Confessions of a rickshaw driver

In this depressing season - when it’s cold enough to see your breath and too dark to see the potholes that send you flying over your handlebars - I am reminded of the awful days I spent as a rickshaw driver this time last year. I say days, but it was more like weeks. Three weeks of exhausting labour, sweating like a packhorse for a pedicab company run by a dyslexic man named Python.

It started with a note taped to a wall in the School of Oriental and African Studies. “OPURTUNITI TO RAKE IN BUKS. MUST LIKE SIKLING...”

At the time I was short enough of “buks” for this ad to draw me into Python’s lair - the third floor of a Soho car park - but after shelling out rent for a rickshaw and entering a big lift to get to the ground floor of the car park, I started to doubt the wisdom of my actions. In my confused state of mind I turned for consolation to the only other person in the lift – an Argentinean chap - and asked, “How’s business?” to which he replied by contorting his face in a strange fashion. “I mean,” I said, “are you raking in the bucks?” He laughed awkwardly. At this point I realised that most rickshaw drivers don’t speak English.

Unperturbed, I hit the West End and cruised slowly through Soho. No one flagged me down until - after about half an hour - an inebriated weirdo threw himself into my path, gesticulating wildly. “Warren Street!” he slurred, and I obeyed. But as I pedalled he leant over the side of my cab as if to puke, but instead swore loudly at a passer-by. Then he grabbed my shirt and whispered into my ear: “These people all are filth. I can have them all killed because I am a member of the Albanian mafia.”

I steered through crowds of braindead slappers, drug dealers, and drug-abusing city boys (gangsters with offices) beneath lights that glowed so brightly they could be seen through the closed eyes of millions of Londoners. When we came to a halt near Warren Street he shoved a fat wad of twenties into my hand and barked: “Wait here for five minutes… If you run, I’ll kill you! You think I’m joking, but I know everyone in Soho and if you run I’ll find you again and I’ll kill you!”

I was confused. He made as if to kiss me before vanishing into a building to finalise a crack deal, and I waited, amazed that after only an hour of working in Soho I was already complicit in organised crime.

After fifteen minutes I was tired of waiting and noticed a gaggle of squiffy Manchunian lasses sashaying down the pavement.

“Take us to Piccadilly Circus,” one of them beseeched me. “Go on, love, it’ll be a laff!”

“I can’t,” I replied. “An Albanian gangster told me he’d kill me if I ran.”

“Come off it!” they giggled in unison, “Take us to Piccadilly Circus!”

My front light was wired up to a dynamo and flickered slowly into life as we set off. They were corpulent girls and I wheezed and sweated as we travelled down Tottenham Court Road.
After we got to Piccadilly Circus one of them asked me if I’d like to join them in their hotel room on Shaftsbury Avenue, but I decided against it, sounding my bell as I made off in search of more fares, aware of the pressing financial difficulties living in London entails.