The Clairvoyant Cabbie

 

The Clairvoyant Cabbie

?

My daughter had a strange experience in a London cab some years ago. The cab stopped at some traffic lights and the cabbie looked at my daughter through the driver’s mirror and said my late sister’s name. My sister had an unusual name, not one that would naturally spring to mind or easily be guessed, so my daughter was taken aback.

 When the cabbie then added my brother-in-law’s name to the mix, my daughter was even more perplexed. He said she was not to worry and that my sister was well and happy. My daughter and my sister did not look alike – blue/green eyes and long blonde hair against dark brown eyes and short dark hair, so there could have been no visual ‘jolt’ even in the unlikely event that my sister and the cabbie had met.

Was it chance that he happened upon my sister’s name? He and my daughter had never met before – it was a casual encounter between driver and passenger and they knew nothing of each other and had not been conversing. My sister had lived near her husband’s family in rural Norfolk for many years after moving from Kent and had never lived in London.

This was brought to mind when I was listening to Radio 4. Julian Clary was a guest on Paul Merton’s programme, Room 101 and mentioned a psychic cabbie in London. Apparently, there is also a psychic cabbie in Gateshead.

 

As Shakespeare’s Hamlet expressed it:

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

Telephones (2)

In the days before every child received a mobile phone as soon as it babbled its first words it was possible to maintain some control over phone calls made, though not received, by the young adults in our families. It’s true that such ‘control’ might sometimes consist of an unseemly screaming match between mother and daughter involving a lot of misunderstanding – ‘You don’t understand, I need to call her’ – and much flouncing out of rooms, thundering of feet on stairs and slamming of doors (or was that just in my house?)

Teenagers have an urgent need to communicate – not with their parents, heaven forfend! Mumbling suffices for most responses – ‘Yes, no, maybe, if you like, I did, I didn’t, goodnight, hello, goodbye’ are all covered with one grunt. No, they have a desperate desire to maintain contact with their peers. No matter that they have just parted outside the house after spending all day together, it is imperative that they call each other as soon as they have entered their respective homes and thrown their school bags on the floor.

Hours of garbled conversations follow and it’s no use eavesdropping in the hope of gleaning any information. What you hear bears little resemblance to English as you speak it.

Well, that’s the way it was, anyway. Long ago, we had just one telephone in our house, a good, old-fashioned rotary dial beast that was solid and reliable and in constant use. In vain did I plead with my children to use the phone when rates were cheaper but the prospect of having to wait a couple of hours before they could engage with their friends was intolerable. Finally, I hit on the solution. I bought a telephone lock! One daughter was so disgusted that she stormed out of the house to a public phone box. I was delighted that at last I had regained some power.

My husband was working abroad quite frequently during those teenage years (‘Was that deliberate?’ I ask myself now) I was also out of the house all day, working. One day he returned from a business trip and needed to make an important phone call. He was not happy to find the telephone locked. He managed to wrench the lock off the phone and when I arrived home I was left in no doubt that a replacement device was not to be purchased.

The young people in my house were only too happy with that directive!

Call me by my name, please

Call me by my name, please,

Call me by my name.

I'm someone else's mother,

Someone else's wife,

Someone else's daughter -
Is this someone else's life?

I mirror others' glory,
Rejoice in all their deeds,
I linger in the background,
Anticipate their needs.

Look beyond the labels
And see the steadfast soul;
The woman that I once was
Is still there, strong and whole.

Call me by my name, please,
Call me by my name.
JC

Mother Courage

This morning on the BBC breakfast news programme a mother was interviewed about her decision not to tell her thirteen-year-old daughter she had terminal skin cancer. She had been told that her daughter had six months to live - devastating information for anyone but to hear that for your child is the cruellest blow. The mother wanted life to continue as normally as possible for her family so she shared the diagnosis only with her own mother. Her daughter and son were able to continue their usual relationship and no concessions were made for the young girl's plight because no-one knew.

The daughter lived for almost four more years. When she was aware that her cancer had returned she wept with her mother and said, 'Mummy, I'm going to die'; her mother comforted and reassured her and a few weeks later her daughter died.

I think the mother made an extraordinarily brave and compassionate decision for the child she so dearly loved. She gave her a normal life. Shethought the diagnosis was a burden her daughter should not have been expected to bear; she could not have watched her marking off the days on the calendar if she had known the original projected time-scale.

Knowing that a person is desperately ill changes attitudes to them. This mother spared her daughter the awkwardness that family and friends often experience when they don't know how to react or what to say. I applaud her for her courage and steadfastness. I don't know whether I could be so brave in a similar situation.