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 road less travelled (07.08.12)

In Charles Street, Mayfair there remains evidence of the last vestiges of Georgian competitive running with a tentative link to the cabbies of their day. Dating from 1749 this pub has a curious name: ‘The Only Running Footman’.

The pub was once called the Running Horse and frequented by the footmen who were in service to the households of Mayfair. As the fashion for footmen dwindled one bought the pub and renamed it after himself.

London in the 17th century was a pretty chaotic place, with narrow streets, overcrowded, animals, carts and numerous other obstructions. A footman’s job was to run ahead of his master’s coach paying any tolls and clearing a safe passage.

After The Great Fire of London, many streets were clearer and the need for a running footman lessened, although they were then employed as house servants.

By 1750 a footman’s advertised annual salary was £7, including a smart uniform, white stockings and shirts with full board. But with ‘vails’ he could expect an income of £40 (about £60,000 in today’s money).

He had to be tall (about 6ft), look fit, and be nonchalant and handsome. Footmen were notoriously the source of the best gossip, trusted with clandestine errands and hanging around with women ‘above their station’. These runners were also useful in a household to fetch things and take messages before a reliable postal service had been introduced.

King Charles I’s household accounts record the payment of 2/- (10p) paid to a footman to run from London (presumably Whitehall) to Hampton Court.

The aristocracy would also like to pitch their footmen in a race with others from wealthy households. On the 3rd July 1663 Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary:

The town talk this day is of nothing but the great foot-race run this day on Banstead Downs, between Lee, the Duke of Richmond’s footman, and a tyler, a famous runner. And Lee hath beat him; though the King and Duke of York and all men almost did bet three or four to one upon the tyler’s head.

That old reprobate The Marquess of Queensbury is said to have kept the last running footmen as a mark of his own virility. The Survey of London records an incident (possibly anecdotal) in which ‘Old Q’ met his match:

The duke was in the habit of trying the pace of candidates for his service by seeing how they could run up and down Piccadilly, watching and timing them from his balcony. They put on a livery before the trial. On one occasion, a candidate presented himself, dressed, and ran. At the conclusion of his performance he stood before the balcony. “You will do very well for me,” said the duke. “And your livery will do very well for me,” replied the man, and gave the duke a last proof of his ability as a runner by then running away with it.

The pub’s full name is actually ‘I Am The Only Running Footman’ and has been the venue for many a historic London pub crawl, treasure hunt, mystery tour and even a novel by American detective fiction writer Martha Grimes.

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 road less travelled (07.08.12)

When announcing the hydrogen taxi scheme recently the Mayor could hardly have envisioned starting a scenario straight from the script of BBC television Twenty-Twelve.

“A vision to promote innovative zero and low emission technologies in the capital to clean London’s air and tackle pollution” was announced.

In the spirit of zero emissions five hydrogen-fuelled Olympic taxis have been operating during the Games shuttling VIPs and guests of the Mayor between venues.

The one flaw in this well-meaning initiative was that due to its proximity to the Olympic Park, the hydrogen service station at the Lee Interchange has been closed for security reasons. This has meant that the closest fuelling station is in Swindon 65 miles away.

Twice a week the five clean emission cabs are hoisted onto the back of a dirty diesel-fuelled car transporter to make the journey to be refuelled and brought back to London.

The irony is that if the cabs were to complete the 130-mile round trip unaided they would not have enough fuel to drive the VIPs around London, necessitating a return to Swindon.

As a further dent in the green credentials of London a fleet of hydrogen buses that operate along the South Bank in London has also been affected by the closure.

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.

Sex and the Olympic City (31.07.12)

When the London 2012 Olympic organisers announced that the Games would bring local jobs to the community it was probably not what they had in mind. Major sporting events always tend to precipitate a boom in the sex industry, with thousands of visitors – site workers, spectators and athletes – flooding an area and London is not any different.

Prostitution and the Olympics go back to the Games inception. In fact for the early Olympiads, competing in 776 BC, the winners were invited to take their pick of prostitutes from the Temple of Aphrodite.

In an attempt to make London 2012 not only the greenest but the cleanest Olympics ever, over the past year, more than 80 brothels near the Olympic site have been closed down and prostitutes have complained they are being driven from the streets by imposing curfews and giving Asbos to stop them touting for business.

Apparently, hordes of sex-hungry sports fans are expected to fuel a spectacular boom in the sex industry. And that’s just for starters health experts have added their voices to warn that this surge in demand for sex could “increase the spread of sexually transmitted infections”.

A campaigning group warns of the potential threat to the sexual health of Londoners and promises to distribute 500,000 free condoms in what it, rather imprudently, characterises as “hot spots” for sexual activity.

With blatant disregard for the Olympic brand online, ‘escort agencies’ are renaming themselves, Olympic Escorts and others offering ‘gold medal services – come to win a gold medal with this Olympic London Escort’.

With the Olympic site locked down and the only realistic transport links starting from Stratford, I for one, cannot see how the visitors are going to be able to meet the escort of their choice if the destination is in the Stratford area, or do these ‘services’ have nothing to do with Olympian spirit apart from the scale of their charges?

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 Marathon read (24.07.12)

Just how do they do it? I mean when an actor is given a major part to play, just how so they remember their lines. I only ask because last weekend a mighty 76-page tome thudded onto my doormat.

Years in the planning and in less than six days I have to commit it to memory.

The publication goes under the catchy title The taxi and private hire information handbook and was compiled by the Olympic Delivery Authority.

Comprising 23 maps, a dozen graphs and scattered liberally with gobbledegook straight from a script of Twenty Twelve: ‘No taxis or PHVs will be permitted to pass through a VSA without the correct VAPP’. It makes for an interesting read.

Like an inexperienced actor learning his lines in Hamlet, we have to make sense of this impenetrable jargon.

SatNavs will be obsolete as so many roads are either closed or had their direction changed. It is going to be hard for us but for private hire with their reliance on technology, it will be impossible.

The maps make for interesting reading. Should a spectator require a cab from the Olympic Stadium they will have to walk 1,400 metres (or nearly a mile in old money). Cross a 6-lane dual carriageway, and walk under a flyover to find the rank located, if memory serves, behind a caravan park.

According to the comprehensive map, only two small ranks service all the major hotels in Park Lane, but that is probably because every 5-star hotel in London is fully booked with the Olympic Family.

Sorry I’d better get back to memorising all this I only have three days to learn my lines.

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.

Life imitating art – a cabbies diary (26.07.12)

With the first Olympian week drawing to a close, with the predictability of a shortage of cabs on a wet Friday night, we have had a bumper week of motoring stories.

In a scenario straight from the script of BBC’s TwentyTwelve, on Monday two buses containing United States and Australian officials were lost for up to four hours as they made their way from Heathrow to the Olympic Park.

That was followed by confusion on the M4 as to who could (and should) use the Olympic Lanes. The ban of all vehicles except black cabs and Olympic vehicles will, apparently be ‘monitored’ by the police but in the main, the authorities will rely on the goodwill of motorists to stay out of the prohibited sections – Just tell that to John Griffin at Addison Lee.

In central London, in many cases, the lanes, with the confusing signage, have been empty all week for fear that a £130 fine will be dropping through one’s letterbox. Again in a rare display of magnanimity, an unnamed source was quoted as saying: “If we get to the end of the Games without issuing a single ticket then that will be judged a 100 per cent success, and there was me thinking the fines would fill the gap in the Games overspend.

Tuesday found black cabbies wasting their time protesting at their exclusion from the Olympic Lanes. By circling around Trafalgar Square they hoped to draw the public’s attention to their plight, the square might commemorate a battle victory, but I fear that this is one war that has been lost.

Apparently, cycles have also been banned, but who will stop the rickshaws? The sight of a top-of-the-range BMW with a member of the Olympic Family on board, queuing up behind a ropey rickshaw being peddled slowly by a foreign student should make for an interesting interlude while sitting in gridlock.

Speaking of which Tuesday evening gave TfL their finest hour, or to be precise two hours, as Madonna finished her concert in Hyde Park. She had stood on stage brandishing a gun, the precise weapon of choice many motorists must have wished they possessed as Park Lane was closed, along with West Carriage Drive and The Mall. The fare from Paddington to Chelsea Bridge which should have taken a little over 15 minutes took 1 ½ hours and had over £50 on the meter.

Passing on to Wednesday I noticed that in Russell Square one set of markings gives motorists the choice of either driving in a bus lane or an Olympic Lane – the choice of fine is up to you. An exciting diversion that night was accomplished after the Strand and Waterloo Bridge were closed, and why has the Aldwych underpass been changed from northbound to southbound?

Thursday saw the recreation of medieval London Bridge traffic chaos as Waterloo Bridge was closed southbound and Tower Bridge had been raised, it might have taken two hours to transverse old London Bridge but it was still taking half an hour, this could be an idea for Danny Boyle for the opening ceremony – art imitating life.

Soon I should have the answer for these conundrums and others. We have been told that the Olympic handbook detailing everything we need about the Olympics was posted on 9th July to all licensed London taxi drivers and private hire operators. But most documents have been in the post for 11 days, we can only hope that the Royal Mail vans have not been held up in traffic.