minute. While he talked about leashes for children. And idiot parents, and the luck of fools and all the things you say when you're absolutely terrified and don't need to be anymore.

            And the thing is, I've always looked down on parents who would do that - who would put leashes on their kids. Who clearly can't trust themselves to keep a proper eye on their own kids.  I've been deeply superior about lots of things.  It's hardly an original sort of epiphany, but how on earth do we trust ourselves to do this right?  That mother looked away for one moment - and if it wasn't for a taxi-driver passing on the street who happened to hear her calling, she'd have been a mother without a son.

Granville Island

Yesterday Mum shoo’d  us out of the apartment and sent us off to visit the Granville Island Markets.      
            “You’re from Adelaide.”  She said.  “You need to see it.  You’ll understand why when you get there.” 

Mr Tabubil and I walked across the city to False Creek ferry and took the ferry across.  I don't know the nautical terminology for this class of ship, but the False Creek ferries are the most fun I've had since I played with fisher-price toys in my bathtub.  The ferries are round little boats with a row of portholes and a tall seat in the middle for the driver, who steers by peering out through a turret in the roof. In stiff seas the distance between the gunwales and the waterline is mostly negative, and waves slop sideways through the door, and the engine goes with a marvelous chug - a deep ch-ch-ch throbbing sound. 

Granville Island, on the far side of False Creek, is a neighborhood of old warehouses and chandleries- re-purposed for a farmer's market and colonized by artists. 

The Market Hall is wonderful place - very much like our Most Beloved Central Market in Adelaide, filled to the roof in glowing primary colors with heaped piles of blueberries and raspberries and gooseberries and strawberries and grapes and  figs and kumquats and cherries. Baskets of mushrooms and asparagus, ropes of  garlic and onions and barrels of potatoes, still dusted with soil.  Wheels of cheese - Bries and Cheddar and Swiss cheeses, tubs of feta and bocconcini.  Ropes of smoked sausages - wursts and salamis and chorizos and kielbasas and thing we'd never heard of before.  Bakeries, with shelves of enormous, flour dusted french loves, and cabinets of small, glowing, glazed fruit tarts. Beds of crushed ice with salmon and halibut and mullet and rainbow trout and Dungeness crab. Chocolate makers.  Fudge makers.  Fresh local honey. Don't eat the buckwheat honey.  It tastes like a barnyard.

We trailed lightly up and down the aisles, feeling faintly homesick, and feeling very much at home.  

We soothed ourselves with bags of maple-smoked salmon.  Vancouver-ites take their salmon seriously and eat it every way imaginable - and in one way I'd never considered.  They dice it into bite-size nuggets and baste it with maple syrup and smoke it and serve it in little paper bags like gumballs.

It’s very good.

Outside the market, the neighborhood is made up of art galleries and artists studios.  We saw a totem pole being carved from the inside out, then we walked down the sidewalk to peer into a glass-blowing studio.  A few doors down a woman was weaving a tapestry on a big wooden loom - and every other storefront seemed to be selling hand-spun silk yarn in iridescent colors - Mr Tabubil had to drag me away.  The yarn caught on the rough nicks and scuffs on my dry hands, and promised me scarves and shawls that lay like lace and clouds on my fingers - Mr Tabubil, in pained tones, reminded me that at that moment, my facility with knitting needles was limited to half of one lumpy doll scarf, and a lot of knotted wool.  He let me buy two skeins of rainbow-striped silk, craftily promising to let me use them as a graduation project, along with the title of 'Real Knitter', if I get the dolly scarf done - this year.  That silk yarn is in my sewing cupboard, Mr Tabubil - and eight weeks on, the dolly project is almost finished.  I'll be knitting that silk scarf yet!    

We found a workshop that builds scale architectural models.  It was extremely satisfying - and gratifying - to watch them through the window making 1:100 buildings SLOWLY.  Carefully.  Measuredly.  Consideredly.  There were no tantrums.  Nobody was slamming the sides of the laser-cutter and weeping with impatience because the CAD templates hadn't scaled and there was no more chipboard to be had at any price.  Nobody would be gluing their hands to each other with superglue, and then tearing their fingers loose and smearing blood across their models– and then showing off the mess as a mark of pride and aggressive dedication to their purpose.  I wouldn't mind that sort of job.  Without the screaming pressure and the midnight deadlines, it'd probably be thoroughly satisfying.

I wandered into a print workshop watch two artists roll a plate through a lithographic press.  Mr Tabubil stayed outside to eat maple candy in the sunshine – and was joined on his bench by an elderly couple who blinked at him amiably and introduced themselves; they were from Adelaide, in South Australia and they were visiting their daughter here in Vancouver.  She had sent them to visit the Granville Market.  She told them they’d understand why.

Recipe: Pumpkin Soup (and a Taxi Full of Grandma)

Last week it was Mr Tabubil's turn to bring something edible to his friday morning meeting, and everyone in his office voted, as they should have done, for the Best Chocolate Brownies Ever.
            I seemed to owe everybody chocolate last week - Mr Tabubil's office, my students, my supervisors, my sewing circle -
            What with a kitchen full of racks of cooling brownies I ran late for work.  The bus only comes past once an hour, so I called a taxi -
          And swung inside, with a knapsack full of tupperware tubs full of baked heaven.
The driver took a long, deep breath -
            "Oh my."   She sighed.  Long and deep and rapturous.  "Oh MY.  You smell - "
            "I do?"  I said, chagrined.  "I've had a shower, I've changed my clothes - I can't possibly still smell of cooking!"
            "Oh you do." She said emphatically.  "You smell like -oh, I shouldn't say it."
            "Like what?"  I said, intrigued.
            "Oh, you smell like my grandmother.  Like you remember your grandmother smelling from when you're small, after she's been baking good things all day."
            I gave her a brownie.
            And she gave me a recipe for pumpkin soup, and talked about the importance of not forgetting to add the bacon at the end all the way to the school.  I'd never contemplated bacon in a pumpkin soup.  Can't imagine why.  Bacon goes with everything.

Yesterday I caught another taxi (honestly, when the bus runs  through town once an hour in each direction, unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands, you tend to take a lot of taxis.) and the soup-lady was my driver.  
As soon as we were rolling:
            "Did you make the soup?"
            "The soup was fantastic."
            "Really? You really liked it?"
            "It was amazing."  I said.  "I made it on the weekend, when I boiled up a new pot of chicken stock."
            "I'm so glad."  She said, gazing at me in the rear view mirror.  "You wouldn't happen to have any more of those chocolate brownies on you, would you?"
            I laughed and said no, and she sighed and looked back to the road and was the model of silent chauffeurial service until we arrived at my destination.
            At which point she snapped the locks shut and turned around in her seat and said that if I liked the recipe for Pumpkin Soup I was going to love her pasta salad.  And her Backyard BBQ Hawaiian Coleslaw.

Pumpkin Soup:
1 Liter home-made chicken stock (the store bought stuff is insipid. Pre-packaged mediocrity.)
1 butternut squash
3 medium sized potatoes
4 carrots
3 cm of peeled ginger -diced
2-3 cloves garlic - crushed (only add garlic and ginger if you haven't used any in your stock.)
1 pack of English bacon (the sort with a minimum of fat)
A little sour cream
Fresh mint

Peel the vegetables.  Dice them and boil them, along with the ginger and garlic, in the stock till soft.  (20 minutes or so.) Mash with a potato masher.  Finely dice the bacon and toss into the soup.  then pull out the hand-held mixer (or the blender) and blend till you have a soft puree.   Stir in two or three spoons of sour cream to give it a kick. 
Dice a handful of mint.
Serve the soup with a spoonful of sour cream on top, and a side of diced mint to stir into it as you eat.

Hawaiian Coleslaw:
One packet of supermarket coleslaw mix from the fresh veg. section.
Half a bottle of mayonnaise.
One can of crushed pineapple (with juices.)
Tip everything into a bowl and stir until everything is coated with everything else.

I confess I haven't tried this one.  It's a little intimidating.

Conversation in a Taxi

"What did you think of our fog this morning?"  The driver asked me.
            "It was awfully thick."  I said. 
            "Oh yes."  He said.  "It got very very thick before it was through.  We need some more fogs like this! If we can have three of these in a row, we'll have some good rain after the last."
            He was an old man, straight and gray, with a hearing aide in his left ear and an RSL community badge pinned to his chest.
            "Does it always work like that?"  I asked him.
            "Yes, indeed - for as long as I've been here, and I've been here all my life.  Three morning fogs and the weather will come down on us like a rain of bricks and fill the tanks.  What did you think of that thunderclap last night - the first one?"
            "Wasn't that a bang?  It shook our windows loose!"
            He laughed.  "Split the sky open all right!  Nature's been on a streak this year, hasn't she?  He glanced at me in the rear-view mirror.  "All these earthquakes and volcanoes and landslides - what can you say, eh?"
            "You know why it's all happening, of course." I said confidingly, sliding forward in my seat.
He looked back at me suspiciously.
            "Why's that?"
            "Declining moral standards."  I told him.  "One of Iran's senior Clerics has explained that all this geomorphological turmoil is because Iranian women aren't wearing their veils quite as far forward on their heads as they should be.  Men are being tempted beyond the brink of decency and the world is breaking out in earthquakes and volcanoes."
            He looked at me for a very long time, and then he caught the twinkle in my eye and burst into laughter.
            "Oh the things," he gasped.  "The things people say!

            "There's a young blogger in the US who is proposing an empirical test." I said.  "She's proposed that on Monday the 26th every female with a passing interest in science or moral philosophy wear the most revealing clothes they dare - a shirt open to their navel or a flash of the ankle below a sensible skirt - whatever feels really decadent.  If the men of the world fail to go on compulsive sexual rampage and the earth fails to implode out of sheer moral indignation, the cleric has to take it back."
            He looked at me again and then he laughed and laughed and laughed.
            "There's a thing I say to women" he offered.  "D'you want to hear it?"
            "I'd love to hear it."
            "Every year on August 6, every woman I see - I wish a happy birthday!  And they hate me for it!  How they hate me when I do it.  Do you know why I say that to them?"
            "I don't know why you say it."
            "D'you want to know why I do that?"
            "I would love to know why you do that."
            "You really want to know why I say it?"
            "You know I really really do!"
            "Let me just adjust this mirror, so I can see you better.  There you are.  Now - I tell them Happy Birthday because August 6th is the date that every racehorse in Australia is considered to be one year older.  Now d'you know why I do it?"
            "I am beginning," I said gravely "to have a few suspicions."
            "But you're not going to give it to me."
            "I am not going to give it to you."
            "You're going to wait for me to say it."
            "I am absolutely going to wait for you to say it."
            "It's because" he said triumphantly, "on August 6th, every woman is either a young filly or an old nag!"
I burst out laughing.  He slapped his knee and looked back and me and roared.
            "Oh yes" he sighed  "I'm a terrible trouble - a terrible trouble!   But there's words and there's words, I know that, you know that.  I may like to peck at them a little, but I do love women, and there's far too much pleasure in making them want to wring my old neck.
            Did you know that my football club came up with an annual award just for me? Do you think you could guess what it might be?"
            "I have a few ideas."
            "Well, I'll tell you.  It was a foot in mouth award!  Happened at the annual awards banquet a few years ago. The president of the club led us off with a little speech and we raised our glasses and at the end of it he pointed to a big chart on the wall and told us up there everyone would find their seat and their table for the night, and I just couldn't help meself: I opened my mouth and said "Glad you didn't leave it to the wives. We'd be standing here all afternoon."
He slapped his knee again and wheezed.
            "Well- the wife looked at me rather frostily - rather frostily. The president took me aside and said "Charlie, I need your help with something" and he took me outside for ten minutes and when we came back he pointed me in the direction of my table and do you know what they had done while I was away? I sat down at that table and a circle of female faces stared back at me without a smile on any one of them. I was the only man there, and they did me properly.  Oh dear.  All night, they did. They made me pay.
            And the very next year, the very first award of the night was my Foot in Mouth award.  D'you know how they made it?"
            I shook my head encouragingly.
            "They went out and bought a concrete door stop shaped like a foot and painted it gold.  And on the front of it - can you guess?"
            "I couldn’t guess."
            "They found a pair of those wind-up chattering teeth - a pair made out of brass, and they stuck that to the front of that golden concrete foot.
            I saw those ladies last month - at a banquet in Port Pirie.  We were at their table because we hiding out from a certain bloke and it turned out that they were hiding out from the very same bloke. We had a lovely time together. Of course" he said reflectively "I probably shouldn't have that story around town afterward. Now he knows that we're all hiding from him!  And they're telling me now that those teeth are mine again this year!"
            We had been parked across from my destination for the past five minutes. He turned in his seat and looked directly at me.
             "Darling, it has been a pleasure - an absolute pleasure - to have you in my taxi today. You'll wear a very small shirt on Monday- you will, won't you?  A very small shirt.  Peck at them - bite them hard!"
            I laughed and said that I would.  He reached back to shake my hand.