Paris taxi

My friend Ingrid and I were chatting over tea and sticky buns one afternoon, and talk turned to travel, Paris in particular. Having never been there, I said, "Let's go!" and two weeks later we touched down at Charles de Gaulle, two lone female travellers susceptible to the deviousness of French taxi drivers (nothing personal, we were just in France). One of said taxi drivers detached himself from the pillar he had been leaning against and offered his taxi. We should have been put off by the fact that it wasn't at a taxi rank, but inevitably we just wanted to get to our hotel and have a shower after the long flight.

We set off through the outskirts of Paris, endless rows of huge, unimaginative apartment buildings, agape at the size of the place (Cape Town doesn't prepare you for the large cities of Europe). We soon hit rush hour traffic and were jammed into lanes of vehicles which sat for ages while the meter ticked over alarmingly, and then all surged forward like lemmings as soon as a gap appeared. There seemed to be no rules of the road, just every man for himself. They say that to get a driver's licence in Paris, you have to go round the Arc de Triomphe five times without causing an accident.

A huge truck pulled up alongside, just inches from my face, and as it pulled forward there was a dreadful ripping sound like the tearing of metal. The back corner of the truck had hooked onto my door and had opened a gash along it, like a giant tin-opener. And I was the sardine in the tin. Ingrid and I had eyes like saucers as we gaped at each in disbelief. The taxi driver didn't seem to notice, and the truck driver just drove on (we assumed that truckers are brawnier than taxi drivers)! Of course, there was no possibility that they could have pulled over to discuss it anyway.

When we got to our hotel, we could see that he would need a new door. He gave some sort of French gesture and probably swore a bit. But I think we paid for it. He charged us R600 for the trip, and that was eleven years ago.