Tag Archives: London life

Bizarre requests made of London Cabbies

20 March, 2020 Gibson Square Leave a comment

Cabbies in London get to see all walks of life. In fact, you never quite know who you’ll get in the back of your cab or how they’ll behave. Some passengers ask very little of you as a taxi driver, just to be taken from A to B safely and within good time. However, there are others that are just a little more demanding or at times, outright bizarre.

Leading taxi insurance broker, insureTAXI asked 220 London cabbies to reveal the strangest requests they’ve ever got from passengers and they came up with these fantastic tales. From transporting budgies to visiting the crematorium at midnight, these taxi drivers truly went beyond the call of duty.

Can I bring my budgie?

“Had a customer ask me if she could bring her budgie, told her that she could as long as she kept hold of it. Well, she didn’t and when I broke hard for a car that pulled out in front of me the cage went flying. The door flew open and the bird was flying around my car with her daughter screaming her head off!! The customer had to climb in the back to try and catch it.” Steve (St Albans, Hertfordshire)

Have I just bought a black cab?

“On my way home but with my light still on and the early hours of the morning a guy waves me down and asks if I would take him to somewhere in deepest Kent (forget now exactly where) after 45 minutes he asks: could I in any way slow down the meter; or could I drive slower? I say to him that would make no difference to the metered fare. He was I think just happy to be getting home, after about 50 minutes or so his phone rings and it was his wife asking where he was: “Be home in about 20 minutes Luv” he says and, “Oh, by the way, take your car out of the garage, I think I’ve have just bought a black-cab”. By Colin (now in Thailand)

I need my charger . . . it’s in my car!

“Had a lad ask me to take him on a 40-mile round trip just to collect his phone charger from his car. This was a £50 fare from the bar he had been drinking at! When I explained the cost he insisted that it was important and that he didn’t mind. I’m sure he could have waited to make some other arrangement the next day” Ali (Central London)

Quick! I’m live on air in 9 minutes

“I once was asked to take an MP to a TV broadcast 9 minutes before he was live on air with Paxton on Newsnight! No pressure I thought. We made it with less than a few seconds to spare.” Anonymous (Central London)

I want a divorce!

“I once took a couple of arguing newlyweds home from their night do and the bride asked to be dropped off at her parents as she did not want to go home with her new husband and wanted a divorce.” Tahir (Croydon, East London)

Secret midnight cremation

“Back in the 80s, I was asked to take a male and a female, dressed in Gothic fashion to the local Crematorium late at Night. I said, hesitantly, “what actually inside the grounds?!” “I mean I’m sorry to ask but why do want to go there this late at night?” “Yes!” she said. Nervously, I drove into the grounds of the Crematorium, shaking, fearing I was going to face some ritualistic ceremony…it was getting darker and darker until suddenly I saw the lights of a house and breathed a great sigh of relief. The female passenger explained they’d been in a timepiece having a laugh and been invited to a friends’ party whose house happened to be inside the grounds of the crematorium. The man, whose identity is still a complete mystery, paid the fare, and wrote “thank you for a great ride, love Alf” in my notebook.” Rasheed (Chelmsford, Essex)

This is a Guest Post by Tim Crighton director of taxi insurance specialists Taxi-Insure.

A version of this post was published by CabbieBlog on 14th March 2014

Thinking allowed

London’s crap years

31 December, 2019 Gibson Square Leave a comment

Depressed? Worried about our new Political Masters? Before you decamp London for pastures new, consider this if you may, as CabbieBlog gives you the 10 years you really should be anywhere else but in our capital city:

Everybody has heard of the Great Fire of London in which only nine people lost their lives, but this one was much worse, leaving 3,000 dead according to medieval accounts. The conflagration led to new laws requiring the use of brick and tile for rebuilding instead of wood and thatch.

The wise would have left long before November when the Black Death struck the Capital. With crowded streets and bad sanitation making the contagion spread even faster. By the time it had run its course half the population of England would be dead. Afterwards wages increased due to the chronic shortage of labour.

With revolting peasants marching on London, the teenage king Richard II seeking refuge in the Tower of London. Prisoners released, palaces ransacked and burned and the Archbishop of Canterbury beheaded, scores of lawyers were also beheaded, so the year wasn’t all that bad.

Call it what you like; dropsy, griping of the guts, wind, worms or the French Pox (we always like to blame the Frenchies), the Great Plague killed 100,000 that year. Manufacturing collapsed as Newcastle colliers refused to deliver fuel to London, and with servants ransacking their master’s empty mansions.

The Great fire destroyed 13,000 houses; 87 churches; 52 livery company halls; 4 prisons; 4 bridges; 3 City gates; Guildhall; the Royal Exchange and Customs House. The City was rebuilt within 6 years, so good news if you were a builder, not your day if you owned the bakery where it started.

It started as an anti-Catholic march on Parliament, but after a gin distillery was breached the Gordon Riots turned into an orgy of looting and burning. At the end some 850 people had died, including bankers from the Bank of England, which must have seemed a good idea at the time. Once order had been restored its 21 ringleaders were hanged.

It wasn’t until Parliament had to be evacuated because of the smell from sewers disgorging effluent into the Thames that an efficient sewage system was commissioned. After a long dry hot summer and a cholera epidemic caused by the insanitary conditions it was known as the Great Stink.

If the Great War wasn’t bad enough, returning soldiers brought back with them the flu virus. Killing more than the war, London was especially vulnerable with its densely packed population transmitting the contagion more effectively. By the time the virus had run its course 220,000 Britons had died.

On the night of 29th December Hitler sent hundreds of bombers to destroy London, the ensuring firestorm left 436 dead and ultimately damaging or destroying 3.5 million buildings by the time the Blitz was over. The blackout also caused the country’s highest ever traffic casualty figures.

In December sulphur dioxide combining with rainwater and oxygen to form deadly sulphuric acid suspended in a dense fog and lasting for seven days killed 4,000 residents, together with scores of livestock at Smithfield. The Clean Air Act stopped the problem and an excuse for children to bunk off school.

A version of this post was published by CabbieBlog on 21st May 2010

An urban view

Blue is the new green

7 May, 2019 Gibson Square Leave a comment

I have been driving down the Embankment watching as the soft incandescent lights strung between lampposts slowly died of age, and no one bothered to replace them. Then the wet desolated pavement alongside the Thames was reminiscent of a late ’50s scene for a cigarette advert as lone man, stopping under a light, its gentle glow illuminating him as he lit up, to the familiar catchphrase ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’.

As the last of the old bulbs have spluttered and died a brave new lit world has replaced them – with that stark intense blue of the halogen bulb – and the string of lights between lampposts isn’t the only harsh light now to be found alongside the Thames.

Green was once the de facto colour of environmentalism when political parties adopted it into their name or their logo, but now blue has the right credentials. Green is about trees and plants whereas blue is about oceans, rivers, lakes and the sky, ensuring adequate clean supplies of essential resources — air and water, it is also the colour of our planet seen from space.

Eco-Blue cars

[O]ne of the world’s biggest polluters – carmakers are now using blue as a colour and a word to express cleanness and efficiency – even for vehicles with petrol and diesel engines. Volkswagen puts a ‘Blue Motion’ badge on its most efficient cars; Mercedes-Benz adds a ‘Blue efficiency’ emblem to its environmentally friendly (and easiest to recycle) models. New Holland, part of Italy’s Fiat group, even uses the name ‘eco Blue’ on its low-emissions range of blue tractors.

Blue is more acceptable

For sure, blue is more acceptable to right-of-centre political interests than the term green since that colour was appropriated by the left-of-centre parties in Europe. So the ‘boys’ of City Hall have embraced those beautiful eco-blue lights. “You see”, they would say “lighting up the Thames hasn’t harmed a single polar bear using our blue energy efficient bulbs”.

It started with the long-overdue construction of the Hungerford footbridge with its blue lights surmounting the pillars, once before Coco-Cola took over, the London Eye adopted it and now almost every bridge spanning the Thames is bathed in a blue glow. My cabbie colleague in his the capital letters blog has dubbed the new Blackfriars Station, which spans the Thames and is illuminated with the ubiquitous blue lights as – Bluefriars.

Tower Bridge taken by David Anstiss

A version of this post was published by CabbieBlog on 13th November 2012

Thinking allowed

Demographic analysis

6 November, 2018 Gibson Square Leave a comment

[L]ondon’s first French-language terrestrial radio station broadcasts to the capital’s 400,000 native French speakers as a reminder of their own culture, but why are so many French institutions based around South Kensington?

It’s a subject that has perplexed me for years, if not decades and here I feel I might need some help.

London is often said to be a conglomeration of villages each with its own identity, but also within our City – as with its villages – are islands of immigrant settlements each with their own economic, social and cultural identities.

But here’s the question I would like answered: What attracts ethnic, religious or cultural groups to live in particular areas?

For instance why have the Chinese moved into Chinatown; why are a few streets at the north of Stamford Hill the home to Europe’s largest Hasidic and Adeni Jewish communities. The Greeks frequent Green Lanes and why would you find Little Lebanon, with its large Arabic population along the southern stretch of Edgware Road.

When I first started working in London my company was located in Clerkenwell known then as Little Italy, there was to be found an Italian delicatessen, restaurants serving pasta and pizza, an Italian church, it even had (and still does) an Italian driving school, presumably to teach you Italian driving skills.

Earls Court is known as Kangaroo Court due to a large number of antipodeans students in digs there.

The Irish once populated Kilburn while the Whitechapel Road supports an almost exclusive population of Muslims.

For while I can understand later arrivals setting up home near people of their own ethnic mix for language, security or cultural reasons but what makes the first settlers adopt a particular area?

For the large Afro-Caribbean community in Brixton David Long in his book The London Underground suggests:

During the war a series of deep level air raid shelters were built designed in such a fashion they could eventually be linked up to form a super underground railway, but lack of money after the war meant this scheme was abandoned. So in 1948, the Clapham Common Deep Level Shelter became briefly home to several hundred Commonwealth citizens who arrived on the SS Empire Windrush, laying the foundations for nearby Brixton’s Afro-Caribbean community.

So why have different divergent communities decided at random to live in different areas of London, any theories are to be welcomed.

I am indebted to Lucy Inglis for her map of London, her site Georgian London was voted History Website of 2009, on it will find more information than seems possible to amass on what London was like to live in during the 18th Century.

A version of this post was published by CabbieBlog on 10th October 2015

A window on My World

It’s like Florence with rain

8 September, 2015 Gibson Square Leave a comment

Each month American Express Essentials present a selection of the most original travel and lifestyle trends with ideas from around the world.

I was recently asked by them to contribute for their travel section some suggestions about London prompting me with a series of questions. For no particular reason here are my answers.

What is your best-kept secret find in London, and why? (could be anything: a restaurant, a shop, bar, museum, park, landmark, etc.)

It’s like Florence with rain

[A]djacent to St Paul’s Cathedral is shopping centre One New Change, ignore the plethora of shops and restaurants, and take the glass-walled lift to the top. A platform there gives unparalleled views of Londoners’ favourite historic building, one of the few places left to view the iconic dome, much like Florence’s Santa Maria del Fiore. The novelist Guy de Maupassant ate daily at the Eiffel Tower’s restaurant so he didn’t have to look at the structure which he hated, and from this vantage point above the shopping centre you can’t see the murky goldfish bowl beneath you.

Where do you go for a great iconic ‘London’ experience, without the tourists?

Gain some Knowledge

[Y]ou could waste your money and time by joining the queue to gape at a room full of wax effigies, but I’m suggesting a better use of your vacation, by taking a tour. See all the sights without joining the crowds. A number of cabbies offer tours: Harry Potter; Princess Diana; or historic London, you choose. No overcrowded tour bus, confusing use of public transport, the guy doing the driving knows London and with up to six passengers it’s not as expensive as you might think.

The colder months will be here soon: what’s your favourite thing to do or place to go when the weather gets chilly?

A shelter from the elements

[D]otted around London are 13 remaining Cabbie Green Shelters offering sustenance to all, but only those with ‘The Knowledge’ get a seat inside. Built by philanthropic contributors to ensure Victorian cabbies had a warm dry place to eat, the alternative had been the local boozer. The size of a garden shed, only 13 are left of the original 61 built which at that time provided donated books and newspapers to read while eating; while alcohol and political discussion was forbidden, as today the latter was probably ignored. Seating twelve with a working kitchen, one even has its own Twitter feed @RussellSqCabHut.

If you can’t visit during Open House Weekend (19-20 September) when last year three opened their doors to the public, go there to buy an authentic London breakfast, you never know the shelter’s proprietor might let you have a look inside.