Winter(2)

Smokers in motor vehicles will be aware of the precise window configuration required for smoke to vent directly to the outside. A centimetre either way and the smoke can't escape or swirls in gusts throughout the vehicle.

The same principle of aerodynamics applies in taxis when discreetly extracting passenger odour, except for one critical difference – to avoid funnelling the offending odour past one’s own nose. This is the beauty of a driver's central window controller.

Passenger odours are not a problem in warmer weather as windows are invariably open. It’s only during winter that such odours can become trapped inside a motor vehicle.

Indeed, due to the cold a delicate balance is required between shutting out the cold, whilst retaining one window slightly open for venting, and avoiding reliance on the heater.

Heaters in taxis are killers and should be avoided. They can send a driver to sleep and/or have an explosive effect on passengers who’ve been drinking.

Anyhow, with last nights bitter winds and chilly temperatures I got to test each passenger’s personal hygiene, whether it was gut-rot from food and alcohol sloshing around together; acute halitosis from gum disease; foot rot from dirty socks; stale odours from dirty clothing; workout sweat, sex, etc.

Yet one passenger in particular stood out, a well dressed and sober, middle-aged woman from the North Shore. Despite my precaution of adjusting the passenger window, the first thing she did upon boarding was nip the window closed. Trapped !

Yet there was no way I was opening my window and have the vile odour wafting past my nose - she had some nasty sulphuric compounds on the boil. I recognised this rancidness from past encounters with mental patients, maybe the result of their psychotropic drugs.

So I spent the journey in survival mode, hunched against the door and snatching short intakes of air through the opposite corner of my mouth to avoid gagging.

Of course sitting up front she wanted to chat but I steadfastly refused due to the suffocating odour emitted every time she opened her mouth. It was absolutely revolting and would’ve killed a brown dog at ten paces...phwoar!

It’s going to be a long winter.

Comments

[Walter]

Adrian,
I know exactly what you mean. Back when I drove there was a regular customer lady that smelled like a hamper of mildewed laundry. The stench was so unbearable that a delegation of us drivers went to the radio dispatchers, explained the situation, and we never heard her address again, though I don't know what they told her. One time before that when I had her in the cab, I had to drive with my head OUT the window in the dead of winter.

[Walter]

Adrian,
I know exactly what you mean. Back when I drove there was a regular customer lady that smelled like a hamper of mildewed laundry. The stench was so unbearable that a delegation of us drivers went to the radio dispatchers, explained the situation, and we never heard her address again, though I don't know what they told her. One time before that when I had her in the cab, I had to drive with my head OUT the window in the dead of winter.

[Rainer the cabbie]

Having lived on the north shore for many years I have to suspect the story above as being fabricated. People like the passenger in this story live in other areas of Sydney, one knows about hygiene and relating to other humans in my neck of the woods. After checking your GPS and checking the facts I assume you have not moved out of Surry Hills all night. We will investigate!

[Kezza]

Hopefully you won't come across this situation too often. I bet that's one occupational hazard no one warns you about before you start driving!

[Roy]

Don't you ever fart yourself Adrian?

[adrian]

Roy, of course, but as a fellow cabbie you'd be well aware that cabbie farts don't smell, natch.

[Chas]

This is a good tale. You should write short stories you seem to have a flare for taking the ordinary and making it interesting.

[Goldstein]

I picked up a guy about 60 one day, nice man, owned hotels, I won't say his name -it came up because it is unusual, and is a family friend's surname -anyway, when he got in I thought he had dog shit or putrid rat guts on his shoe -I was looking at the passenger footwell -nothing there -but it began to dawn on me that it was his breath !

We chatted a bit on the journey, he told me he was going to the hospital that day for tests -he'd been unwell..

Anyway, about 6 months later my mother points out a Death Notice -she reads them every day.. -because the last name was our family friend's surname -and it is the gentleman I'd picked up..

I asked at the front bar of the hotel I'd picked him up from, that he owned. Apparently when he went to hospital for the tests they found advanced stomach cancer.. what I'd smelled was cancer. Not nice at all.

[Nigel]

Did a trip across the Nullarbor back in the days before air conditioning - and at the height of summer too. Went two days without a shower. On the second day, my co-driver was fast asleep, so I positioned my elbows in such a way that the fast moving air from outside blew up my T-shirt sleeve, across my right armpit and then across my body and into his nose.

It only took him about 1 kilometre to wake up, which is not bad at Nullarbor speeds. His comments about my personal hygiene don't bear repeating.

[raf]

Goldstein you can smell cancer??? amazing

[Goldstein]

raf:

If that putrid odour was caused by the rotting in his upper guts -yes, I can smell cancer. Or its results. As I presume the doctor he saw that day also smelled..

By the way, an old medical practitioner told me that different infections in the throat etc have different odours -tonsils being different to gingivitis, stomach/oesophagus problems, etc..