Last month I posted a slightly tongue-in-cheek post about Grumpy, London’s Cabbies? This Grumpytutters list prompted Mark from America to suggest I compile 50 things ‘I love about being a cabbie’. There are many and various reasons to extol the benefits of being a cabbie here’s some of them:
1. A feeling of superiority in The Knowledge that you know London better than almost anyone else
2. Self-employed with no employer breathing down your neck
3. An ability to choose your hours
4. Stop work at a time of your choosing
5. Access to Green Shelters to eat
6. Americans (including Mark) love London’s cabbies
7. Access to private spaces (for me Downing Street)
8. Get to talk to interesting people (see back of my cab)
9. Giving Chelsea Pensioners free lifts
10. Join the Magical Taxi Tour on its annual journey carrying children suffering from a range of chronic illnesses and life-limiting conditions to Disneyland Resort Paris
11. Being waived through police roadblocks
12. Being let out of side roads by fellow cabbies
13. Staying in bed instead of rushing to work on time
14. A panoramic view of the world’s best cities from the window of your ‘office’
15. Talk to interesting people every day
16. The ability to work part-time in early retirement
17. You rarely encounter the same difficult customer
18. Working outside whilst keeping dry and warm
19. The comradery of other London cabbies
20. Your golf clubs fit in the boot of a London cab
21. Dress (within reason) how you like at work
22. You don’t have to justify and reapply for your job every year
23. You can bore anyone who’ll listen about ‘famous people in the back’
24. You earn enough to pay for a private osteopath to help your back (an occupational hazard)
25. Being told by an old cabbie “The game’s dead”, to find it’s not
26. Friendly hotel doormen allowing the use of the facilities
27. Meeting like-minded students at Knowledge Schools – and remaining friends
28. Just knowing where the best chippies are in London
29. Being able to turn up at a garage and have the cab fixed without making an appointment
30. You go to places you otherwise couldn’t and see people you would never have met
31. Get to conduct tourist tours
32. The profession is open to everyone, so you’ll always meet a cabbie with an interesting life story
33. You can usually pick your customers and ignore the drunks
34. Not needing an organisation like Uber to survive
35. The opportunity to harangue a politician with the doors locked in your cab
36. When the train/bus/tram drivers strike you can still get to work (and earn a lot more)
37. People are genuinely interested in your profession, asking questions even while on holiday
38. You work in a safe environment, thanks to the driver’s partition
39. There’s always something new to discover in London
40. The public is always interested in The Knowledge
41. Driving the iconic London cab (TXI) is a privilege it’s so well-designed
42. You have the satisfaction of being the only one responsible for your income
43. Our profession seems to be the go-to for the opinion of Londoners
44. If you’re prepared to put in the hours a decent living can be earned
45. Your vehicle can be driven for personal use without having to pay Sadiq Khan’s penalties
46. A cab is a great people carrier
47. The cab’s spacious interior can be used to transport large items, including Christmas trees
48. When we protest on-mass we always get on the local TV news
49. We can use bus lanes to avoid the traffic
50. You can get to write a blog (and a book!)
London in Quotations: Hume Nisbet
There is no river in the world to be compared for majesty and the witchery of association, to the Thames; it impresses even the unreading and unimaginative watcher with a solemnity which he cannot account for, as it rolls under his feet and swirls past the buttresses of its many bridges; he may think, as he experiences the unusual effect, that it is the multiplicity of buildings which line its banks, or the crowd of sea-craft which floats upon its surface, or its own extensive spread. In reality, he feels, although he cannot explain it, the countless memories which hang forever like a spiritual fog over its rushing current.
Hume Nisbet, Gaslit Nightmares “The Phantom Model”: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and others
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London Trivia: Red for danger
On 10 December 1868 the world’s first traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament. Operated by a policeman they had scarlet-red arms and red and green gas lights for use during nighttime and foggy days, looking much like a railway signal. One night gas escaping into the pillar’s hollow column ignited, killing the policeman operating the device. Traffic lights were put on the back-burner until 1929.
On 10 December 1971 Frank Zappa was hurled from the stage at the Rainbow Theatre by a fan, falling 10ft he walked with a pronounced limp for life
During World War II Diana Milford, then Lady Mosley was locked up in Holloway HMP but in a cottage in the gardens with her husband, Sir Oswald Mosley
London is the greenest city of its size in the world, green space covers almost 47 per cent of Greater London
In December 1817 Captain Bligh from Lambeth was cast adrift from The Bounty by a band of mutineers – his grave is in Lambeth’s Garden Museum
The British Museum’s reading room is where Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital between bouts of getting drunk and asking Friedrich Engels for money
Famously irritable landlord of Coach and Horses, Soho Norman Balon called his memoirs You’re Barred You Bastards: Memoirs of a Soho Publican
The department store that inspired the TV comedy Are You Being Served? was Simpsons of Piccadilly – now the huge Waterstone’s
When Spurs moved to their new ground in 1899 it was almost named Gilpin Park but gradually became known as White Hart Lane
Among the many things Londoners have left on the Tube are a samurai sword, a stuffed puffer fish, a human skull and a coffin
A profitable occupation in London was that of a Lurker who would use their ability to copy another’s handwriting usually to gain favours
Founded in 1826 as London University, University College London was the first university institution in England to be entirely secular
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
Previously Posted: Rich men’s basements
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.
Rich men’s basements (02.11.2010)
Recently I was taking a couple home after they had been to the theatre. They were the quiet, courteous generation that grew up in the 1930s and 40s, expensively well dressed in a subdued way rather than the vulgar and scruffy apparel favoured by the rich today.
After a short conversation about their theatre visit, I was directed to their home in Belgravia. Travelling down Chester Row my customers directed me to stop just before a house shrouded in builder’s hoardings and with a large skip outside in the road.
“I see your neighbour is having some work done”, I remarked when we had stopped.
While his wife said goodbye and thanking me as she walked towards her front door, her husband approached my driver’s window to pay, upon which he metamorphosised from a genial gentleman to Victor Meldrew. “These houses weren’t built with deep foundations, they are digging under the house and we can hear their work all day, the noise is driving my wife made and I’m just waiting for my house to subside, cracks have already appeared in our walls”.
A sad fact is that a new generation is moving to Belgravia nowadays and many are doubling the size and value of their houses by burrowing underground.
Now my customer’s predictions would seem prophetic, for while adding an underground cinema and a gym to a perfectly respectable late Georgian house in Chester Row a skip has fallen into a hole in the road outside the house, spewing water out of the hole and flooding the neighbouring properties in the process.
Why would you spend the sum of a respectable semi, to live underground if not for a vast profit? Who would want to live underground we’re not moles. Already predictably there is the threat of legal action as the conversion was originally opposed by most of the road’s residents.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but a little research of Belgravia’s history might have given the developers cause for concern.
The land owned by Lord Grosvenor was originally marshy land with the River Westbourne running through it. In the 1820s Thomas Cubitt was granted the right to develop the houses that we see today. The nomenclature “Speculative Builder” given to the developer should tell you everything you need to know about Cubitt’s Belgravia. Built for a quick profit, much like today’s developers, they would not have been expected to last nearly 200 years. The lax building regulations of the day almost certainly precluded the insistence of adequate foundations, load bearing joists and cavity walls.
When building a single story kitchen extension my borough planners wanted me to dig three metre footings, enough to support St. Pauls Cathedral, so why cannot the same be applied in conservation areas?
A neighbour commenting summed it up perfectly:
This entire fiasco represents a massive collective failure for all involved in designing, approving and attempting to build overly ambitious, vulgar additions to listed buildings in a conservation area.
How much misery do residents have to endure before we learn to properly balance long term interest against reckless pursuit of short-term profit?
More cabbies needed
I didn’t know whether to upload this on this Friday’s more prosaic post, or Thursday’s Whinge. But first: over the past decade, licence applications to undertake The Knowledge have plummeted by almost 95 per cent, and as only 30 per cent of applicants complete the intensive course, it’s hardly surprising that wheelchair accessible cabs are, at times, in very short supply.
Although demand for black cabs has seen a resurgence, the shortage of licensed drivers has put this safe and iconic mode of transport at risk.
Taxi-hailing app FREENOW aims to revitalise the black cab industry and address the declining number of licensed black cab drivers. It will fund 100 per cent of the application cost, tuition fees, exams and licensing, amounting to over £2,000 per driver over a minimum period of two years.
This will provide a unique opportunity for more than 20,000 London Public Hire Vehicle drivers on the FREENOW app to expand their careers. Through this subsidy, the company aims to encourage more individuals to pursue careers as black cab drivers, ensuring that this cherished mode of transportation remains a prevalent and convenient option for Londoners.
To make this initiative a reality, FREENOW has partnered with two renowned schools, Knowledge Point School and WizAnn, which will collaborate in hosting information sessions for interested Public Hire Vehicle drivers. These sessions will help drivers understand the requirements, benefits, and opportunities associated with obtaining a black cab licence.
Not surprisingly over 500 applications for the Knowledge of London funding subsidy after just one day.
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