The 81st Entry
RAF Halton Aircraft Apprentices
Sept 1955 - July 1958

ISSUE No.13 - NOVEMBER 2007
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

Life After Halton Part 4 by Malcolm[Mac] Mason

Taxi Driver

After leaving the steel company I set my sights on owning a taxi business. I did some research, but obviously not enough I was later to learn, and decided to go ahead. Before that happened I had to get all sorts of licences and certifications sorted out, one of which was a driving and knowledge test through the Amsterdam traffic police. I studied and studied, eventually I passed the test and to gain practical experience I took a job with a cab company for a couple of months. I bought a taxi business with a single vehicle at a very high price - the licence plate cost a small fortune and the vehicle was old and clapped out, so it had to be replaced with a new one. Things didn't go as well as I had hoped. The hours were long and the regulations very strict - I could only work according to a rota drawn up by the authorities and the fares were also regulated by them; there was very little room to develop any initiative unless you broke the law. Income wasn't particularly brilliant, taxes and bills were high and all in all I felt stuck keeping up with all of this. I never did achieve the expansion I'd hoped for.

Life wasn't all that bad though and it was most certainly interesting in a city like Amsterdam, there was never a dull moment, but there were also some rather negative incidents. On one occasion I was attacked and severely beaten by a man who was as high as a kite on drugs and drink - my injuries prevented me from working for some time. He eventually appeared in court (three years after the incident), was found guilty but not given a sentence because it would have prevented him getting a job he had applied for. On another occasion a passenger paid me with a 100 D Mark bank note, which turned out to be false. When I reported it to the police I identified a mug shot of the man who handed me the false note. The detective then led the same man in, he'd just been arrested, and took some money out of a bag which the man owned and handed me the legal equivalent of 200 D Marks as compensation. On the lighter side there was a day when I was driving along a main thoroughfare and I noticed masses of bank notes floating in the air. I came to a screeching halt, jumped out and started to collect notes - so too did my passenger. More cars stopped and people were grabbing money left and right. It is rather a long story but eventually I collected in excess of 5,000 guilders, which I duly reported to the police, but kept the cash in my possession. No one ever reported it missing and the police suggested it could have been money from a drug deal!! There was also the time that I won a TV after having delivered a passenger to a high class brothel. I was always surprised at the way passengers open up when chatting with a taxi driver. I used to hear the most intimate personal stories and felt at times like being a psychologist, or a marriage counsellor, or a priest hearing a confession. It was the same case with some of the Dutch personalities I met during my work.

Six years into the job I was asked by a representative of a British Travel firm if I could do some work driving their special guests, which I agreed to. After a while they asked if I could substitute as a tourist guide on their incoming coaches, I knew enough about Amsterdam and the Netherlands so it wasn't a problem. I took on more and more work for them and eventually, to gain official recognition, sat the (then) recently introduced state exam to become an official guide. Before sitting the exam I paid for and followed an expensive course (staged at an Amsterdam museum), and spent quite some time studying Dutch history, the geography of the land and the Dutch Masters. As the tourist work increased my taxi work decreased. The income in the tourist industry wasn't bad and it was bumped up by the commission from purchases made by the passengers at tourist 'traps' which we were compelled to take them to (cheese farms, diamond polishing factories, clog makers, souvenir shops, museums, restaurants etc).

In 1980 The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight visited Holland for the annual remembrance service , which is on 4 May. I drove out to Schiphol Airport to see the Lancaster that was on display on the platform with several other aircraft. The RAF Association Amsterdam Branch had set up a stall to raise money. When it was learned I had served in the RAF I was invited into their club and shortly after I joined, this turned out to be good move