For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Passport for Pimlico (20.08.13)

Just south of bustling Victoria lies a little enclave comprising some of the quietest streets in London. It is an area full of intrigue and scandal, so isolated yet near to the seats of power if I were a spy I would seek out a pad here.

Roughly a lop-sided square with Lupus Street running along its southern edge and Warwick Way to the north, with Belgrave Road and Sutherland Street enclosing this labyrinthian pattern of parallel streets, one might be excused for thinking its layout was the easiest to learn while studying The Knowledge.

But there is a problem none of the roads comprising the Pimlico Parallelogram can be driven along their entire length as most are one-way in multiple directions.

The kernel of this post was that recently I asked a customer to direct me to their house, complaining, as usual, that I had given up years ago trying to learn the geography of his neighbourhood. It was then he told me that the bizarre one-way system was to protect MPs.

Apparently it is impossible to transverse this little area, this was in part to prevent the IRA targeting its high profile residents. I pointed out that if an individual was prepared to kill to further their cause, compliance of the Highway Code would not be high on their agenda, but he insisted that that was the case.

The resident safety would probably not have occurred to the speculative builder Thomas Cubitt who in the 1820s started to build these houses with their perfect Regency symmetry which were described in an 1877 newspaper article as:

“Genteel, sacred to professional men . . . not rich enough to luxuriate in Belgravia proper, but rich enough to live in private houses, its inhabitants were more lively than in Kensington . . . and yet a cut above Chelsea, which is only commercial.”

The area’s isolation was the setting for the 1949 comedy Passport to Pimlico where in a cellar children find an ancient parchment document which authenticates Pimlico as legally part of Burgundy and therefore outside British Government jurisdiction.

Now the area has over 350 Grade II listed buildings and without grand houses, Victorian serial killers, ancient monuments or tourist attractions it still feels detached from London.

With its proximity to The Houses of Parliament over the years the area has attracted Members of Parliament – and their mistresses. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the young women at the heart of the Profumo scandal were sub-tenants of Dolphin Square, but no one seems to remember which flats they occupied; some say Keeler lived in 501 or 601. Other famous or infamous politicians have included Sir Winston Churchill, Jomo Kenyatta, Charles De Gaulle and Oswald Mosley.

With MI5 and MI6 a short walk away this seems to make Pimlico and perfect spot for those protecting – and spying on – the corridors of power . . .

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Back to Black (09.08.13)

It now has been 17 years since I started pushing a cab around London looking for fares and in that time I’ve probably driven most post-war taxis. Even before I had qualified going to a trade exhibition at Islington’s Business Design Centre got me a test drive in one of those boxy Metros. They always had trouble shifting those utilitarian boring beasts.

When I was first let loose on the streets of London my baptism of fire was an old – no very old – FX4. Registered in 1982 at a time when air conditioning was something an East Ender massaged into their hair, and without power steering, your arms would ache negotiating its two tonnes of steel around London with a penchant for swinging left unannounced when squeezing between tight gaps.

When the old girl gasped its last (well the drive to the meter broke) it was saying just let me die in peace, I’ve taken my last paying passenger.

A succession of Fairways followed some you couldn’t lock the doors, others that the only means of exiting the driver’s compartment was via the window and opening the door from the outside. One vehicle accumulated rainwater beneath the for hire sign to ensure the driver had a shower whenever he had occasion to brake heavily.

I’ve owned a more modern TX1, its shape unfairly likened to a blancmange, as with most of its siblings it had the ability to track down top secret transmissions. Perplexedly at certain ‘hot spots’ (outside the Langham Hotel is one of them), the central locking on the fob key would fail to work, occasioning a complicated procedure punching in PIN numbers to get the vehicle started again.

I should have headed this post ‘Tickled Pink’ but some enterprising cabbie has beaten me to that for recently I’ve been driving what must be the most photographed cab in London – it is pink.

A neighbour, also a cabbie, declared that it matched my eyes, while I’ve received opprobrium from Aussies standing outside a local hostelry, “strewth mate!” I think was the refrain at the time.

My postman just had to knock to deliver a parcel which clearly fitted the letterbox, so he could voice his mirth at seeing ‘Pinky’ parked outside.

Ladies would choose my distinctive livery over my more conservative colleagues while many will strike up a conversation, rather a novelty for decades the fair sex have ignored my presence.

Henry Ford might have generated the quip ‘any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it’s black’ after he realized that drying paint took the longest of any step in the assembly line and had his factory switch to the fastest drying paint they could find, which, of course, was black. But I think old HF would be speachless at the sight of Pinky.