Ian Mcmillan: The day I doubted I was me

The other day a taxi driver called at my house to take me to an event. As I levered myself into the car he said: “I know this street; years ago I used to pick a bloke up at Doncaster station and bring him back here. I think he lived on this side of the road.”

I nodded and said: “Do you remember his name?” The driver shook his head. “He was a poet, I think, and he was always on the radio. He used to do a lot of work down in London. Mind you, this was ages ago.” I waited for him to say: “He’s probably dead now” but he didn’t. He looked up the street as we set off. “I think he might have lived next door to you,” he said, changing gear.

I didn’t know how long to leave it. “Yes, it was definitely this side of the road,” he said. “It was me.” I said. Thinking about it, I remembered him. Older, of course, like we all are, but definitely the same man. He didn’t hear me. “He might even have lived in your house,” he said. “How long have you lived there.” “It was me,” I said again, a little louder, a little more decisively. “It might have been further up,” he said. Maybe my voice was muffled by the noise of the engine. “It was me. It was me you used to bring back,” I said, lifting my voice. “I used to do quite a lot of radio work in London and I’d get back to Doncaster station quite late and you’d be on the rank and you’d take me home.”

I was sitting in the back in a mask, so maybe that was why he didn’t recognise me straight away. He looked in his rear-view mirror. “It’s me,” I said again, lowering my mask slightly. He paused and said: “Are you sure?” I nodded but then, suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. I don’t know if anybody else has ever had this experience, this feeling of being nudged off the tightrope of who you are, but I certainly felt it then in the back of a car on my way towards the A1. Of course I’m Ian McMillan, I said to myself. I was then, all those years ago in the back of a different taxi, and I still am.

The taxi driver was speaking again. Yes, he remembered me now, he said, and I believed him, and it was as though the years had melted away and we spoke about the other drivers who used to be on the rank at that time and where they were now. It struck me, not for the first time, that there are advantages and disadvantages to living in the same part of the world all your life. The disadvantage may be that you could be a stick in the mud, and that your horizons are a little narrow, but the advantage is that you have roots, and a kind of memory of place and people that you can’t replicate unless, to coin a phrase, you’ve put the years in.

“I think I’ll write a poem about this,” I said, as I got out of the car. He laughed and said: “Show it to me in 15 years!”