Home for Christmas

I get a taxi to work when I'm feeling lazy or don't have my bike or am wearing the wrong shoes for walking. I stand out on the road. Sometimes a taxi arrives straight away; other times I wait. I was waiting this morning, getting more and more impatient when one finally came along. The driver was wearing a suit and tie, which is unusual enough these days. He looked about 80, which is even rarer.

I told him where I was going, and we discussed how best to get there. I studied the side of his head, his ears, which were longer and more elaborate than most ears, with faint wisps of grey hair around them. As we talked my impatience disappeared, and I was suddenly glad that Operation Freeflow doesn't seem to be working, because it meant I would have more time in the car with him. The rest of the world melted away as I sat forward and listened.

He never married. He couldn't afford it. He imagined I wouldn't understand, being the age I am, but when he was young there was no money, and he didn't want to bring a girl into a life of poverty. Oh, lots of people did it, but he only had one life, and he didn't want to spend it in drudgery. He drove lorries across the country, making deliveries in every town, every county. The job of a slave, he said it was. Sleeping in the cabin at night. Not like now, when you get put up in decent accommodation. Then he started driving a taxi. He's been doing it for 30 years.

As he drove along North Strand he was caught by a guttural cough, the kind that rattles dangerously, the kind that's hard for the healthy to hear. He has had a cold for the best part of a year. The doctor prescribed a course of strong antibiotics, but they haven't worked, and the cough bottle he takes doesn't seem to make a difference.

He is in his late 70s, he said, and he was relatively healthy until 20 years ago, when he finally gave up the drink. That's the funny thing. He was grand and healthy, and then he gave up the drink after being an alcoholic for most of his life, and it was only then that he started getting these terrible stomach pains. He went to the Mater, but they found nothing wrong with him. When the pain persisted he insisted on going back to the hospital. This time they saw that his stomach was producing too much acid. So he eats very simply these days.

He told me about his diet. In the morning he has a bowl of porridge, because it agrees with him, and so many foods don't. At dinner time, which you might call lunchtime, he has a fillet steak. With vegetables? No, not vegetables, just a fillet steak, grilled, and some bread and butter.

He has been to every butcher in the city, trying to find good meat, and he only found what he was looking for in Finglas. That's where he said the best meat is. So he gets his steaks there, and he cooks them himself. No salt or pepper or mustard. At teatime, which you might call dinner time, he has a slice of bread and tea.

I brought up the subject of Christmas. I was curious to know where he would be. It's just another day, he said. He will be at home, in his rented house on the north side of Dublin. Nobody will come to visit him. His few relations, nieces and nephews, down in the midlands county where he is from, are too far away to visit. They might call him on the day, but then he hates the telephone.

On Christmas Day he will get up and have his porridge and then his fillet steak and then his bread and tea, and then he will plug in the electric heater beside his bed and settle down for the night.

Bob (his name is Bob) only does five hours in the taxi a day. It's his way, he said, of trying to cheat the undertaker. Two and a half hours, then a break, then another two and a half hours, then home. He said you get used to the loneliness, but he said it in a lonely voice, so I found it hard to believe. Especially when he added, without sorrow or self-pity, that nobody cares about you when you are old. Boy or girl, he said, nobody cares.

It's not the whole truth. There are people who care about the more than 113,000 older people living alone in this country. I've a friend, for example, who is part of Care Local, a Dublin charity desperate for funds to ensure the continuation of its valuable service. He and his fellow volunteers visit men and women who live alone, to provide some regular company. It's just an hour, a life-enhancing hour, a week.

When we parted Bob shook my hand. He said my shake told him a lot about me. Did you not know, he told me, the handshake was originally conceived as a way of judging a person's character. His was gentle. Yet solid. And warm. Merry Christmas, Bob.

Care Local is at 01-8782358 and www.carelocal.com. Age Action Ireland is at 01-4756989 and www.ageaction.ie