Category Archives: A window on My World
Protected: Takeaway Tales
September’s monthly musings
🚓 What Cab News
Bilking, a funny name, for a not-so-amusing practice of running away without paying the fare. Website Taxi Point has collected bilkers who got their comeuppance. Alan Clark said: Had a lad run off, vaulted a 2ft wall and disappeared, he didn’t know it was about 20ft drop on the other side. Cabbie Jason Lake had a guy run on an £8 fare, he picked him up 16+ years later and told him. In all fairness, he paid me £20 plus the fare on the day. I asked ‘what’s the £20 for?… he said interest! Adrian Roberts had a similar scenario: I had a lad who paid me £20 upfront for an £8 fare but paid me as I started driving and said sort the change when we get there. We got to his house and he legged it shouting I’ve got no money!
🎧 What I’m Listening
For years I’ve been trying to get Suggs to submit a London Grill, but it looks like I’m going to have to satisfy myself with his Love Letters to London on BBC Sounds where he shares his fondest memories of the city with his unique wit, charm and musical highlights from his career, celebrating of what it means to be a true ‘Londoner’.
📖 What I’m Reading
Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden by Rachel Liechtenstein. For six years as an apprentice I worked a stone’s throw from this iconic street, home to diamond workshops, underground vaults, monastic dynasties, subterranean rivers and forgotten palaces, and before reading this book little did I realise what went on behind those unexceptional doors.
📺 What I’m watching
Passport to Freedom. Aracy de Carvalho was a young clerk at the Hamburg Brazilian Consulate. For two years during World War II she secretly issued passports to Jews without the dreaded “J” stamp, which not only wouldn’t allow them to travel but doomed them to the horrors of concentration camps. When newly appointed diplomat, João Guimarães Rosa, arrives the two fall madly in love. Loosely based on a true story, the parallel with today’s Ukraine is obvious. Why the BBC didn’t screen it not so plain, leaving its transmission to the niche Drama Channel. Aracy would later be honoured by the Yad Vashem with the Righteous Among the Nations Award. João would be known as the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century.
❓ What else
One of my earliest memories is of my first year of primary school being given a ‘Coronation’ pen set. The pen’s bodies were deep red with a huge crown on their top. The trouble, in those pre-plastic times, was these heavy metal adornments ruined the balance of the writing implement. Today if I’d have found the now lost pen it could have been used to write in Her Majesty’s book of condolence, that’s if the ink hadn’t dried up and Her Majesty’s crown could be removed from the pen’s top.
Protected: Self-publishing
August’s monthly musings
Cab News
When my neighbour surrendered his cab licence, Transport for London wrote thanking him for his service to London and refunding any outstanding licence fee. Roll on post-Covid-19 and when I surrendered my licence some 3 months ago, I find myself still awaiting an acknowledgement. I rang our taxi association and mirth ensued that I should even expect TfL to be working.
🎧 What I’m Listening
Admire him, or despise the man, there’s no ignoring Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. This series by BBC Sounds tells the story, from boy to man to prime minister. In each episode guests who have watched, worked and dealt with him from his early school years at Eton, studying at Oxford University, and later as a journalist, through to his resignation, tell of their interaction with this divisive character.
📖 What I’m Reading
The Mercenary River: A History of London’s Water by Nick Higham is a fascinating account of how, despite incompetence, private-interest greed, double-dealing, political corruption and short-termism, London became the world’s first place in the world to turn reliable piped drinking water supply to the home into a profit-making business.
📺 What I’m watching
I’ve come to the time of my life when TV Drama Channel has an appeal. Spooks a spy drama series that originally aired on BBC One, has wonderfully bizarre visuals, 1970-style split screens and a host of now well-known aspiring actors. The title is a popular colloquialism for spies, and the series follows the work of a group of MI5 officers based at the service’s Thames House headquarters. With an absence of cycle lanes on London’s roads and an abundance of Fairway cabs, it’s pure nostalgia.
❓ What else
Who uses paper maps to get around anymore? And what has using sat-nav done to our brains? These were questions posed by Timandra Harkness who teamed up with cabby Robert Lorden in a BBC documentary to scrutinise a technology that we now take for granted. Are sat-navs changing our brains? Does it affect the way we think? And at what cost for our health and well-being, particularly in mental health and early dementia?
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