When I was a child, a man tried to accost me as I walked to my friends house (his parents owned the village sweet shop, it was great). He pulled over and asked if I'd like another yo-yo, a better one than the one I was playing with. Inclined to say yes, he told me I'd have to go back to his house to get it though. I had one eye on the church clock- inesrt your own Catholic joke here- and told him thanks but no thanks (actually it was more like ta, but nah. Can you guess where I grew up now?), I had to be going.
It never occured to me at the time that good children don't talk to strangers. When I got home that evening my parents nearly had kittens "you spoke to a stranger!?" was their first reaction, followed by "just what were you thinking!?"
I think, if memory serves that the next week someone offered me a lift home from school, to get out of the rain. Of course I took them up on the offer. All this just proves that perhaps I never learn.
Tonight I got into an illegal cab with a group of strangers all of us heading in the same sort of direction. The driver got lost- such a surprise as his English was roughly as good as my Italian (pathetic and extremely limited) and all this came flooding back to me. If he'd taken us to a backstreet alley with the intention of selling out internal organs on the black market I might then and only then concede my parents were right to warn me about strangers and cars "you don't get something for nothing!" was a common saying of theirs, but I'm trying my hardest to prove them wrong.
I realised half-way through our round-about trip round East London that I didn't have any cash on me. And the other people sqeezed in the cab with me just waved me off "nah, no problem mate"and covered it between them.
Obviously not locals, I thought as I tried to place their heavily accented twang.
Ah, OK. Australians.

Toby x x x x