Pondering the rebirth of telly’s Neighbours on Amazon, I suddenly needed the real thing – big time.
Never one to get owerfamiliar wie folkies next door. Although, in oor Watson Street tenement, wi’ just two cludgies shared by five flats, it was tricky not to get horrendously intimate withoot even exchanging a nod.
In my first semi, Mr Angry next door took it into his wild napper to chop to ankle-height our adorably privatising dividing hedge, claiming he “owned” the roots. So, we promptly erected a fence, claiming we “owned” the concrete posts.
I’d a pigeon-funcier neighbour whose birdies executed a wondrous 42nd Street tap dance on my dormer roof at dawn. Fa’ needed an alarm? Next, the lovely Malcolm, who regularly shooshed angrily charging geese from my garden opposite Walker Dam.
In my present hoosie, the family next door – before they rented it oot – was extra special. Andy, a diamond – apart from when he set oor dividing hedge on fire with his weed torch – fixing every fault I ever had, including a tap fitting flying off and near flooding the kitchen. She advised him how to break into my side door when I’d locked masellie oot and he was temporarily flummoxed. (Solution: break the wee pane of glass and reach doon to turn the key.) I still wonder if she had an evening jobbie…
They’ve now rented oot to a lovely couple – him from Russia, her from Belarus. As I said, I’m not the kind to pop next door for a cup o’ sugar or a spare egg. Aye wondered how onybody hid the nerve to dee that. Well, I’ve now learned in spades.
Tuesday morning, up wie the lark to catch the 8.51am bussie for my 9.15am doctor’s appointment. To the stop in good time, 8.45am. Checked the timetable. No! Arrival time now 8.44am. Had I missed the sodding thing? Panic, panic.
Waited another five minutes. Decided I’d deffo missed it and needed emergency action. Phoned my quine, hoping she’d be working from home. Nuh. Phoned Rainbow Taxis. No cars until the back of 10.15am. Outrageous. Called the surgery to say I’d be late. Surprise – engaged.
It’s amazing what desperation courage will encourage. I to the door of my Eastern European neighbours. She appears, a vision of loveliness – the way we all dream of looking when we’re fresh out o’ bed, but we’re actually wrecks. Long, ash-blonde hair in perfectly tangled curls. Stunningly chic black silk, white-piped, pyjamas.
I blurted oot my desperate plea for a lift. In perfect English, she was unfazed charm itself. Explained her man was oot, but she’d drive me hersellie. So, off she whisks me – just as trundles along oor street (oh, the irony) that bussie I thought I’d missed, but was obviously very late. How’s that for a super-neighbour?
Would Uber sate the appetite for taxis?
Hallelujah! The shortage of taxis in Aberdeen is finally being tackled. Leaders of the Our Union Street taskforce, bent on reviving the city centre, fear a major stumbling block is the lack of cabs to get folk into and out of the area.
For too long, taxis have been as rare as hens’ teeth. Not just at weekends, when revellers are stranded in ever-growing ranks – most cabbies preferring their scratchers to providing a service. Astonishingly, during the day can now be as bad. As you can read above, when I phoned for a hire just before 9am, no cars available until 10.15am. And it wisnae even rainin’. Outrageous.
Tourists and businesspeople as well as locals can testify to the shambles of huge queues at the railway station and airport, leaving the “oil capital of Europe” like a laughing stock – except naebody’s laughin’. Thing is, this is nothing new.
Aberdeen has been a disastrously taxi-free city for mony years. And, at the heart of it all, it’s the citizens who are suffering: residents of all ages who need and want to get into and out of the centre, but find it increasingly difficult to organise their journeys.
Quite rightly, Our Union Street leaders are calling for talks and an examination of the whole issue, hopefully with taxi companies as well as the council. Surely those talks must include the possibility of attracting Uber into Aberdeen? In 2017, the app-based operator didn’t take up an option to move in. With the ongoing, and hugely frustrating for punters, shortage of drivers, surely now is the time to dial up Uber again? After all it’s quick, economical and reliable. Everything our current system is not.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970