My life of crime

I have been in front of a magistrate and done a runner on a taxi driver. Fortunately I do not have a criminal record. Instead I have stories to tell.

The runner on a taxi driver was quite an experience. I had just moved to Marrickville and so was not too familiar with street directions, especially at 4:00am in the morning after a party in Paddington. Of course I was not drunk.

I had hailed my cabbie from Oxford St and directed him to Livingston Rd, Marrickville. After a while the suburb looked vaguely familiar but unfortunately I could not exactly navigate him to the street where I lived.

He could not read a road map.

It was 4:30am and he was prepared to leave me in the middle of nowhere. Remembering the landmark decision, Donohue versus Stevenson’s Snail in the Bottle case I thought, this bloke has a duty of care to take me home. And yet he didn’t care.

I got out of the car and ran.

His limited English stretched out to include, Fucking Bitch and Fucking Slut in his vocabulary. Fortunately I was able to escape by running the other way. I managed to get into another taxi and the driver knew exactly where my street was.

I was so traumatised that the next day I suffered a bout of diarrhoea which, indeed was uncomfortable as it lasted the whole week. And that week was Melbourne Cup week.