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.

Waste not, want not (08.03.11)

I’ve always thought that Prêt à Manger is a rather pretentious name for what is, frankly, just a sandwich shop. The company would seem to now agree with me, for recently they have been referring to themselves simply as Prêt, whatever that might mean. But I can forgive them all the marketing hype when I see their little vans promoting the company’s philanthropy.

Throughout the year they support hundreds of charities by giving unsold sandwiches to the homeless at the end of each day; they deliver over 12,000 fresh meals to numerous shelters in London every week. In total, Prêt à Manger donates over 1.7 million products to charities for the homeless across the UK every year. Their philosophy is that it’s much better that unsold food goes to people who really need it at the end of each day than putting it in the bin.

Being born just after World War II my mother intoned her mantra that nothing should be left on the plate at the end of a meal, for there were many children starving in the world who could do with a square meal. She had good reason for promoting the virtues of preventing food waste, for incredibly until I was seven years old in 1954, Londoner’s were still subject to food rationing.

In the succeeding decades scientists and farmers have been very successful at increasing crop yields but at a cost. Increased use of fertilizers and pesticides has given rise to adverse health problems for many people. While the increase in water consumption used to grow food for the West, has for many countries, promoted friction, indeed many analysts predict the next major war will be caused, not by land ownership, but water rights.

British households throw away a third of the food they buy, while supermarket waste adds a further 25 per cent to that. From a time during the last war when nothing was wasted (even eggs were dehydrated to increase their shelf life), we have come to a point that recently in 2009 the United Nation’s Environmental Programme estimated that more than half of the world’s food is lost, wasted or discarded along the chain from farm to shop, that before consumers’ buy it. They concluded that the world could easily feed itself for a long time into the future, even with the Third World’s burgeoning wealth resulting in increased consumption. All we have to do is radically change our attitude to waste.

The major supermarkets chains claim to send waste food to power the national grid, but this is part of the distorted consumerism that has developed since 1950. What sense is there in sending carefully bred meat and delicately nurtured tomatoes to an anaerobic digester to produce methane gas? This it seems to me, a gross waste.

At least Prêt with their cute little charity vans are putting surplus food into someone’s deserving mouth. It’s just every time I see their evening deliveries I have the notion of two homeless people saying “Oh No! Not wild crayfish and rocket salad with mayo and lemon juice dressing again, what I’d give for a cheese and pickle sandwich.

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.

Regency Retail Park (04.03.11)

If you should jump into a London cab and direct the driver to Locks he should drive you to number 6 St. James’s Street. That is according to the website of London’s most famous hatters, James Lock of St. James’s. Just don’t ask for a bowler while you’re there, at Locks it’s called a Coke hat, after William Coke a farmer from Holkham, Norfolk, for whom Locks made the first such headgear in 1850.

But this cabbie was surprised to find after reading David Long’s Tunnels, Towers & Temples that Locks have a rear entrance giving onto Crown Passage. For years I’ve driven down Pall Mall (now being transformed with London’s most pointless road works) little realising that alongside Quebec House, with its blue and while flag, lies the entrance to Crown Passage as perfect example of a Georgian shopping centre as you’ll find in London.

Many of the little shop fronts in this side street are Georgian, Lock’s small wooden bay window on its serpentine brackets is a reminder of the period when shopkeepers were starting to be a bit more assertive in their architectural display, pushing their windows out towards the street to attract passers-by. But they were only allowed to invade the pavement-space by so much – there were strict regulations about how far they could protrude. In a narrow street like this – it’s little more than an alley, really – your windows were only meant to stick out 5 inches or less.

Next door the Red Lion pub which calls itself London’s last village pub, this little alleyway has a village feel about it with shops for all your daily requirements: hat, shoes, groceries, papers, dry cleaners and a sandwich shop, there is even a chimney sweep.

The Red Lion also plays a part in a curious custom on 30th January each year when The Royal Stuart Society laments the death of the beloved monarch, Charles I executed in Whitehall on that day in 1649.

Wearing full Cavalier attire they first lay wreaths at the base of the King’s statute at Charing Cross, itself the point where all distances are measured from in London. The statute by Hubert Le Sueur in 1633 has a curious tale. In 1649 John Rivett, a brazier, was ordered to destroy it by Cromwell, but he buried the statute in his garden and made a fortune by selling souvenirs allegedly from the metal. He then gave it back to Charles II upon the Restoration of the Monarchy.

Having done their duty for King and country like many societies The Royal Stuart Society repair to the pub after a job well done, The Red Lion in Crown Passage.

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.

My Radio Times (01.03.11)

“Yours is the only cab I’ve been in that the driver listens to Radio 4”, was said to me once by my passenger. On reflection afterwards I pondered – how could someone be cooped up in the driver’s compartment for 10 hours a day, listening to a daily dish of either the top 20 current hits or the 20 golden oldies that are churned out by London’s commercial stations 24 hours a day – and stay sane?

I was brought up in a time when most families didn’t have a television and weren’t likely to for another decade. Steam Radio, as my father was given to call it, was the entertainment of choice – frankly the only choice. The Light Programme, with Workers Playtime, Listen With Mother and The Archers (still going strong after more than 60 years); The Home Service with its output of informed discussion and news; The Third Programme broadcasting mainly classical music; and the world’s finest broadcaster of unbiased news content – The World Service, who would always boast that the information was sourced by “Their Own Correspondent”, and the source was not from some rag bag news agency.

In 1967 to compete with the ever increasing spread of pirate radio and to acknowledge the new wave of what we now called the Swinging Sixties, the BBC took the best of the Light Programme and Home Service to form what was to become the world’s greatest radio station, Radio Four, at the same time starting the fledgling Radio One for a younger audience.

Transistors supplanted the old valve wireless sets which had been manufactured by Bush and Pye and we listened through our trannies (as we called them in the naïve days of the 60s, before the term took on another connotation), and Radio 4’s output of dramas, comedies, quizzes and features have been the background to my working day for as long as I can recall. Any Questions, Does the Team Think?, Brain of Britain, From our own Correspondent, PM, Letter from America, Just a Minute, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue are among programmes that I would prefer to listen to rather than engage in small talk with my customers.

Since that time some of Radio 4’s output has transferred to television with greater or lesser success. Programmes transplanted from Radio 4 to television have included: After Henry; Goodness Gracious Me; Hancock’s Half Hour; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The News Quiz (renamed Have I Got News For You); The League of Gentlemen; Room 101; Little Britain and many more.

A trip down Memory Lane might be a pleasant nostalgic experience for me, but what has that to do with being a London Cabbie? Well, the British Broadcasting Corporation have decided for reasons only understood by their senior executives and some Guardian readers, that The Corporation, as it likes to be known, was too middle class; too London centric, whatever that might mean; and how can I put this? White. Which I suppose is why my customer exclaimed surprise at finding a London Cabbie who doesn’t listen all day to Talk Sport.

Now the BBC’s production teams are to be scattered to the four winds in an attempt at what Radio 4’s controller calls changing “the general tone of the station away from formality and perceived didacticism towards spontaneity and conversation”, which presumably means dumbing down and moving away from London to encourage people other than middle class Londoner’s to tune in and understand its content. With many of Radio 4’s programmes already having hosts possessing attractive regional accents, and most quiz, debate and documentary programmes transmitted from around Britain I fail to understand the reasons for this enormous upheaval. Is Today in Parliament going to be reported from, say, Bristol? Farming Today could be given a makeover and relate topical news items of interest to farmers in Manchester. Woman’s Hour could talk at length about the causation of man flu. Would The Archers be improved if it were the tale of simple farming folk living in Hackney? And the Shipping Forecast with its sleep inducing 00.48 am broadcast intoning Rockall, Malin, Forth, Dogger etc, might it be improved if its predictions for the weather were transferred to forecasts of The Serpentine’s weather?

But what do I know about how to run the BBC? Nothing I’m only a consumer and licence payer. I do know this, that a rather busy taxi rank alongside Langham Place will, over time, be rather quiet. But at least I’ll be able to listen to The Archers without any interruptions from customers.

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.

Man the pumps (22.02.11)

I read an interesting article regarding the fuel rises of late. Someone with more time on his hands that is really healthy came up with these interesting figures. Being the same age as me he started driving in 1965 and according to his calculations, the national average wage was £700 a year or around £13 a week (I was on £5 per week, but no mind), and I was paying four shilling (20p) for a gallon of diesel. That meant I could buy a total of 67.5 gallons if I was earning £13 a week. The national average pay today is £22,000 a year or £423 a week and the average price of diesel is £5.81 a gallon, so I can now buy 73.15 gallons of fuel with a week’s wages. As a percentage of my earnings, I’m paying less for fuel than I was 46 years ago. So why do I get angry over the cost of motoring or is it that as a cabbie I’m buying over £120 of the stuff a week?

This simple “back of a fag packet” calculation would indicate that we have nothing to complain about when it comes to fuel prices, for they are charging less in real terms than they were 40 years ago. Should we be concerned about the companies that sell the product, who cares that Shell was raking in £1.6 million an hour in the final quarter of last year? Well, yes we should.

With oil reserves becoming so inaccessible it produced the fiasco that BP found itself in the Gulf of Mexico last year. And now with proposals to drill under the polar icecaps, and all the difficulty that will entail, not to mention the possible cost to this fragile ecosphere, you would think that the diesel for my cab would be remorselessly rising faster than the cost of living. But according to my fag packet calculations that is not the case.

For more added value can be obtained from processing the black gold. Shell makes the vast bulk of its profits on the “upstream” side of the business – producing oil and gas – rather than the “downstream” refining and petrol sales. These by products are much more profitable than flogging diesel to London cabbies, which after all are only going to burn it and come back for more.

It is for this reason that oil companies are increasingly trying to alienate themselves from the motorist. Take the typical petrol station, its forecourt is dirty, fuel often leaking from nozzles and covering your hands with diesel, and here’s the rub: Notices that tell the motorist – and only the motorist that he’s dishonest. The motorist is photographed from every angle while you brace yourself from the wind that always seems to blow through these soulless places. There is on the forecourt a presumption of guilt. On each pump the sign reads: “Make sure you have sufficient funds BEFORE you fill up. We will prosecute anyone who drives off without paying for their fuel.” And this might surprise some, at night garages insist on payment up front, so you have to queue up in the cold twice to pay (the second time is because the high prices make it impossible to stop at the desired amount). When paying up front I once requested a receipt and I was told once by the poorly paid attendant I’ll give you a receipt after you have filled up. My reply was of course: “If you don’t trust me, I’m hardly going to trust you”.

If you are lucky to enter the warmth of the shop what do you find? Well, if it is in Chelsea or Fulham everybody doing their weekly shop. So you have to queue as if it was Tesco on a Saturday morning. And here’s the thing: those shoppers don’t have to pay up front for their frozen peas, milk or bread, nor are they told as they peruse the shelves they are potential thieves.

So here are my suggestions taken from when I was paying 20p a gallon: Stop serving coffee and selling groceries; man the pumps and clean the forecourt; have you staff in smart uniforms and pay them enough so they actually do care if I buy diesel; trying getting your attendants to fill the tank so they get covered in diesel and not me; and get them to wash my windscreen if it is necessary. But it’s unlikely to happen for you see the multi-national oil companies only make a few pence profit per litre – some estimates are as little as 2p a litre.

Finally, and I promise this is the last gripe, why, with previous Governments spending a fortune encouraging motorists that drinking and driving don’t mix, are these shops which happen to have petrol pumps attached to them, allowed to sell alcohol?

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.

Divided by a common language (15.02.11)

It’s that time of year again when all the hotel chains offer cut price breaks to pull in the punters.

In the summer months communicating with London’s visitors is simple: those tourists from the Middle East have learnt two or possibly three words of English; “Harrods”, “Selfridges” and “ThankYou”. Europeans on the other hand make a better fist of it: the Dutch have better English grammar than most cabbies I know (I was told once that they watched BBC TV from a young age); most other Europeans have English as their second language and feel the need to brush up their linguistic skills with any cabbie they can find. The ever resourceful Japanese take some headed notepaper from their hotel room and show it to the driver.

Thank goodness the American’s have a sense of humour for although they speak American it is not easily understood by the English “Our hotel is in South-Waark” or “Li-Cest-Tur Square are common phrases. But after some good humoured banter on the correct pronunciation of tomato or potato we usually manage to arrive at their destination.

But for our bargain mini break visitors, well, it’s frankly embarrassing; to paraphrase it is like two languages conjoined by a common country. If I can do my best at Estuary Speak and sprinkle “geezer”, “wots up” and “fink” into my lexicon, those northern folks after watching Eastenders four times a week since the old King died, should at least understand me and I them.

But help is at hand from of all people The University of Leeds who are preparing a “Language and dialect atlas of Britain in the 21st Century”. In an important use of their £460,000 research grant they intend to highlight regional variations of English.

Just how we have got to this stage of the development of English since we have been speaking it among ourselves since Saxon times, with just a slight interruption from the Normans, I don’t know. For by now the BBC’s received English should be the spoken norm for all of us.

But what I do know is that Wayne and Charlene will not be using the research paper to brush up their cockernee for their next visit to the Capital. And certainly can I be bovvered?