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.

Hippy Homes (10.05.13)

It was a beautiful summer’s evening and after nearly five years hard graft to pass The Knowledge a task which at times had taken over my life I was now ‘King of the Road’.

Having criss-crossed London a thousand times I thought I knew every square, cul-de-sac and back-water of London, but my fare had directed me to Bonnington Square, somewhere I had never investigated.

As we turned into the square ahead of me was a sub-tropical garden in Vauxhall!

Here tucked away a stone’s throw from where the gardener John Tradescant had founded ‘The Ark’ with its collection of botanical specimens from around the world were tropical trees in peoples’ front gardens.

The story of the saving of Bonnington Square from developers is a true David v Goliath. In the early 1980s a large number of properties were acquired for demolition by the then Inner London Education Authority in advance of proposals to build a new school on the site. However, plans for the school were dropped and the houses were left empty.

The square was taken over by squatters who formed a Bohemian community comprising of individuals from around the world. The squat had two community gardens one created from a derelict playground which previously was a bomb site, a café, wholefood shop, nightclub, newsletter and even a milk bar.

Forming housing co-operative they started negotiating with the ILEA to lease the 100 properties to the South London Family Housing Association. The co-op did up the houses and saved them from dereliction, some have tenants or shared ownership and some even have the occasional freehold.

If ever there was a place in London which shows the capital to be a collection of villages, this little community, in the shadow of the brutal St. George’s Wharf this is it.

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.

Urban Philistines (07.05.13)

Are we becoming a city of Philistines? I ask this as public art is becoming more vulnerable to deliberate damage or theft, for until recently works of art left out in public spaces only had to contend with the occasional pigeon defecation.

In the past, anyone who had good reason to despise a statue would limit their protests to something impermanent. Gladstone’s statue is a case in point. Theodore Bryant director of the Bryant & May match factory, a prominent liberal, had deducted a shilling from the wages of his staff as a contribution to the erection of Gladstone’s statue near the factory. The match girls who worked in appalling conditions for a pittance went to the unveiling, and a gruesome story is told by Annie Besant that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble, paid for, in truth, by their blood.

The Duke of York statue just off The Mall cost £25,000 to build and finance was raised by subscription – each individual in the army was required to contribute a day’s pay. Although many in the army resented this deduction the statute was never desecrated.

But recently we have had a Barbara Hepworth stolen from Dulwich Park and probably sold for scrap, the charming bronze Doctor Salter’s Daydream which once sat on a bench in Bermondsey has been stolen while the accompanying piece – the good doctor’s daughter holding a cat – has been n forced into hiding. A Banksy by that most ephemeral of artists, who expects his pieces to be painted over, has been ripped from the wall it was painted upon to end up in an American auction house and when a statue of Bomber Harris was installed outside St. Clement’s Church a spate of red paint throwing occurred protesting about the bombing of Germany in World War II.

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is proposing to sell a Henry Moore entitled ‘Draped Seated Women’ known to the locals as ‘Old Flo’ hoping to raise £20 million and another Moore ‘Knife Edge Piece’, which stood on Abingdon Green near the Houses of Parliament, has been undergoing restoration after decades of graffiti artist’s work.

Now with the death of Baroness Thatcher, a debate has arisen upon where to site a suitable monument. Its detractors argue that any representation of her in a public space will inevitably be vandalised. Hardly surprising since in 2002 at Guildhall Art Gallery a marble statue of the Iron Lady was decapitated first by a cricket bat and when that failed a metal rope.

So what is the future of public art? Will our parks be devoid of any artwork unless guarded night and day?

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 blinking nuisance (30.04.13)

It’s that time of year when the tourists start migrating to London. Thousands of them descend on the streets forming long conga-lines each one of them intent on following the leader, but unlike native Londoners they tend to stick rigidly to the designated crossing points in the road.

Those crossing points are the fault of the gloriously named Leslie Hore-Belisha (1st Baron Hore-Belisha, of Devonport in the County of Devon) who in 1934 as Transport Minister was appalled by the statistics that in one year 7,343 died and 231,603 were injured on Britain’s roads.

Soon after being appointed to the post he nearly became a statistic as he used a pedestrian crossing. His brush with death came as he was crossing Camden High Street when a sports car shot up – or was that down? It was two-way then – the street narrowly missing the good Baron. This is not different from today’s Camden High Street except nowadays you have a choice in which car to select to hit you, in 1934 probably only two cars an hour drove up the street.

At the time every vehicle was subject to mandatory speed limits except perversely motor cars, so after his Camden High Street incident he introduced the 30mph speed limit in built up areas to all vehicles. Many said that it was the removal of ‘an Englishman’s freedom of the Highway’ but undeterred he also brought in law mandatory driving tests.

His most visible legacy – which actually is the subject of this post – was the pedestrian crossing with their familiar black and white striped poles surmounted by an orange flashing light, nicknamed at the time ‘Belisha Beacons’, the familiar zebra stripes on the road were only introduced on 31st October 1951.

The most famous of these zebra crossings is at Abbey Road made famous by The Beatles which has been given heritage listing ignoring the fact that the crossing has been moved from its original location. Tourists daily risk life and limb being photographed as frustrated drivers push their way across as the tourists stand in the middle having their picture taken.

Nearly 80 years have passed since Belisha’s blinking invention was introduced and apart from a zebra we have had a few pelican crossings, the occasional panda and now at Oxford Circus one straight from Tokyo the Shibuya crossing with its countdown timers.

Most crossings are still the originals with the stream of tourists patiently holding up traffic as they hesitantly negotiate the West End’s roads. You know they are from out of Town as the locals obstinately refuse to cross at the designated points choosing to jay walk instead.

Two years ago a fellow cabbie put out a question. What are London’s worst crossings? Despite the advances in traffic control the top five – as if they were listed heritage sites – remain as Hore-Belisha would recognise.

5th – Abbey Road. I know I’ve already mentioned this one, but what I can’t understand is why people who weren’t even born when that ‘iconic’ shot was taken want to pose on a crossing when Sir Paul McCartney who lives nearby could be walking past with a bemused look on his face. I often see idiots taking their photos on the crossing further north by Abercorn Place.

4th – St Paul’s Churchyard. Everybody around here seems so terribly polite. But with the exaggerated bonhomie there is always a tourist running across at the last minute. The view of St. Paul’s west door is great though.

3rd – Bow/Russell Street. Situated right by the Royal Opera House and a junction where cabs are constantly trying to turn into the main flow of traffic. The tourists seem to queue up here to jaywalk.

2nd – Endell/Bow Street/Long Acre. Within a few hundred yards of our 3rd placed entry. This one is on the turn of the road that’s littered with rickshaws. It is crying out to be converted into one of those new fanged pelican or is that panda crossings?

1st – Great Marlborough Street. Since the ‘dirty dozen’ was closed off most of Soho has just become a car park. Cabbies turn down Berwick Street and right into Great Marlborough Street to miss the nightmare of the Shibuya diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus. You are then confronted with herds of young women who are leaving the perfume department at Liberty’s and others queuing to get in.

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.

Where are the Centre Point fountains? (16.04.13)

There cannot be many post-war buildings which have stoked up as much controversy as Centre Point. Designed by Richard Seifert this brutalist building was completed in 1966 and at 398ft was the second highest in London.

Controversy did not stop at its uncompromising design as the building remained empty long after its completion. Centre Point’s developer, Harry Hyams, sat on a rising asset as its capital appreciation far outweighed the rental income with the added bonus that the un-let office block did not attract rates.

Nestled at the windy base of this building, caused by the downdraft as the wind hits its upper floors, once stood a blue mosaic-lined pool with five triple-tined Y-shaped fountains.

Operators of these fountains had an idiosyncratic approach to when they should be turned on. On hot summer evenings girls waiting for the Astoria to open would sit on the fountain’s parameter wall staring at an empty pool safe in the knowledge they would remain dry. On windy winter nights, aided by the downdraft from 35 storeys above them, hapless pedestrians walking past would get soaked.

Now where these iconic Grade II listed fountains once stood there is what must be the largest hole in Europe with Centre Point teetering on the precipice as engineers construct a new station for Crossrail. When finished in their place will sit two wonky glassey pyramids which the designers describe as crystal sculptural forms.

The Centre Point fountains were the work of German artist Jupp Dermbach-Mayen who built the fountains at his Swiss Cottage studio in 1963. The Twentieth Century Society claim the planned removal of them was symptomatic of a wider problem of post-war art being separated from its architectural context.

Those infamously-sporadic concrete flower fountains will be missed, though . . .

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 toughest place to be . . . (09.04.13)

I was contacted last year by the BBC inviting me to apply for the new series of ‘toughest place to be’, in which they planned to take a London cabbie out of his (or her) comfort zone and place them in a city where driving could be best described as challenging.

After reading the e-mail my wife and I speculated upon which city the hapless cabbie would find themselves trying to earn a living. We both concluded that one of the most chaotic cities in the world was Mumbai.

So when the programme was televised recently it was no surprise to find London cabbie Mason McQueen travelling to India’s most populous city.

Mason’s most and mentor was Pradeep Sharma who lives in a tiny two-bedroom house earning less than £10 a day driving his cab.

It wasn’t long before Mason finds driving on some of the busiest and most congested streets in the world. Far worse than London’s, in sweltering heat in a vehicle without air conditioning, he managed to carefully avoid the sacred cows, get his passengers on the side when getting lost and did all this with good humour.

But the most touching part of this documentary was the change in Mason’s perception of life. Starting out by complaining about life in London from his Epping home his first reaction upon seeing the slum where Pradeep and his extended family live is one of horror.

Later he is shown other cabbies who have come from the countryside to make a better life for themselves living in squalor 6-8 in a room sending their money home to a family they see only twice a year.

But the life-changing event is seeing a young mother with her children living under a flyover, sleeping on the central reservation of the busy road as they try to scratch a living by selling homemade brushes.

The documentary showed us how bad we may think our job is, and all London cabbies have those moments, others doing the same job have a much harder time.

At the end of the programme, Mason is seen in a cabbies hut trying to raise money to send back to India.