Just when you think you have seen it all and been asked every motoring question imaginable along comes one out of the blue. Filling up at the end of the day a young man asks “how do I fill up my car”. I then have to show him how to select the fuel; unhook the nozzle; insert the said nozzle into the car; pull the trigger; and what to say to the cashier. Oh! And “Don’t forget to lock your doors if you want to come back to your vehicle”.

When I buy my Kingsmill sliced from my local supermarket (£1) I wouldn’t trust it if there was no wrapper even if the shop was pristine. So why is it that on Borough High Street with its constant traffic jams of vehicles churning out diesel fumes while waiting to cross London Bridge one maker or should that be creator, of ‘artisan’ bread, displays his wares on a bench in the street?

I was outside the Howard Hotel, before being demolished in anticipation of the unlamented Garden Bridge. A guy with lots of heavy photographic equipment wanted to be taken just quarter of a mile up the Victoria Embankment to a ship. I help him carry said equipment on board and he tells me a previous cabbie, a woman at that when asked to do the job told him to f**k off. It was good to see courtesy is still alive in our trade.

Saw a new Rolls Royce today with minicab roundels on the back, I think it’s a scam to avoid Congestion Charging, or maybe a very expensive ride after a few beers and a curry on a Saturday night.

As a sign of London’s diminishing cab trade, Radio Taxis, for whom I have been writing these past six years, decided we part company. I predict there will be a lot of detrimental changes for cabbies in the next 5 years.

I wrote these rather prophetic words in March 2017.

Little did I realise then how popular for Londoners would be an alternative to Radio Taxis. The new kid on the block used their ‘offshore’ status to avoid paying most UK taxes, and had a close association with the then prime minister.

It dispensed with the cumbersome criteria of having experienced driving in England at some point; abandoned comprehensive criminal record checks; used drivers with a lack of understanding the geography of London’s labyrinthine roads; and who had limited ability in understanding the capital’s native tongue, flooding London’s streets with thousands of rented vehicles purporting to be ‘cabs’.

Not everyone was so gullible. From these seemingly diverse cities spot the odd one out: Barcelona, Spain; Buffalo, New York State; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Vancouver, Canada; Frankfurt, Germany; Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; Oslo, Norway; Reykjavik, Iceland; London, England. Yes, you guessed it – London. The city voted many times as having the best cabbies, and with the most stringent taxi licensing regulations in the world allowed Uber to operate with predictable consequences.

Now they have gone but so has much of London’s Black Cab trade, so does anyone want to syndicate these missives?