Top shelf uber driver experience
Have you ever heard a Scouse-Romanian accent? It’s a thing of beauty. And music to my ears to meet another transplant/emigré as I pulled out of Liverpool Lime Street Station to make the final leg of the journey back to my Mum and Dad’s flat. Often I like to ride in quiet but I of course won’t turn down a bit of chat, a result of manners. And this driver arrived; an angel to accompany my experience.
With an enormous amount of luggage of course attention is attracted and curiosity. Which comes with questions. I told him I lived in Japan and was travelling up from my brothers’ place in London and that I’m visiting my parents.
And he didn’t offer the usual questions - I think there’s a high context that people have when they are ‘foreigners’ at home. it’s a human connection - your humanity comes through the set pieces. We talked about Liverpool, Birkenhead, how in order to get from Liverpool to my home town you have to go through ‘the tunnel’ (I have spent a lot of time and hundreds of journeys in ‘the tunnel’. Tunnels have an almost Proustian effect. Tunnels have not been an occasional experience for me.) How back in the day, you’d struggle to get a taxi driver to take you to the ‘other side’ and how it was really expensive - a high premium was put on it.
This opened up the conversation as to how he lives on this side - not the Liverpool side so he was in fact heading home, he lives in Birkenhead.
Here’s what I learned:
He lives really close to his sister - just 5 minutes - she moved here after him
His brother lives close by too
His Mother died in the past few years (I offered condolenes)
He wants his father to move here too - they can get Romanian TV and the whole family are here
He was just back from three weeks in Romania
He is buying a house in Birkenhead - it’s going through soon
He was going to buy in Romania as it was super cheap but COVID put a stop to that then weirdly the house prices went up to a price where it made no sense to buy in Romania, so he turned his attention to England instead
He does his Uber rides around the school drop off and pick up
It was all so very familiar and I loved listening to his stories - there’s a kinship there. His fifteen years in England to my twenty five years in Japan I felt into every single story he shared and listened intently - letting every word hit me and our third entity to be bolstered by a shared exerience that neither of us need declare but sat between us. Additionally just practical life stuff shared - ageing parents and trying to manage cross-country care, life designed around life, buying houses - where and how to do that, a reminder of the effect that COVID has on us, taking long holidays - ‘holidays’ those visits home we take to stay connected to family and our homelands.
He dropped me off and help me out with my case. I said thanks and off he went. I dropped a fat tip on the app - I appreciated him and try to be a good tipper, having worked in the service industry for many many years.
Noticing - for someone like myself with a shadowy persuasion yet a heart filled with joy and happiness - paying attention to daily confirmations of belonging and goodness, of kinship and companionship can give my shadow comfort and access to the other more enjoyable elements of my humanity. Years of coaching, contemplation, generous friendships and therapy have helped me understand the importance of recognising and welcoming these moments as helpful. In consensus reality these stories provide actual concrete exapmples of decision making and accounts of a life lived. At the more ‘let it be huge*’ end of the mystical scale - this man was sent as a guide to take me through the tunnel of ancestral inheritance and remind me that my experience is shared, not singular but is particular to certain people. And to set me up to walk into my parent’s home and life filled; filled from the essence, filled from the realm of shared experience, the realm of Kizuna,
It felt like a little bit of ordinary magic to have this guy be my driver and share a moment of connection. I’m quite certain that to him I was just a fare, but for me it was an important reflection to send me, my inner child and all the tender, sensitive versions of me, into my family and all the tender, sensitive versions of them.
Thank you RomaniScouse. AKA Vlad.
Vlad Appeared
An angel
To take me underwater
And emerge
Into childhood
An adult
Book a coaching call here - 30 minutes, no charge, no obligation, no pressure - explore how coaching could help you. Let me be your RomaniScouse.
Scouse is the affectionate nickname given to people form Liverpool.
*Let it be huge™ Gretchen Miura Dairyuji Oga (also my partner in the Lighthouse Grief Circle)
