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.

Rage against the machine (13.04.12)

This year’s mayoral race is following the predictable campaign that you would expect from the front runners, all the time honoured issues are being aired and as per usual it looks like a two-horse race. Fortunately for Londoners, some with more eccentric views have made their voices heard over the years on the Capital’s streets which have both amused, entertained and informed us in equal measure.

STANLEY GREEN An entrepreneurial spirit has at times been commendable with some individuals, for example, Stanley Green who upon retirement from the civil service decided against taking up golf, but chose to spend the next 30 years warning us of the dangers of protein. “Protein makes passion” his printed leaflets exclaimed, so reduce your consumption of fish, bird, meat, cheese, egg, peas, beans, nuts and well err . . . sitting, and the world will be a happier place. From 1968 until his death in 1993 Stanley sold his own pamphlet called “Eight Passion Proteins with Care”, which sold over 87,000 copies. With an eccentric approach to punctuation, the document was 14 pages long and rendered in a smorgasbord of font faces and weights, it also existed in a 392-page book form, which the Oxford University Press rejected in 1971.

WILLIAM BOAKES Riding a bicycle festooned with slogans and driven by a solidly-built, elderly gent Bill Boakes fought his first Parliamentary contest in 1951 when he stood for election at Walthamstow East polling 174 out of 40,041 votes cast; in 1956 he tried his luck again but this time in Walthamstow West, where he had an even worst result at 89. After a 30-year career in the Navy (he was a gunnery officer at the sinking of the Bismark) he stood under the banner: ‘Public Safety Democratic Monarchist White Resident.’ Road safety was central to his manifesto, that and a little racism thrown in for good measure. He would push a pram loaded down with bricks onto pedestrian crossings to make the point that motorists should slow down. He is pictured here in his ‘campaign bus’. It was actually a 140lb armoured bicycle hung with road safety and other posters that cleverly concealed an iron bedstead. Sadly for one who dedicated his life to road safety, he was injured whilst stepping off a bus and died from complications to a head injury.

GEORGE CECIL IVES Was a poet, writer, penal reformer and early gay rights campaigner. Born in Germany the illegitimate son of an English army officer and a Spanish baroness, he was educated at Magdalene College where he started to amass 45 volumes of scrapbooks of press clippings of murders, punishments, freaks, theories of crime and punishment, transvestism, psychology of gender, homosexuality, cricket scores, and letters he wrote to newspapers. In 1897 Ives created and founded the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for homosexuals which was named after the location of the battle where the Sacred Band of Thebes was finally annihilated in 338 BC. Working to end the oppression of homosexuals, what he called the ‘Cause’ he hoped that Oscar Wilde would join the ‘Cause’, but was disappointed. He met Wilde at the Authors’ Club in 1892, Wilde was taken by his boyish looks and persuaded him to shave off his moustache, whereupon he kissed him passionately the next time they met in the Travellers’ Club. In later life he developed a passion for melons, filling this house with them. When the Second World War ended he refused to believe it and carried a gas mask with him everywhere in a case until his death.

DAVID SUTCH Screaming Lord Sutch founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983 and fought the Bermondsey by-election. In his career he contested over 40 elections, rarely threatening the major candidates, but often getting a respectable number of votes and was easily recognisable at election counts by his flamboyant clothes. It was after he polled several hundred votes in Margaret Thatcher’s Finchley constituency in 1983 that the deposit paid by candidates was raised from £150 to £500. His most significant contribution to politics came at the Bootle by-election in 1990 securing more votes than the candidate of the Continuing Social Democratic Party (SDP), led by former Foreign Secretary David Owen, within days the SDP dissolved itself. In 1993, when the British National Party gained its first local councillor, Derek Beackon, Sutch pointed out that the Official Monster Raving Loony Party already had six. He committed suicide by hanging on 16th June 1999.

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.

Saving for a rainy day (30.03.12)

First invented in China over 4,000 years ago when some enterprising chap took the parasol that had been used to provide shelter from the sun and waterproofed its paper cone with wax and lacquer rendering it both ugly and waterproof.

Before we had a drought the umbrella’s spiritual home was London. Originally designed as an accessory for women, it took a brave soul to promote its masculine use.

Enter writer and philanthropist Jonas Hanway who in the mid-18th century carried an umbrella for 30 years. His eccentric manner gave his name to the contraption – which previously had taken the Latin word ‘umbra’ meaning shade – and for a time it was referred to a ‘Hanway’.

His persistence came at a price for he incurred a good deal of ridicule, Hackney carriage drivers would try to splash Hanway and hustle him to the kerb because they feared the umbrella’s detri­mental effect on their foul-weather trade. The cabbies needn’t have worried you can never find a taxi in the rain to this day.

Due to our past inclement weather, the umbrella has become a ubiquitous feature of London life and one shop has done more to promote its use than any other.

In 1830 James Smith opened London’s first dedicated umbrella shop in Soho’s Foubert’s Place. When the brolly business outgrew its cramped premises, Smith’s son, also called James, opened two new shops and the one in New Oxford Street remains to this day, a perfect example of a Victorian shop with its original brass and mahogany shop front and interior fittings.

With the continuous procession of buses parked in the road with their engines running inside it’s an oasis of calm. The service from the helpful staff is redolent of an earlier, less hurried age. Choose the wood you like, select the size of the cover, be measured for the correct length and then wait for five minutes while the ferrule is fitted.

You might have to save for a rainy day for a bespoke brolly they cost £250 – £280 per umbrella. So for security, the handle should on no account be adorned with a maker’s name so that upon it can be engraved your initials – especially useful to the waiters in those restaurants in which the differentiation of customers’ belongings carries a low priority, or when you inadvertently leave behind your precious brolly in my cab.

Now you are equipped – not simply with a well-made, properly functioning umbrella, but with a statement to the world in this Jubilee Year that you are English and proud of it.