Category Archives: A window on My World

A window on My World

The ‘W’ Word

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wedding It’s the ‘W’ word

There comes a time in every fathers life which he anticipates and dreads in equal measure. With just six words, your little girl grows up and your bank balance changes irrevocably.

“Dad, I’m going to get married” whoosh 30 years of your life has flashed by and it will never be the same again.

First came ‘the dress’, my luck was in, I would not be required during this part of the process, and only cabbie wife accompanied my daughter to choose said garment.

“The dress has cost double what we budgeted for” was the opening gambit as they returned from their shopping foray. My head snapped up with such force from a quiet read of my newspaper, that at first I feared a trip to an osteopath would be required.

“But never mind, we can economise with some of the other items”, was the solution for my wallet.

[N]o limousine for my daughter as she wants a white taxi just like Dad’s. Great thinks I, pick up from house off to church then on to the reception. Two hours work on tariff 2, £40 tops.

And this is where the ‘W’ word comes in. For whenever the word that dare not speak its name is mentioned (WEDDING) you add a nought at the end of the price.

“One white cab, flowers and ribbon £400, but to you Squire with a trade discount £360, do you require chilled champagne at £40 a bottle or a release of white doves?”

“We need a function room for late afternoon and evening, considering we are in a recession what’s your best price?” was my opening gambit on the phone. “Is that for a wedding? Then its £2,000”. “Oh! Yes and the meals we serve in the public restaurant costing £12.50, we will charge you £27 plus VAT.

The organist at the church you would have thought a rather charitable chap helping out on Sunday, his fee for 45 minutes graft . . . £100.

Now I’m the sort of husband that occasionally, just occasionally buys his wife flowers. So I know a thing or two about their cost, with when the ‘W’ is said 60 carnations wrapped in silver foil – £3 each! Vases on the tables, cost in IKEA £10 for six, “Well Sir, we can rent you the vases for £7.50 each plus VAT”.

Now, does anyone want a cab, I promise not to mention the ‘W’ word.

A window on My World

I’ve Got The Hump

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Kwik Fit Fitters could be the sponsors for these carbuncles growing on virtually every street in The Capital.

Every regular driver in the City knows to their cost these humps inflect on the suspension.

Last week I encountered 127 road humps on a single shift, yes I know I’m an anorak but I derive a perverse pleasure compiling these statistics.

[P]utting in 50 standard humps on three or four connecting residential streets costs about £150,000 and some of the more upmarket ones are wonderful works of art, worthy of exhibiting in the Tate.

In the Borough of Islington they have even constructed humps on short cul-de-sacs, now it is proposed to remove them and impose a blanket 20 mph on all roads in their borough.

Some of my customers even ask me to make detours of up to a mile to avoid these obstructions in Islington and have you noticed the nouveau rich now buy 4x4s just so they can travel over these humps at 40mph, while the rest of us mere mortals, apart from white van man can only go at only half their speed?

Do emergency vehicle drivers have to wear gum protectors to spare their teeth when on a shout?

So here’s my suggestion, if we are to keep vehicle speeds down to a reasonable level, cameras loads of them. Okay I know we have more CCTV cameras in London than we can shake a stick at, and average speed cameras are useless as journey times across the Metropolis are down to Victorian averages. A set of eight average-speed cameras covering four residential streets cost £250,000.

Produce the cheaper normal speed cameras concealed in hanging baskets and stick them on every lamppost, a double whammy, beautiful streets and an income for The Burgers of London.

And you never know Rachel Thame might be tempted on Gardener’s World to extol the virtues of speed cameras in hanging baskets, or should she appear on Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson.

Don’t get caught speeding, travel by Licensed Black Taxis for your comfort and security. Complementary opinions are available on current affairs, politics and football. Ask any driver for details!

A window on My World

Chinese Takeaways

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rickshaws

[T]his blog tries very hard to avoid profanity and believe me sometimes it is tested to its very limits. But these f***ing rickshaws are now all over London. What started out as harmless fun pedalling the odd tourist around the pedestrianised confines of Covent Garden has turned into a nightmare. These rickshaws cause massive congestion as London’s traffic queues up behind them as they travel at little more than walking pace on major roads.

The Rickshaw riders charge exorbitant sums in order to recoup the high rental fees the operator’s charge for the bikes. Up to £12 a mile is normal, whilst £30 per mile is not unusual. If three people get into one of these contraptions they can expect to pay £12 to the driver and then have to negotiate the cost of the journey.

The safety of these vehicles is horrendous. The Transport Research Laboratory looked at the possible safety implications of allowing the continued use of these vehicles for hire and reward in London. Its scientists warned that ‘any impact with a motor vehicle’ was likely to result in ‘serious injury to both passengers and riders’. Transport Research Laboratory also warned that ‘The standard of braking for a Rickshaw fell well short of that expected of a car’.

I suspect members of Westminster Council and the Greater London Authority don’t go out at night and see this problem. If a major West End show should need to evacuate the theatre near to conclusion of a performance, 800 theatregoers would be confronted by a wall of these bloody contraptions. We have seen alas, what happens too many times before with people getting crushed and trampled on when an evacuation route is obstructed.

And if that is not bloody bad enough these crazy bastards ride down one-way streets in the opposite direction with young children in the back. It is only a matter of time before we have a tragic accident.

Whinge over, I feel a lot better now, can I get off the couch doctor?

A window on My World

Whinge for 25 years

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This is whinge of the week or should it be called whinge of the next 25 years?

Listened on the radio today and they said there are now over 580 different scheduled road works in London, that’s not including any emergency works that crop up. Thames Water when asked for a date of completion of their much vaulted ‘Replacing London’s Victorian Water Mains’ have said it will be finished in 2035 yes!, you read right, 2035.

[T]he Victorians built the water system quicker than Thames Water are fixing it by inserting plastic sleeves into the existing pipe work. Just one example Cromwell Road the major route out west was started on 10 July and will take 18 weeks.

And do you know, I think these holes are dig by leprechauns, because I never see anyone working on them.

Why don’t they just converge on an area and work three shifts all day and night until the job is done? They say night work is not possible because it disturbs the residents, I would have thought traffic jams day and night outside your bedroom window might be a little irritating.

Are they really trying to stop London’s traffic, the bendy buses on diversion around the Oxford Street hole have jammed up half of the West End?

While apparently the traffic flow in London is now back to pre congestion charge levels. So anyone paying the congestion charge is hardly getting value for money, are they?

Some of these holes are untouched for weeks, is it beyond the wisdom of Thames Water to complete one excavation before they start another?

They can’t even get the signs right; a roadwork’s sign in Hyde Park reads ‘delayes suspected’. Is this a case for Inspector Morse? Should not the Education Secretary, the appropriately named, Ed Balls, be complemented on the rising exam result passes?

A window on My World

Make a cuppa and do the Knowledge

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When I started the Knowledge 17 years ago you got yourself a bike, some warm clothes and set off most days to explore London whatever the weather.

One anecdote at the time was of somebody buying a Travel card and attempting to gain that coveted green badge from studying the Knowledge from the top of a double decker bus. Nowadays I suppose the lazy use Google Maps.

[B]ut for most of us it was the humble Honda C90. Along the way you first experienced Cabbies Scrotum a condition caused by sitting down for too long. The verbal exams also would be a challenge to your resolve, I was once asked to describe a journey from two places on opposite sides of the same road. When I queried it with the examiner he said “it’s raining, I’m pregnant and I’ve got a wooden leg so I need a cab”.

Now these clever people at Google have come up with a service which some lazy Knowledge students will want to try, make a cuppa and sit in the warm, call up Google Street View and bingo.

Google has spent almost a year collecting these images, with a fleet of specially modified cars, and the resultant images provide a snapshot of a bygone era before the recession hit the British high street. With many of the pictures were taken last summer, they show stores that have since gone bust, including Woolworths.

As well as the logistical challenges of taking tens of millions of individual pictures along Britain’s roads, Street View has also suffered intense criticism from privacy campaigners since it launched in the US two years ago. An American couple even went as far as to sue Google over invasion of privacy although they subsequently lost the case.

The resolution of Google Street View is amazing and you can examine every recess. Alright you still have go to Knowledge School to revise with other students, and yes, you don’t get some of your senses stimulated, like smelling the urine on the Paddington slip which for some perverse reason is used as a toilet by some cabbies.

But pursuing the Knowledge can be much more interesting than looking at images and studying a map all day, and you need a reasonable intellect to achieve your badge, but it’s a pity you’re not told how boring driving a cab all day it can be.

But how good is Google Street View at locating some obscure ‘points’ like the Texas Legation Memorial. So what will we have soon, a generation of cabbies who have strained their index fingers using a mouse?

I tell you what they’ll miss the smell of the urine!