Paul Archer - Its On the Meter: Traveling the World by London Taxi

An inspiring story told with lashings of energy and humour.

Ranulph Fiennes

This is the trip I would take if I were younger, braver and lightly but certifiably out of my mind.

Bill Bryson

What do you do after leaving university? Get a boring office job or drive a black cab 43,000 miles around the world? Ernest Hemingway said always do sober what you said youd do drunk. These lads did and raised 20 K whilst smashing two world records. Brilliant.

Andy Parsons

High adventure filled with hilarity and mischief it goes to show what can happen when you combine some serious guts and a daft idea.

Levison Wood

Copyright 2016 by Paul Archer and Johno Ellison

Afterword 2016 by Leigh Purnell

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2017

Originally published by Summersdale Publishers, Ltd. in the United Kingdom.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Summersdale Publishers, Ltd. in the United Kingdom

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1713-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1708-4

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHORS

This is a story about three of us, by two of us. Throughout the book Johno will be writing in a font like this, and Paul in a font like this.

Writing a book with two voices has been a challenge. Three voices proved beyond our abilities, so our third member, Leigh, is mostly absent from the writing (except for the afterword) but his contribution to the adventure was just as important as ours, if not greater.

This is a story about what happens when three lads in their early 20s go on an adventure in an old banger. It was not noble, it was not smart and should probably be viewed as a series of stories outlining how one should not travel the world, but (unfortunately) all of the events detailed in the book are true. However, some names have been changed to protect people we met along the way.

PREFACE

The soldiers looked unsure of themselves. It seemed unlikely that they had ever been in this situation before.

JUST LET US OVER THE BORDER, YOU FUU!

The nearest soldier jumped backwards, out of reach of the screaming red-faced Australian who lunged out of my car window. The others, less intimidated by the yelling, jostled forward cradling their AK-47s.

How did I end up here? Sitting in a 20-year-old London taxi in the middle of the Baluchistan desert, on the IranPakistan border, with a raging Aussie hitchhiker who was trying to start a fist fight with a bunch of armed conscripts.

Oh, yeah, thats right, I listened to my idiot friend, Paul. But where was he now? He was long gone.

I closed my eyes and tried to zone out from the chaos for a moment.

When I opened them the view hadnt changed. I was still staring out through the filthy cracked windscreen at the rolls of barbed wire that marked the all-important border, our holy grail.

Sweat dripped off my scraggy beard.

I eyed the gauges on the dashboard wearily; the temperature seemed to be holding steady, but the fuel gauge was barely at halfway. Getting across this border relied heavily on this beaten-up, jetlagged taxi not packing up. Beyond this lay 350 miles of Taliban-controlled desert, baking with 50-degree heat. My two best friends were hundreds of miles away and I had been left to navigate this desolate landscape, with its recent spate of kidnappings, drug smuggling and banditry, with a passenger who seemed hell-bent on getting us arrested, or worse.

The Aussie started afresh: IM GONNA KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE FUU

How the hell did I end up here?

Three years earlier and thousands of miles away, a different black cab raced along the rainy Birmingham expressway:

Been busy tonight?

How many times had this guy been made to suffer that question?

I didnt actually care about the answer and he knew it. I was pretty sure he didnt care either, yet the awkward charade played out in its usual way. He replied with the standardised formula that he used when other punters slurred the very same question through the pay hole in the plastic barrier: a non-engaging comment on the traffic, a reference to which club had chucked out the most people, a generic moan about recent roadworks.

Cool, I replied, returning to my intoxicated thoughts, only just managing to stop myself from asking him what time his shift would end.

I was dressed up like a Thunderbird. The reason for this escapes me, but I took comfort in the fact that everyone else at the party had also been in fancy dress. I had been just on the right side of tipsy until Id been roped into that round of shots, and now I was firmly in the I reckon that tree is climbable reckless and excitable stage of inebriation.

The yellow felt of my Thunderbird boots had turned black from the sweat and beer and vomit and blood and dirt and blue alcopop on the club floor. None of these constituents were actually black, yet they had somehow mixed together to form a black slime. I pondered this great unanswerable question for a handful of seconds, until my thoughts returned to how long the taxi was taking to get me home, where my warm bed and tomorrows hangover awaited me. The fare was getting expensive; incredibly so.

I had been discussing earlier that night with my best friend Leigh what to do after we graduated. Ideas began to surface as the beer flowed; he wanted to have a driving adventure somewhere as travelling around the world with a plane ticket that stops in just six places is for pussies and I thought that sounded fun.

The taxi driver and I were pootling along the expressway five minutes later and I began to wonder about the longest ever taxi ride. Maybe there was a world record? That would be a world record worth having! Not quite as noble as the fastest 100 m sprint, perhaps, or some of the Arctic adventures or mountain climbing ones but definitely better than having the worlds longest fingernails or spending the longest time in a bathtub of baked beans

HOW MUCH!?

Wed finally pulled up outside my student house and it appeared as though I was in the process of being mugged. I considered contacting Guinness to tell them that I had just broken the world record for the most expensive taxi ride ever.

Once I got inside, I heard Greg snoring in his room and Johnos room was locked. When Johnos room is locked, its best not to think about what hes doing let alone disturb him so I went into the kitchen to raid the fridge.