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.

The lost apostrophe (07.10.11)

Harrods cast it aside in 1928; Selfridges followed 17 years later, but by then Gordon Selfridge was too busy having his way with twin showgirls The Dolly Sisters, then worry too much about what went over the door of his emporium. Currys have dispensed with its services and Starbucks, well they are American, never used one in the first place.

The apostrophe is going the same way as the double space after a full point, which was much loved by legal secretaries when using manual typewriters. If punctuation marks were endangered species, then the apostrophe would be an Amazonian rainforest frog, or a fish dependent on Great Barrier Coral Reef for survival. We would have David Attenborough talking earnestly to camera in hushed tones about the need to keep it safe for future generations.

Despised by graphic designers who have been paid a fortune to “conceptualise” and “brand” a product, this little tick just gets in the way of their oh-so-cool layouts when they use their ubiquitous MS Comic San’s. And so corporate logos, billboards and most advertising omit this little symbol of possession or contraction.

This humble floating tadpole once looked to be consigned to the history books, but one valiant group have continued to keep it alive, albeit mistakenly. The greengrocer’s apple’s and pear’s were for many years a reassuring sight on our high street. This kind of sign-writer did not want to be faulted for omitting an apostrophe, so they were willing to run down their stick of chalk whenever an “s” is found on the end of a word. And it is this reverence for punctuation, an anxiety, even in this misuse which has kept it alive.

The large supermarkets seem to have put pay to the humble high street greengrocer with his random tadpole placed before an “s”, and Sainsbury’s, not content with taking all the customers from high street grocers, has even taken on the mantle of using their own apostrophe, the only supermarket chain to retain its use.

If punctuation has a gender then the full point is undeniably male, while the rather contrary apostrophe can only be a lady. The little mark shows up when she feels like it and at other times will appear gracefully in the wrong place altogether.

The Apostrophe Protection Society, established to defend the punctuation mark’s place in the English language, is calling on users of the inappropriate apostrophe to mend their ways, well they would. The Society probably has among its members the Colonel Blimps of this world who reside in The Shires expressing righteous indignation whenever an offending tadpole is spotted.

With the demise of the greengrocer, one might have expected the apostrophe to disappear from our streets, only appearing in its correct place, firmly disciplined within articles in The Times. But no, a new group has taken up the baton, and if anything in London at least is more numerous than the late lamented greengrocer.

Road works. Hundreds of them, in every street there is an urgent need to dig a hole and leave it for posterity. And many holes need the familiar temporary yellow road sign that often states the obvious.

The writer of the many road signs might not have apples and pears to sprinkle with fairly punctuation dust, but they have a surfeit of roads, streets, parks, squares . . . and yes cab’s.

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.

A Capital Idea (04.10.11)

The city of London was founded by the Romans, as Londinium, in the 1st century AD (although there was an earlier settlement), but the origin of the name London is still uncertain.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his 12th-century work Historia Regum Britanniae, suggested it derived from an ancient King Ludd who, on capturing the settlement, renamed it Kaerlud, which became Karelundein and then London. This has been widely accepted, though Monmouth’s book is full of myth. Richard Coates, in his 1998 article A new explanation of the name of London in transactions of the philological society, suggests the name derives from the pre-Celtic word Plowondia, meaning “boat river” or “swimming river”, because the Thames becomes too wide to ford in London. He also outlines other theories such as the Welsh-derived Llwn Town (“city in the grove”), or Glynn din (“valley city”).

Another suggestion is that it comes from Luandun, “city of the moon”, a reference to the temple of Diana, supposedly on the site of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The World Gazetteers lists 27 other Londons of which 18 are in the United States alone. There is even an asteroid called 8837 London discovered in 1989 by Eric Walter Elst is a Belgian astronomer.

Here, I believe is the definitive list:
London, England, a city in the United Kingdom
London, Ontario, a city in Canada
London, Belize, a village
London, Equatorial Guinea, a village
London, Finland, a section of Jakobstad
London, Kiribati, a small city on Kiritimati
London, Nigeria, a village
London, Limpopo, a village in South Africa
London, Mpumalanga (Noordprovincie) in South Africa
London, Mpumalanga (Graskop) in South Africa

In the United States:
London, Conecuh County, Alabama, an unincorporated community
London, Montgomery County, Alabama, an unincorporated community
London, Arizona, an unincorporated community
London, Arkansas, a city
London, California, a census-designated place
London, Indiana, an unincorporated community
London, Kentucky, a city
London, Michigan, an unincorporated community
London, Minnesota, an unincorporated community
London, Missouri, an unincorporated community
London, Ohio, a city
London, Richland County, Ohio, an unincorporated community
London, Oregon, an unincorporated community
London, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community
London, Tennessee, an unincorporated community
London, Texas, an unincorporated community
London, West Virginia, an unincorporated community
London, Wisconsin, an unincorporated community

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.

Being overheard (27.09.11)

Watching the new series of Downton Abbey I’m struck by people’s lack of discretion when within earshot of modern cabbies and the similarities with the butlers of Edwardian England. We may not be as erudite nor have the manners or sartorial elegance of Carson superbly played by Jim Carter but we are just as invisible, for at the dinner table the Granthams discuss the most personal aspects of their lives, quite oblivious that the butler waiting at table can hear their intimate details.

When driving the cab it’s impossible not to hear snatches of conversation and the adage “to keep one’s own council” would seem apposite for the more verbose of my passengers. Some of my colleagues once would brag about making money on the Stock Exchange after overhearing City dealer’s conversations, no doubt they are now losing money by being so indiscreet. While only last week in my cab I had two women and a man discussing their drunken exploits and sexual conquests in graphic detail, and quite frankly I don’t need this during my working day.

It wasn’t so long ago that our vehicles weren’t fitted with internal rear view mirrors preventing the driver from even looking at their passenger, let alone listening in on their conversation by way of the intercom.

An openness to one’s thoughts has now become commonplace with e-mails which are as private as a McGill holiday postcard; Twitter; blogs; and Facebook broadcasting to the entire world a person’s life and innermost thoughts. My father’s generation was told in the war that “careless talk cost lives”, but now anybody who travels on public transport is subject to the minutiae of strangers’ lives as they chatter incessantly on their mobile phones.

Now award-winning poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw has recognised this chatter that surrounds us all in the modern city can give inspiration to writers and has created Audio Obscura a new sound work, conceived for the public spaces of St. Pancras International station. Audio Obscura is an aural version of the camera obscura, giving a heightened reflection of the passing world and its snippets of conversation. The audience can listen to the work on personal headsets while wandering amongst the crowds of the Lower Concourse. Listeners will hear concentrated fragments of interior worlds drawn from monologues that glance off one another, listening to these many different voices it is hoped will enable visitors to engage with the connections, a process that Mark Mason has used with effect in his recently published book Walk the Lines. Audio Obscura is intended to remind people of the potency of the “fragment” and aims to explore our compulsion to construct narratives, to impose meaning, and to seek conclusion; the experience is not one of being told something but of becoming conscious of what we do with what we listen to, a bit like my colleagues who dabble on the Stock Exchange.

We’re surrounded by other people’s conversations and while many of us try to block them out, for CabbieBlog fragments of overheard talk have been a valuable source of material for the blog and have even helped me get over a case of writer’s block.

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 fifteen minutes (16.09.11)

Recently I was contacted by the BBC London Arts Unit with a view to my contributing to a documentary they were making to be transmitted in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. Entitled “A Picture of London” the assistant producer/researcher explained to me over the phone that they wanted to feature a number of people who work and live in the capital, who would relate their favourite places in London.

Meeting with the documentary’s producer in of all places the Museum of Childhood – would that be a reflection of childhood memories – he explained over a cup of coffee that they were filming about nine individuals and some would eventually end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.

Filming was scheduled for a Sunday evening a week or so later to rendezvous in a car park near Tower Bridge. My cab had a camera mounted on its bonnet by the grips man Garth (I had always wondered what grips were) and after about half an hour we were driving to Battersea via Tower Bridge.

One of my favourite spots in London is the beautiful Georgian church of St. Mary’s perched above the Thames in Battersea. It is said that Turner painted some of his rivers cape studies of light from the vestry window of the church and was rowed over every day by his servant in order that he might paint.

While taking numerous zoom shots of the cab approaching the water’s edge we were scrutinised by the River Police inquisitive of our intentions. It was explained to me that this was an occupational hazard of film units and they had already been stopped more than once that day.

Next was a drive across the capital with a camera pointing into my left ear with I trying to negotiate London’s traffic while commentating of what life was like for a London cabbie, not as easy as it looks with everybody cutting you up.

On arrival at the London Zoo (where both my father and grandfather worked), it was pitch dark but that didn’t stop them from taking another round of rolling shots of the cab, which again drew the attention of this time the Zoo’s security staff, hardly surprising as the main entrance by now was illuminated by their floodlights. A short piece of commentary by me as an audio recording rounded off the day.

Would I be contacted again by the BBC? Could this mark a career in broadcasting? These thoughts ran through me, by now, exhausted head.

Two weeks later I picked up a copy of our trade’s newspaper, there inside was a full-page article written by the doyen of cabbie journalism – Al Fresco – writer, raconteur, sometimes editor and a cabbie of some 40 years, describing how on a Sunday morning recently he was filming for the BBC.

How could I compete? There was an erudite part-time journalist, old fashioned Jewish cabbie who had more tales of London’s East End after the war, a place where most of the cabbies hailed from at the time, featuring in a documentary entitled A Picture of London.

Oh well! My Andy Warhol moment will have to wait.

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.

Maidens without midriffs (05.09.11)

Travelling along one of London’s busiest roads it’s easy to miss St. Pancras Church, which when built in 1819 cost £76,679 and at the time was the most expensive house of worship built since the construction of St. Paul’s Cathedral some 100 years previously.

Standing on the corner of Euston Road and Upper Woburn Place covered in grime thanks to the traffic hurtling past, with vagrants sleeping under its spacious Ionic portico it’s hard to imagine what it must have looked like in its prime when its architects William and Henry Inwood returning from Athens with measured drawings under their arm based their building on the Erechtheion of the Greek Acropolis.

On the side facing the Euston Road are three caryatids, copies of a purloined original on display in the British Museum nearby thanks to Lord Elgin – was there anything he didn’t take that wasn’t screwed down in Athens?

Now I don’t want to appear unchivalrous, but tell me don’t the beautiful handmaidens supporting the projecting alcoves, look, how can I describe it? Dumpy.

The statues were made of Coade artificial stone, a formula which had been lost but has since resurfaced on Wikipedia, taking the sculptor three years to make. They were brought to the church looking dainty until they were ready to be put up into place, Mr Charles Rossi, their creator, found that the measurements were a little out. He presumably had been working to metric while the builders of the church chose imperial and try as he may he couldn’t get the Greek goddesses to fit the recess. With a large crowd bemused at his misfortune Rossi needed to act rather quickly to regain his self-respect. He performed a miracle operation with 12 inches being extracted from their midriff, their draped Grecian gowns helping to conceal their stunted torsos.