the cabbies capital

The Great Taxi App Race

October 23, 2011 by rjcudlip

As any cab driver will tell you, there was a time over the summer when it seemed that there was a new Taxi booking app appearing every week. Although some seemed to disappear as quickly as they appeared, there are 5 or 6 that seem to be making a reasonable stab at getting properly off the ground. I shudder to think how much money they will end up spending between them, but there is certainly a feeling in the tech community that the London Taxi Trade is ready for some “disruption” and that some money can be made along the way. There was a lot of excitement around the launch of Uber Cab in San Fransisco, and there seemed to be a strong desire in certain quarters to get that level of disruption in London. And part of what I write here will be about if that is really possible here. But before I head off into the depths of a post that could be long and not a little ranty, I need to be upfront about my “interests” in all this. Not only am I obviously a Licensed London Taxi Driver, I am co-founder of Tweetalondoncab (TLC), who in turn had extensive meetings with the people behind what is now Hailo, with a view to combining forces. Those discussions ultimately failed and Hailo then teamed up with the TaxiLight team. TLC itself is not a business and after a couple of false starts is not looking to build it’s own app, it will continue to fill a little niche and provide it’s extremely useful Twitter based information service, Cabup. So my views on all this will almost certainly not be completely unbiased, but they will be based from the viewpoint of someone who has tried to run a taxi booking service & as a driver.

So where are we in the Great Race? Well let’s have a quick look at the runners & riders shall we? In no particular order, and with some omissions I’m sure, here are the services I’ve come across or heard of this year; TaxiZapp, London Taxi App, TaxiStop, Usestands, Get Taxi, Black Cabs App, Cab:App, Hailo, Hail, App Cab & Taxi Square. Quite a list, with the potential for confusion looking pretty high what with the sheer number of apps and the similarity in names. Hail/Hailo? Cab:App/App Cab? Good grief. Out of that list, 4 seem to be making better progress than the rest, Get Taxi, Hailo, London Taxi App and Cab:App, and 2 of those, Hailo & Get Taxi, appear to have serious money behind them.

London Taxi App was first to properly get out into the market and from the feedback I’ve seen from drivers may have done so too soon. I’m sure my driver colleagues will soon put me right, but the initial burst of publicity for London Taxi App seems to have passed, the app itself seems a little unreliable and perhaps they’ve missed their chance to steal a march on rivals. Cab:App is much newer to the market and seems to be going about things in a more measured, steady fashion. Their App, available on most smartphones rather than just iPhone, seems straightforward and their pricing structure simple & fair. The customer pays a £2 booking fee, £1 going to the driver & £1 to Cab:App. The customer settles up with the driver direct, they do not provide the means for drivers to take credit cards payments. To make money, they’ll need to take a lot bookings at a pound a pop but I’m assuming their costs aren’t anywhere near the likes of Hailo or Get Taxi. Whether they’ll have the financial clout to compete with the “big boys” remains to be seen though.

So let’s move on to the big players both of whom, if you follow my tweets, I’ve had my issues with. Yes, I am keen to “win back the work” as much as the next driver, but I do have to ask at what cost? And when the established circuits (Radio Taxis, Dial A Cab & ComCab) are viewed as antiquated, expensive and/or too close to private hire the door should be wide open for someone to come in and provide a new, hi-tech taxi service that blows these circuits away. But on what I’ve seen so far, neither Get Taxi or Hailo are doing that. Get Taxi are insisting on providing drivers with a “drivers box” that attaches to your windscreen like a Sat Nav and a smaller version of the terminals the existing circuits provide. Some drivers are already complaining that the units are poor quality, and that the battery doesn’t last long. Having a separate unit has been pushed as better for safety by Get Taxi, their argument being that using your smartphone while driving is illegal/unsafe. There may be a legal issue here (although I hear that TfL have approved Apps for use on Smartphones) but I fail to see how having an extra box in your cab with the potential for 2 devices competing for your attention, is any safer than having one device that deals with everything. And then there is the cost to drivers, Get Taxis website states that drivers pay “just £5 per week plus 10% pay-as-you-go per job for account work capped at £19 per week”, which works out at over £100/month. Cheaper than most of the current circuits certainly, but not the radical reduction in costs that this technology should be giving drivers. I for one won’t be getting a Get Taxi box in my cab, perhaps if they decide to deliver jobs to drivers via a smartphone I’ll think again. And for the implications of the “pay as you go” model, see below for how I think that affects coverage.

And so we move to Hailo. I will try to choose my words very carefully here as I’ve upset the people behind Hailo already and I have no desire to do so again. But………I don’t like the service they are offering, and here’s why. Hailo, like many of the other Apps, make a big deal out of “winning back our work” by which they mean that lost to the likes of Addison Lee. I’ve always had a problem by what anyone means by “our work”, like black cabs have a divine right to any journey in a car/taxi. But let’s leave that argument for another day. In Hailo’s enthusiasm to “win back our work” they have decided that the customer is king and should not have to pay a penny more than is on the meter, unless they choose to tip the driver. So that means no credit card charge to the customer, no booking fee, no nothing. To make things even easier for the punter they only have to press 2 buttons to book a cab, meaning they don’t even have to tell Hailo where they want to go. Brilliant, as a punter I can get a taxi to come and pick me up from my favourite pub/restaurant and the taxi will even wait for 5 minutes outside before putting the meter on. Take that greedy taxi drivers! But let’s just think about this from those greedy drivers point of view. As a driver I get to use the Hailo App for free, it’s ever so clever and has all sorts of stuff that is going to help me during my working day, stuff that may have been, ahem, “borrowed” from other services. It’ll even keep track of my earnings for me (klaxons now going off in Tax Offices around the country) something Taxi drivers have been desperate to have for years, that pen & paper is history. For those who struggle with irony, that last bit was a joke. But to me, it just smacks of technologists thinking that they know better what a taxi driver wants than the taxi drivers themselves. But I digress slightly. Back to the greedy driver, who’s using Hailo for free, luckily for him he won’t pay a penny until he takes a job from the system. When he does though, he’ll pay “about 10%” of the metered fare for the privilige, but that kindly includes the credit card processing fee if the customer pays by card. It seems unclear if that % stays the same for cash jobs Hailo give you, but they are definitely charging for those, because their T&C’s say they do. All well and good you say, Hailo are providing the tech platform to connect punter & driver, someones got to pay for it right? Well of course. But let’s really think about the implications of this. As a driver I’m out and about on a busy Saturday night and up pops a Hailo job. I’m at Chelsea Bridge, the pickup is a nice restaurant in Knightsbridge. Do I a) take the Hailo job, which I don’t know where the punter is going and I have to pay 10% for or b) reject it and take my chances on finding a street hail around Sloane Square or Victoria. In fact, on a really busy night I won’t have made it as far as Chelsea Bridge empty anyway, and if I do I’m probably getting hailed as the Hailo system is offering me the job. So how are Hailo, or any of the other new services, going to get drivers to cover jobs at busy times? Well there is some stuff on the Hailo site about being higher up the “priority list” the more you accept jobs and the better ratings you get from customers. But, frankly, I don’t think drivers will give 2 hoots about a priority list. They’ll know that at busy times there will only be a few drivers available anyway, so the priority list is meaningless. And we go back to the options a driver has, if every job is allocated without a destination a driver is only going to do that job if he is very close to the pick up and it’s not busy elsewhere in town. Why keep taking jobs at 10% off the meter when you can get the full meter fare from all those nice people waving at you in the street? If you dig into the Hailo website you can find some of their T&C’s which make it clear that Hailo is a distribution platform (with accompanying customer focused rules) only and won’t be held responsible for the actions of customers, and only offer payment protection in certain circumstances. Despite being “run by cabbies” and wanting to “win back our work”, it sounds to me like Hailo will happily introduce you to a punter that needs your service, and get you to cover all the costs of doing so, then run for cover if it all goes pear-shaped. There also appears to be little, if any, attempt to build a community of drivers that might care a bit more about the service and therefore provide the all important customer with better coverage. In short, providing a taxi service is a tricky balance between punter & driver needs, I really think Hailo are far too customer focused. In fact, given that drivers are the ones paying for their service, should they be regarded as the customer here?

To be fair, the problems Hailo face are not exclusive to them. All the new services will struggle to cope at busy times, and I don’t profess to have any smart solutions to these problems. How do the current circuits cope with these issues? Not brilliantly it has to be said, but the likes of Dial A Cab at least have a level of driver loyalty that will be very difficult for the new players to replicate. Dial A Cab in particular are owned by the drivers themselves and when I was a member that, combined with the fixed £140/month subs, made me go out of my way to cover work. I quite literally had a stake in Dial A Cab and clumsy as it may appear, the subs also made me make sure I got my “moneys worth” every month. But the circuits are archaic and it should be possible to provide a similar service for a fraction of the cost. But, with a slightly heavy heart, when I look at the new services on offer now I don’t think any of them offer a realistic, competitive option to what we already have. That is not entirely their fault though, you really do have to question how much taxi drivers are prepared to adapt their working practices to new technology and I have severe doubts about how disruptive technology can be in a trade of 25,000 sole traders, every single one of which has a different motivation to be a cab driver. The experience I’ve had of drivers and the trade while running TLC has left me extremely sceptical about how drivers will welcome these services, and that no matter what they offer drivers they will never be happy.

So there you have it, my view of the Great Taxi App Race. Who will emerge victorious? Or will the cab trade itself leave them all stalled at the starting line? Should be interesting seeing what happens.

Posted in Cab Rant | 9 Comments »

I blame the bloomin’ Beatles

February 5, 2011 by rjcudlip

I mean, there can’t have been THAT many ZEBRA CROSSINGS back when this photo was taken. The intervening years have seen our great city afflicted by what can only be described as an epidemic of ZEBRA CROSSINGS. Pedestrians continue to insist on walking around the city, often forming themselves into herds of marauding sheep, and they also continue to insist on crossing the road. Cars, and Taxis in particular, just aren’t given the respect they are due and have to play second fiddle to the great unwashed that are roaming around getting in the way of London’s best drivers.

This was playing on my mind as I sat in a queue of traffic that snaked around Russell Square earlier this week, as I tried to get a punter from Bloomsbury Way to Euston. A short and pretty straightforward journey when you look at an A-Z, but take into effect the Pedestrian factor and a fiver fare ended up nearly £7. Get through Bloomsbury Sq and you might think you are well on your way, but you just know that the zebra crossing in Bedford Way is going to screw things up. You could avoid it, but the traffic going the other way doesn’t look a lot better and your punter is likely to scream blue murder. So you sit there waiting for a) the constant stream of pedestrain to end and b) the constant stream of muppet drivers who think their journey is more important than yours and cut in the queue of cars. Once you’ve got through that, the traffic by Gordon Sq can be a bit sticky as the ZEBRA CROSSING by Byng Place is slowing things down, then turning right into Gordon Sq you have to be really careful as you turn across the cycle lane, only to be presented with another ZEBRA CROSSING, just before the Bloomsbury Theatre that at the wrong time presents another human wall, thankfully mainly students and therefore expendable if you really do lose the will to live and steamroller your way through. And there you are eventually at Euston, with a punter wondering why the hell he didn’t walk. So as I queued at Euston to get my next fare, I asked on Twitter “Can we start a list of most annoying zebra crossings in London? I’ll kick off with Bedford Way.”. And, as expected, I got a wonderful response, mainly from my cabbie colleagues. In all there were 13 crossings nominated and I will reveal the top 5 below. But “honorable” mention must go to, of course, Bedford Way itself (which I’m sure would have received more votes if I hadn’t nominated it in my original Tweet); Anderson Street (as you enter from Kings Road), Great Russel Street (outside the British Museum); Long Acre (outside Covent Garden Tube); Terminus Place, Victoria; Chiswell Street (by the junction of Bunhill Row); Bernard St (outside Russell Square tube); New Cavendish Street (junction with Marylebone High Street). All, I’m sure you’ll agree, supremely annoying crossings. But the crossings with the most votes were;

5th – Abbey Road – the temptation to mow a few tourists down is pretty difficult to contain at times, but your mood is often lifted by seeing some divs taking their iconic photo on the crossing further north by Abercorn Place.
4th – St Paul’s Churchyard (or is it still Ludgate Hill there??). I tolerate this crossing because of where it is. But only for the view.
3rd – Bow/Wellington/Russell St, Covent Garden. Yes, of course, right by the Royal Opera House, and a junction where cabs are are constantly trying to turn into the main flow of traffic. Let’s have a crossing where tourists, who don’t even know how the things work, loiter looking like they have barely evolved since the missing link.
2nd – Endell St/Bow St/Long Acre. Genius. Within a few hundred yards of our 3rd placed entry let’s have a new crossing right by another hugely busy junction that wasn’t perfect before but worked a hell of a lot better than the new “improvement”.
1st – Great Marlborough Street. In reality not that much traffic goes down this street, certainly not so much since the “dirty dozen” is closed off and most of Soho has just become a car park. But, if you are forced to travel down there at pretty much any time of the day or night, you just know you are going to be stopped at this crossing FOREVER, only to finally get moving once your previously pre-school children have left home.

Yes, yes I hear you all cry, you cabbies aren’t the most important thing in London. Ha! Well I’ll have you know, I can find at least 25,000 others that will agree with me……..

Posted in Cab Rant | 5 Comments »

Lightning Indicator for London Drivers (1926)

January 24, 2011 by rjcudlip

I have a Reader’s Pass for the British Library, something I’m jolly proud of (see picture below). Anyone can get one, you just have to navigate your way through the BL’s arcane rules & regulations and within an hour or so you have your pass. I got mine for reasons to do with getting access to their Business & IP Centre, but thought it would be rude not to have a search through the archives for some Taxi trade related stuff. And in amongst the database I found a few items that I’ll be boring you with over the next few weeks, possibly months if I find anything else. So brace yourselves, here we go…..

Today, my iPhone is invaluable to me when working, I get updates through Tweetalondoncab’s Cabup system, I can look up places & roads in Google Maps and when I’m really struggling out of town a bit, even get some directions from Messrs Google. But back in the day, and this little gem of a book was published in 1926, cabbies (or other London Drivers) had to rely on the written word. And the Lightning Indicator for London Drivers must have been a great help for cabbies back then, it’s 60 pages packed full of useful “points”, from Clubs & Restaurants to Hotels & Sports Grounds. Due to BL rules, I’m not allowed to copy all of the book so I’ve extracted the bits that interested me most, the “Principal Hotels” & the introduction. It must have been a nightmare to keep even such a small volume up to date, hence the offer of “a cheque for 2 guineas will be forwarded to the sender of the best suggestion for the improvement of the next edition”. I wonder if anyone claimed that 2 guineas?

If you click on any of the photos above you’ll be able to read the pages yourself, you might even find them interesting. Maybe it’s just me, but I find the list of Hotels fascinating, all the big names are there of course; Claridges, Savoy, Ritz etc.. but there are many others that appear to have made it intact through the intervening 75 years, more than I would have thought. Bailey’s Hotel is there (wonder if it was stitched up by cabbies even back then?), the Bonnington, Imperial & Russell all in and around Russell Square still exist today, as does the newly refurbished Connaught. Even what might be considered lesser know hotels like the Rembrant on Thurloe Place and the Rubens on Buckingham Palace Road are on the 1926 list and appear to have made it through to today with the same name & in the same location. But perhaps more intriguing are the names that have disappeared since 1926. The marvellously named British Empire Hotel could have been found in De Vere Gardens, the Hummmums in Covent Garden (next to what is now the Transport Museum). And there are at least 3 Hotels that used to be in Euston Square that must have been demolished at the same time that the Square itself all but disappeared. Also note how many Hotels are listed for Northumberland Ave (click the link for photo, with added Hansom Cab), when it was first built pretty much all the buildings were purpose built hotels, now only a couple remain that way. But the most interesting name, I don’t know why it’s name stuck out, is Haxell’s which was on the Strand and was absorbed into the Strand Palace Hotel not that long after the Lightning Indicator was published. After a quick bit of research I soon found that it was owned & managed by Edward Nelson Haxell, who become embroiled in a cross dressing scandal, which others have covered much better than I could. There must be hundred’s, if not thousands of equally intruiging stories linked to these forgotten Hotel’s, I’m going to do my best to try and uncover a few more of them. Or if you have any yourselves, please feel free to let me know.

"researching the world's knowledge" is the unreadable bit at the top...

Posted in Loving London | 2 Comments »

I say top, you say bottom – let’s call the whole thing off….

January 21, 2011 by rjcudlip

heading in the right direction.....?

Let me tell you a cab trade secret. Cab drivers don’t know EVERY street in London, there are over 20,000 for gawd’s sake, you could never learn them all. And even when you’ve learned all the ones you need to get you through The Knowledge, you slowly forget some of them too. Then there is the issue of rubbish intercoms, onsetting deafness through old age & comedy foreign accents, predominantly from our friends directly across the channel. Witness a job I did on Wednesday night from the Landmark Hotel – “60 Charles Street, pleez” in what can only be described as a Clouseauesque accent. To which I would normally just ask exactly where the punter was going as I know landmarks much better than house number. But I didn’t and as we got to Charles St, I slowed down to try and see where No. 60 is. ”Why are we stopping here driver?” was the response from my punter, “You wanted 60 Charles St, no?” as alarm bells started to ring, “No, I wanted *incomprehensible* St”. So I pull over and after my poor punter has to spell out the name of the Street it turns out he wanted the Gaucho Restaurant on Charlotte Street. Why didn’t he just say that in the first place? Tsk. But hopefully you get my point, it isn’t quite as straightforward understanding where someone wants to get to, and these kind of episodes are one of the best examples of why Sat Nav can’t replace The Knowledge. But let’s not get into that argument, not today anyway.

My other little secret, and the main point of this post, is that if I’m really not sure where a punter means, or I just can’t remember the road, I’ll ask “which end of XYZ Road/Street do you need?”. Which is designed to get a response that helps me place where the road is like, “Farringdon end”, or “Grays Inn Road end” but can open up a whole other can of geographical worms. What if the punter says “Oh, about in the middle”, or “up at the top end”, or “down the bottom end”. Then you’re buggered. It’s then that I start on the “having a brain freeze/need some more coffee/just can’t think of where that is” type jibberish. And many times, it really is that I’ve just misheard what the punter said in the first place.

But when someone does say “I’m at the top of the road”, what do you think they mean? I once had a very long “discussion” with a punter about what was the top (and therefore bottom) of Portobello Road. Given that Portobello Road is mainly one way for it’s entire length and travels in a S(E) to N(W) direction I would think that it’s a no brainer that the Notting Hill end was the bottom, wouldn’t you? But no, when I said which end did she want, my punter said “Oh, near the top” and then got upset when I headed for the north end. So if roads like that are open to debate, they shouldn’t be of course, what about roads that go West to East? Do they have a top and a bottom? I’d argue that they do, and that the “top” is the bit closest to the centre of London and the bottom bit furthest away. So the “top” of Holland Park Avenue would be Notting Hill end and the “bottom” down at Sheperd’s Bush. Some of you might think this slightly nit picking, or perhaps slightly obsessional, but when your job is to get people as efficiently as possible to their destination, these things really are important. So next time you get in a cab, just be sure you and your driver are as one when you ask him to take you to the “top” of your road.

** Update 22nd January, 10:20am **

As has been quite rightly pointed out in the comments below, if a road actually does, you know, climb a hill then the top is just naturally the top. Not the bottom. Just to be clear…………

Posted in Cab Rant | 7 Comments »

Xmas London Quiz 2010

December 28, 2010 by rjcudlip

Greetings one and all, I trust you have been having a fab time with your nearest & dearest. You may, or may not, be getting a trifle bored after the extended break, or you may just want a distraction between eating & drinking. Either way, I present to you my Xmas London Quiz 2010. Hopefully the questions will make sense, if you need any clarification feel free to drop me an email to rjcudlip@gmail.com. And when you’re ready for the answers just let me know via email or on Twitter (@mrcudlip) and I’ll send them over to you, enjoy!

Xmas Quiz V2

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Until You (I) Come Back To Me (You)….

December 17, 2010 by rjcudlip

……and start filling this blog with all sorts of stuff and nonsense. Like blog post titles that are references to 80′s songs I may have purchased in the dim & distant past. But after being busy doing other stuff for most of this year, I’ve made a conscious decision to make time to start writing this blog again. That means stopping my involvement with Tweetalondoncab and leaving it in the capable hands of others. My intention is to write a lot more about the day to day happenings of driving a cab, along with all the bits & bobs I come across that fascinate me about the wonderful city that is London. I’ll also be setting some regular quizzes and tests of obscure places around town, starting with an Xmas Quiz. As friends and family get first look at my now regular Xmas Quiz, you’ll all have to wait until after Boxing Day, but look out for it being put up here soon after that, so you have something to fill the void between Xmas and New Year. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a picture taken just before the first lot of snow fell this year as I walked over Tower Bridge, I posted the picture on Twitter (where you can now find me as @mrcudlip) and it seems I wasn’t the only one seeing London under a purple sky that early evening.

I’m pleased to be back blogging, I hope there are some of you left out there who want to read what I write.

Posted in Loving London | 5 Comments »

Get up, stand up……

May 5, 2010 by rjcudlip

…..and more importantly, stand up for what you believe in.

This post has been prompted by a whole host of different conversations (on Twitter and in the flesh) over the past few days that include people telling me that Gordon Brown “hates people” and me being called a fool for declaring my intention to vote Labour tomorrow. And quite frankly, I’m sick of it. Sick of being told that standing up for what I believe in is foolish, sick of people regurgitating half-truths from the media, and sick of those same people not having the decency to argue their corner in a reasonable fashion when challenged. I started this election campaign as someone who had re-joined Labour (after a 15 year battle with myself about why I left in the first place) and who wanted to make sure his local MP kept his seat. I’ve been out delivering leaflets and said some nice words about Sadiq Khan, which led to the slightly strange situation of me delivering leaflets with my own mug on them, and as time has gone on I’ve been drawn more and more into what this election is all about. I can’t claim to have had any sort of epiphany on the streets of Tooting, but I think I’ve finally come to terms with my internal debate about what my support of Labour really means. It means that rather than stand on the outside whingeing about how shit everything is (I can’t quite bring myself to even mention the whole Broken Britain thing), I’m now more than prepared to stand up and be counted. Stand up for my local MP against a Tory candidate that seems to be straight out of the Cameron School of PR Robots. Stand up against people who ask me to name “one good thing Labour have done”, and then scuttle back under their rock when I mention minimum wage, reduction in waiting lists and investment in schools. Stand up for my local, wonderful community in Tooting. What struck me more than anything else when I had my close encounter with Gordon Brown on Sunday, was what a diverse group of people where there to see him. Not all hand-picked Labour members, but members of all parts of the community, of all faiths. That’s what a Labour MP, and Sadiq Khan in particular, will do – bring people together. All I’ve ever seen Tories do is divide people, rich & poor, union & business, and I don’t want this country to slide back towards those attitudes.

Does this mean I think Labour are perfect? Of course it doesn’t, they’ve made mistakes, and some of them have been bad mistakes. But when I look at most of the big issues that people complain about Labour, I can’t help asking myself, what would Dave have done? Iraq? Credit crisis? Both would have had the same outcome under Dave, he certainly wasn’t against the war was he? And while Labour certainly got too close to the banks for my liking, you can’t tell me that at the same time Dave wouldn’t have been equally cosy with them? No government I remember has “saved for a rainy day” and Dave and the Tories wouldn’t have either. Pretty much everything they’ve said about the economic crisis has been with the benefit of hindsight. And as for all the scaremongering about having to go cap in hand to the IMF if their’s a hung parliament? Well sorry, but that just sounds desperate “you must vote for us because…….” because what, because you think we should? And that’s pretty much where we’ve got to isn’t it? The Tories seem to believe that their time has come again and that they “deserve” to get back in. Well they don’t “deserve” anything. If the central part of your campaign is “look at them, aren’t they crap” and “look at Britain, isn’t it shit?”, then it seems to me that you don’t deserve anything. And despite the alleged pile of cack that is apparently covering this country, they seem to failing to really convince the public that they are a viable alternative. That’s because you have to earn the right to govern, not have it fall into your lap. Surely, with the all new cuddly Conservatives, and an open goal in front of them, this election should be in no doubt at all? Perhaps showing a bit of passion, as Gordon Brown certainly did on Monday, would help us all, I certainly haven’t heard any passion come from the Conservatives. It’s all been a bit wooden really, almost a little bit too well rehearsed perhaps? But the election result is still in doubt, and I for one will be doing my bit tomorrow to make sure Britain & my patch of South London stays a fair and tolerant place. What are you going to do? Shrug your shoulders and whinge? Well shame on you then.

Posted in Election Fever?, Tooting | 9 Comments »

suck my goldman sachs

April 1, 2010 by rjcudlip

Ha! I’ve tried to avoid politics for a while, but sometimes you just can’t avoid it. No sooner have I rejoined the Labour Party to try & help that nice Sadiq Khan stay as my MP, than I’m seeing politics everywhere. There I was minding my own business in N16 having dropped off a very nice lady in Foulden Road (a rare and exciting event in itself), and as I cruised down Stoke Newington Road I couldn’t help noticing the poster(s) you now see in the picture to your left. And I had to stop and take a picture. Well, when I say stop, I actually mean I did a u-turn to annoy local drivers, then another one just in case I hadn’t annoyed enough of them and then got quite a few strange looks from the people at the bus stop while I took a couple of photos. Well I knew that some of you would enjoy the poster, whatever your political allegiance, and I pride myself in having the common touch with these things. See what I’m doing here, I’m going all electionspeak on you. Much as it might annoy some of you, it’s going to be pretty difficult to avoid this whole election thing for the next month or so, so in amongst the “you’ll never guess who I had in my cab posts”, I’m warning you now, you’ll also be getting some stuff about the election. I’m not going to talk about what I believe in, thats not for this blog, but I think it would be remiss of me not to bring things like this to your attention. I hope you agree.

Posted in Election Fever?, Working Day | 4 Comments »

building of my life…..

March 22, 2010 by rjcudlip

I’ve mentioned Peter Ackroyd before haven’t I? Well I remember him talking once about growing up in Acton and how he thinks that being slightly removed from the centre of London helped make him the London obsessive that he is. As if being on the edge of the city made it seem that little bit more alluring and exciting. Well having spent the majority of my childhood in Morden, a place that couldn’t be more boring & nondescript, I understand exactly what he means. Not that Morden was completely bereft of interest, oh no. Morden was the location of the first fixed fare bus route in London (the M1), a route that took you on a strange loop from Morden town centre to Raynes Park for 5p single & 10p return. But going to Morden held no real interest for me as there is, after all, only so many circular sausages you can eat in Wimpy’s. As soon as I could I would try & venture further afield, and if you lived in that part of SW London, then your arrival point in the city would invariably be Waterloo and the Southbank.

And this is where we come to the building I want to talk about. Not that there’s much to say about the Shell Centre. For an impressionable young boy from suburbia, the Shell Centre WAS London. It was big, seemed to almost be the middle of the city and , excuse the slightly crass description, was absolutely cool as fuck. Well it was to me, as a 12 year average boy from Morden. It just seems to sit there, knowing that it’s pretty cool as well. Perfectly at ease with itself and it’s place in the city, unlike the 12 year old boy that admired it so much back then, the 12 year old who didn’t know his place in the city. And 30 years later I don’t think my opinion of the Shell Centre as a building has really changed much. If you look hard enough, it’s slightly tatty around the edges, but who isn’t after 30 years of aging? And perhaps I take it a bit more for granted than I used to, I see it so often it’d be hard not to get complacent, and I’ve even seen a bit more of the inner workings of the complex by picking up account jobs from the underground car park. But when I do stop to look at it, as I did the other weekend to take some photos, it still has a very special place in my heart. And when Robert Elms has me on his show as a Listed Londoner (I’m expecting the call any week now), it’ll definitely be my favourite building, even beating St Paul’s Cathedral. High praise indeed, I think you’ll agree.

Posted in Building of the week | 3 Comments »

their life in my day…

March 15, 2010 by rjcudlip

looks better than an a-z

As a cab driver well, as this cab driver anyway, you start off each day wondering quite what your day will have in store for you. On particularly anxious days, you might wonder if there will be any work at all. Perhaps London has suffered a 28 Days Later style exodus or that people have just suddenly stopped taking cabs altogether. You might start your day with a few displacement activities, dressed up as essential pre-work tasks; fill up with diesel, have a large Americano from Cafe Nero, that kind of thing. But at some point you have to point the cab in the direction of town and wonder at which point you will get that FJOTD (First Job Of The Day) and quite where the Taxi Gods are going to send you today. Will that first hand up be a flyer? Or will it be Clapham Junction to West London Magistrates Court? Luck plays a big part of course, but I am a great believer in Cabbie Karma and that if you do the little ‘uns, the good ones will eventually come your way. And with all that in mind, I decided to fully record the jobs I did one day last week from FJOTD to LJOTD, to try and give myself (and indirectly you folks) a better understanding of the kind of flow you can get into and a little insight into the people that come into my life every day. So on this particular day, having travelled in from deepest SW17 with no sign of a job (pretty typical these days) I was north of the river heading for Sloane Sq before;

FJOTD – Lower Sloane Street to Seymour Walk, SW10 (1.7 miles). Easy first job, no worry about route, just a quick check exactly where Seymour Walk is. Then a slightly tricky reversing manoeuvre passed an Ocado van and I was back on Fulham Road heading east and not long before;
Fulham Road (junction with Cranley Gardens) to Saatchi Gallery (1.5 miles, but only coz Kings Road was solid and I went Oakley Street and around the back) . Man and his 2 sons were standing at a bus stop, so I had that moment when you aren’t sure if they are trying to stop you or the bus behind you, but in they got and off to the Saatchi Gallery for a bit of culture and lunch.
Sloane Street to Kensington Church Street (2.3 miles via Harvey Nichols and a close encounter with 2 fire engines). Nice Italian man wants to go to an antique shop but first must “rescue” his wife from Harvey Nichols. Which all sounds easy enough, but when 2 fire engines suddenly appear on the scene, the already slow traffic at the north end of Sloane Street becomes stationary and rescue of wife is a little more tricky than than expected. But eventually we find her and they are safely delivered to the north end of Kensington High St. And before they get out a man in a rush appears at the window to go from….
Kensington Church Street to Kensington Court (0.7 miles). Now some of you may be asking why this gentleman would make such a short journey. He was middle aged, seemed capable of walking his own way there if needs be and wasn’t a mentalist. Turns out his office had a power cut and he was going to a mates office to send an urgent fax. Fax?? Do people still send fax’s? So a quick u-turn and a right out of Kensington Court and it’s nearly all the way down to Hyde Park Corner before the next hand goes up…
Knightsbridge (west of the Mandarin Oriental) to Piccadilly (junction of St Jamess’ Street) (0.9 miles). No idea why this gent needed my services, as he got out before his stated destination (Fortnum & Mason’s) and walked off towards Mayfair. But if enough shorts jobs come along one after the other, who cares?
Selfridges (Duke St rank) to Euston (1.6 miles). So no joy in St Jamess’ or Mayfair before finally settling on the rank at the side of Selfridges that, if you can squeeze onto it (only room for 3 cabs), is always good for work during opening hours. Didn’t have to wait too long until 2 ladies what lunch emerged needing to get to Euston. What with their scouse accents and too tight facelifts it was quite difficult to understand where they were headed but after an initial furrowed brow from yours truly, Euston it was.
Euston to Hallam Street (1.0 miles). There’s a pattern emerging here isn’t there? Only one job so far over 2 miles & that wasn’t exactly a roader. But this man was late for a meeting, was extremely nice and gave a decent tip. My patience was being tested, but not too badly.
King’s Cross Station to Highbury Grove (3.1 miles). Ooh, based on my previous jobs, heading to King’s Cross paid off. A job over 3 miles and into double figures £ wise, things are looking up.
Selfridges (Duke St rank) to South Quay Station, E14 (8.8 miles). As I said, things were looking up. No job between Highbury Grove and getting back to Selfridges, but I had stopped for a coffee and to stretch my legs. And after a 10 minute wait at Selfridges 2 young Japanese ladies ask for South Quay. Just about able to not spill my coffee all over myself in the excitement, I check that they mean South Quay on the Isle of Dogs, and off we go.
Bank Street rank, E14 to West Hampstead (12.0 miles). Now Canary Wharf is a funny place all in all, in general as well as for cabbies. Once a goldmine (especially if you were on a radio circuit) the work that you get “on the wharf” (or “on the Island”) is a real mixed bag. And generally a pretty cruddy kind of bag and many drivers won’t even bother stopping there and just head straight back to the City. But, in my experience anyway, as the City isn’t a lot better these days, so I tend to stay on the Island even if it’s just to make use of the facilities and a have a break. So I got on the rank at Bank St (when I tell you it’s opposite the old Leman Brothers building, you might get the irony of that) and patiently waited my turn. Lot’s of people approached the rank with a variety of freight (luggage/bags) which almost certainly means a City Airport (alright job but wrong way) or if the “freight” is a Waitrose or M&S carrier bag they almost certainly are a “local” down the Westferry Road. So on point, I have 2 people approaching the rank, one with “freight”, one without. The chap without gets to me first and asks if I’d mind taking him to West Hampstead. Luckily my coffee was long gone by this point as I may well have choked on it. But my decision to stay put and not wait too much diesel looking for that next job paid off big time, and within an hour (and a visit to cashpoint) I was heading back towards town with a spring in my step.
West Hampstead to Springfield Lane (1.2 miles). Nice to see a hand go out so quickly after dropping someone off. Not so good when after your punter says Springfield Lane Kilburn, you head off in completely the wrong direction, then manage to go speeding past the turning he is telling you to turn left into. Still, he seemed happy enough.
Maida Vale to Fellows Road, NW3 (2.2 miles). Another short hop before another hand goes up, this time just down Maida Vale towards the junction with St John’s Wood Road. Bit of a rude bugger, clearly running very late for something or other, but it’s only a short journey to the Chalk Farm end of Fellows Road, and I’m off again hunting for a job, hoping to keep my good run going.
Chalk Farm Road to Praed Street (4.1 miles). And my good run did keep going. Couple that had clearly had a long day shopping (and arguing) desperate to take the weight off their feet and get back to their hotel in Paddington. So from a slow start my day was getting better & better.
Paddington Station to Crowne Plaza Shoreditch (5.4 miles). Bit of a queue of cabs on the bridge at Paddington, but all seemed to be moving so I joined the back and was soon picking up a couple of Japanese businessmen going to Shoreditch. Nice job, easy route down Marylebone /Euston Road etc.. and over “the hump” to Shoreditch High Street. A continuation of what is turning into a really great run of jobs.
Liverpool Street Station to Crowne Plaza Shoreditch (0.7 miles). What are the chances of that, eh? Straight back to the Crowne Plaza and back to the local jobs. But I’d seen a man on the other side of Shoreditch High Street be ignored by all the cabs heading south & he was still there when I’d dropped off. So I turned round for him and off we went again…..
Shoreditch High Street to Southgate Road (1.7 miles). Nice chap and slightly narked by all the cabs that had ignored him before I turned up. But no wait between jobs is fine by me and it made the previous job seem a bit better. By now it’s about 8:30pm and we are heading for the quiet time between 9 & 10 and I get all the way back to Mayfair with no sign of a job. So I had to the new discovery (for Tweeting cabbies anyway) of the rank at Quaglino’s.
Quaglino’s to Goring Hotel (1.2 miles). Not a great job, but didn’t have to wait to long and then completely transformed by events at the other end of the journey.
LJOTD – Goring Hotel to Hilton Heathrow (T4) (16.1 miles). Not normally a place I ever pick up The Goring unless, like on this occasion, you have a group of people milling about looking for cabs and the doorman getting himself in a right state trying to sort them out. A cab in front is filling up and then 3 men come to me with one getting in the back. ”Heathrow OK driver?” in a thick German accent. ”No problem” of couse, but then another man is at the window asking how much it will be, will I do a FP so that he can pay for his colleague up front? Quickly deciding that this will be a great LJOTD and wanting to make sure I don’t lose the job I agree a price of £50 and the man duly pays up front and get’s a couple of blank receipts for his trouble.

And so ended my day, a day that can truly be described as a day of two halves. The early, daytime, local jobs gradually building up into better and better jobs and finishing in grandstand style with a flyer. Job done.

Posted in Loving London, Working Day | 6 Comments »

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