Near side, off side, other side

"He'd always insist on driving my mum round. But even then my dad used to hate driving. He really was only doing it because, when they were first married, driving the car was seen as a man's job."

I smiled, and thought about my own dad's driving. "A different generation, I suppose," I said.

"Exactly, yeah. The thing was, he was a plumber, so he had to go round people's houses, you know, to fix their boilers or whatever—"

I nodded and grunted something that meant: our boiler stopped working recently, and the house was bloody freezing for days. If there was a hint of disparagement for the plumber that first tried to fix it and made it all worse, then I hoped the cab driver didn't hear.

"—But he used to hate getting in the van to get there. Hated it."

We changed back into the left-hand lane as we approached a roundabout, and started to slow down.

"Funny, really," he continued. "He never saw me do any of this stuff. I was still in sales when he died. I wonder what he'd have made of me driving other people round. All the driving I do, every day, he'd probably be horrified...! Thing is, I suppose he'll never know, now...."

There wasn't much I could say after that. A heavy weight lay across the conversation for a few moments and the roundabout loomed closer. I just frowned a frown that he probably couldn't see. But we were suddenly both distracted by a van powering up the outside lane. As it came alongside, we could both see the big red lettering on its side:

A & J — PLUMBERS

It hared round the roundabout with barely a touch on its brake, shot into the turning opposite and was quickly lost in the traffic. As we stared after it, of course we were both thinking: the old man knew exactly what his son was up to, all right.