Not quite to home, I already know my way there, but I must admit to using my sat-nav for the first time "in anger" this weekend. And for the second time...
The first was on Saturday night when I managed to pick up a family in Strand who first asked me to take them to Liverpool Street, and then as they were climbing in they asked how much it would be to Romford. I told them it would be around £50-£60 and he said, "Ok then, take us home". I already knew the route to Romford town centre, but it was just putting the finishing touches to the job that I needed. The passenger was quite happy to tell me the route, but I was keen to see if Tom Tom agreed so we tried to programme in the postcode but it didn't recognise it, but the address came up and the route was in.
To be honest I was more comfortable using the passenger's directions than sat nav but it got us there and more importantly, got me back onto the A12 after dropping them off.
I had another long job on Saturday night, from The Banker in Cousin Lane, down to Old Coulsdon ("How far south of the river is that?"). Again, I knew the main part of the route from the suburb runs at the end of The Knowledge, and the customers got me to their destination from there. After that it was back onto the A23, the M25 and head for home, a fairly busy night finished off with two £60 jobs.
The only major problem on Saturday was the lack of roads available for use through the West End. With the O2 Wireless Festival taking place in Hyde Park and the Gay Pride parade and events going on most of Soho and the West End were no go areas for any vehicles (presumably other than Pedicabs). Luckily, most of my work took me well away from the West End.
One of my first jobs was into Long Acre, an I.T. engineer on call for the weekend, and having dropped him off after a trip from Waterloo Station, I immediately picked up two ladies wanting to go to Rose Square on Fulham Road. Since Strand and Shaftesbury Avenue were both closed I warned them that I would have to get down to the Embankment and work my way in form there. There had also been warning that Knightsbridge traffic was heavier than usual so I asked if I could take a more southerly route than usual. They were happy, just so long as we didn't have to sit in traffic for too long. The only time one of them moaned was when we hit a little bit on Kings Road, but once we'd got into Anderson Street, it was plain sailing from there to the destination. Happy customers, despite a fare that was probably 50% higher than perhaps it would normally have been. They were quite understanding about the traffic problems and still gave me a nice little tip on top of the fare.
From there I had jobs pretty much without any down time going to Campden Grove, then Praed Street. From Praed Street I had two tourist wanting to go to Sussex Gardens. I told them it was a matter of no more than 1/4 mile to the hotel they wanted, but they insisted on taking the cab. I ranked up at Paddington after that and 10 minutes later I was on my way to Saint Johns Wood Park. From there I went to the rank at London Zoo and was asked to go to Soho. "Soho - Oh No!". I explained about the road closures and they were happy for me to get them to any point as close as I could get to Frith Street. A long journey to get to Cambridge Circus and then a short walk for them.
I picked up heading South on Charing Cross Road, a customer wanting to go to Regency Street, SW1. After 10 minutes we had moved about 50 yards because of the closure of Trafalgar Square, so I suggested it might be easier for him to walk. He agreed and I let him off the £3.40 that had clocked up up to that point, saying it wasn't fair that we'd gone nowhere. Another grateful customer.
From there I managed to get Eastbound along Strand and picked up a job to Euston Station. Since the rank was back in operation after some refurbishment work I decided to drive down the ramp to see how different it was. A bit cleaner and the island had been removed allowing you to get out of the rank if things re a bit slow down there. Wish I'd taken that option. Sat there for 45 minutes before getting a job to Gibson Square (my second to that famous destination - but never from Manor House Station). Everything after that seemed to keep me North and West with jobs to Crouch End Hill, Rutland Grove in Hammersmith, Chiswick High Road, Kensington High Street, until finally getting back into town for the two "roaders".
Sunday was just as busy, but with road closures still in place until mid-afternoon from the previous day's Gay Pride Festival, and that morning's London 10K run (Why would people want to run that far in London when there's a perfectly good cab network?) This caused some problems for one customer who wanted to get from Pimlico Road to Charing Cross Station. Road closures around Whitehall were causing horrible queues all around Victoria and Westminster. Luckily, chatting to the customer I found out he wanted to get the train to Woolwich so suggested that we cut across Lambeth Bridge and head for Waterloo East. Another changed destination, but another happy customer.
The Rail Air Freight Terminal at Victoria (RAFT) was particularly busy during the afternoon but only resulted in jobs to Tedworth Square, Royal Hospital Road and Fawcett Street. After that, most jobs kept me away from the centre of town and I found myself in some areas i hadn't been to in the nine months since I got my badge. I had a job that took me out to the Turnham Green area so made my way back to Hammersmith Broadway to see if there was anyone heading back into town. Two ladies approached the cab and asked for Maida Vale. I had the route in my head until one of them told me "It's not actually Maida Vale, it's Walterton Road". This threw me completely since I couldn't place the street at all. Now, I could have got the A-Z to see where the road was, but asked if they'd mind me cheating and switching on the sat-nav. "No problem".
So, I programmed in the destination and followed the route. Wish I'd used the A-Z since it would have shown me the final destination and made me think of the route. As it was I followed almost blindly, and when it took me along Great Western Road, right into Woodfield Road, Left Woodfield Place, Left Harrow Road, Right Elgin Avenue instead of just going straight over at the end of Great Western Road I had to apologise to the customers. I got them to the destination but knocked a couple of quid off the fare with which they were happy. And I've got one more area to report to the Tom Tom mapshare system.
All in all a good weekend, cab rent covered, a few quid towards my summer holiday wherever that takes me, and a lesson learned about not being lazy and relying on the sat nav instead of the three and a half years of training on The Knowledge.
Showing posts with label london. Show all posts
Showing posts with label london. Show all posts
Monday, 7 July 2008
Sunday, 22 June 2008
In the long run
Two more weekends of work to report on.
Looks like I might just be doing weekends and nights for a while. With oil prices on the increase and everyone generally talking about tightening their belts my wife and I thought it might be an idea for her to hold off the plans for me to go full time in the cab.
My first fuel receipt for the cab only eight months ago shows that the price of diesel was 96.9 pence per litre. I filled up yesterday at one of the cheapest local garages to me and paid 128.9p per litre, an increase of about 33 per cent. Compare that to the 4.5% increase that we managed to get from Transport for London on the tariff and you can see that we're starting to suffer a bit. Perhaps I'll become a fuel tanker driver and look forward to the 14% increase on a salary of around £40K p.a.
I know there are plenty of other things that will be hit by this huge price increase (others in the transport industry and indirectly, anything else that relies on the price of oil - just about everything if you look closely) but how do we resolve the problem. Perhaps the government could see people in transport as needing a fuel price reduction and let us by fuel at lower rates. Some hope. We could have an extra price rise on the taxi tariff, but that could just kill the industry off. People already moan that London taxis are the most expensive in the world so any increase may see them turn away from us and go towards other forms of transport. Perhaps in times of recession we just have to realise that we've got to work that little bit longer to keep our takings on a par with the "good times".
There is also news of a new taxi for London. Not saying that we don't need something as competition for LTi's TX4 but to bring out a vehicle that doesn't look like a London Taxi (regardless of whether it meets the conditions of fitness - 5 passengers, 25' turning circle etc) is going to leave the trade open minicab drivers and others buying similar vehicles, fitting a light dome and coming in to take work from us. How will passengers know whether they are using a genuine London cab or a cheaper (the new Mercedes is reported to be about the same price tag as a TX4) version that externally looks the same. And will they care, just so long as they get to their destination. Let's hope they get to the destination safely.
That said, it's bad enough that we have to battle against the legal minicabs, illegal touts and the rickshaws that form rings of steel around theatres at kicking out time, but more and more cab drivers are putting two fingers up to their own by jumping queues at some stations, picking up insight of ranks where cabbies are already waiting for work.
I ranked up outside Hamleys yesterday and in five minutes two cabs picked up jobs right next to the rank while I was there with my light on. I tried to get the attention of the drivers but they didn't seem to care that they were nicking jobs less than 20 feet from a ranked cab. Perhaps it's getting more dog-eat-dog out there. Let's hope that the majority of drivers keep up the etiquette than go for the other option.
Following on from my moan about non-tippers I decided to see if I could figure who are the best and worst tippers. There doesn't seem to be any real pattern to the type of person who tips and who doesn't buty I've found that Londoners tend to tip more than foreigners, and that Australians didn't tip at all over the past two weekends. Women are more generous than men (but we all knew that they are more caring and sharing than us blokes anyway.... didn't we?), and couples tend to tip more if the bloke is drunk and trying to impress.
Other than the couple I picked up from outside Liberty in Great Marlborough Street, going to Denmark Road in Camberwell last night. Not sure that he would have impressed anyone unless he was in a How-many-times-can-you-say-"F***"-in-one-sentence competition. She was a bit wobbly as she got in, he was even worse. Before we'd even got to Regent Street, a distance of less than 100 yards he'd shouted "Put some f***ing tunes on!". He then wanted to argue about what was good music and what wasn't, so I eventually found a station with a song he liked and turned it up so I couldn't hear him. Once in Regent Street he banged on the glass partition and slurred something in his best Sauchiehall Street aggressive drunk accent. I wasn't sure what he said but it was well punctuated with expletives, generally aimed in my direction. I pulled the cab to the kerb and told him that he could either calm down or find another cab. One slurred apology later and we're off to Camberwell, music turned up and intercom switched off.
I heard more from him as the journey continued, particularly some really nasty racist comments as we hit Elephant and Castle. I was tempted to drop him off there and then but figured I'd lose out on the rest of the fare so continued down Walworth Road towards the destination. We eventually got to the drop off point with £25.20 on the meter. He handed me two tenners and started "F***ing let me out of the f***ing cab, you c***". Clearly his day job with the diplomatic corps was frustrating him, especially when I told him that I needed another fiver. Another string of expletives and he realised that I didn't have my foot on the brake so he could have got out of the cab at any point. His girlfriend gave me four two pound coins and an apology while he stood at the side window streaming it with abuse and spittle. Hopefully I'll not have to deal with him ever again.
Luckily most other couples were a lot more pleasant than Wayne and Waynetta as I worked my way through a fairly slow Saturday night. As usual when it came time to think about heading for home I managed to pull jobs heading in West rather than towards the wonders of the new tarmac on the Gravesend stretch of the A2. The weekend before last saw jobs to Acton and Ealing on both nights with some help on the way back into town at Shepherds Bush. However, as I was preparing to head towards the O2 dome for a last job on Saturday, I picked up a couple on Regent Street wanting to go to Northcote Road near Clapham Junction. After dropping them off I headed back towards the West End and picked up almost immediately, a fare going towards Wimbledon, even further away from home.
I was tempted at this point to switch the light off and head for home, but I though that the next job MUST take me back in the right direction. I got as far as the Clapham Grand before a hand went out ... on the proper side of the road as well...
"Chessington please". Then a pause after the female passenger got in while the male stood outside the cab looking at me, then looking at her.
"Are you getting in this cab or not?". No it wasn't me asking the question, it was the young lady already on board.
With a tiny rebellion going on he mumbled "I dunno, you tell me" as he stepped in the back and slammed the door. I was tempted to comment about not taking it out on the vehicle but thought better of it since he had gone quiet and the only sound from the back was the lady sniffing back tears.
Time for the radio to go on again, and before too long she was screaming at him about his mates, his work and who knows what else. Luckily the TX2 is quite a noisy beast above 40mph so all went quiet again once we hit the A3. And it stayed quiet as peace descended on the pair and I started praying that they would get home before they did the whole "best part of breaking up is making up" routine in the back of the cab.
On the way back into town I managed to pick up five passengers at Putney Heath on their way to Clapham Junction, and then I crossed the river and found four people on the Kings Road heading towards Amika on Kensington High Street. As soon as I dropped them four more people got in wanting to go to China White's in Air Street. To avoid waiting too long at Piccadilly Circus they jumped out at the bottom of Air Street on Piccadilly and I started to head for home thinking I should switch my light off so that I don't end up going back west.
As I reached the lights at the top of Haymarket a lady with a broad French accent asked if I would go to Newbury Park. "Hang on" thinks I, "that's out towards the East." I checked with her and she said "Zee one on zee Zentral line". "Climb aboard!"
So we set off for Essex with five French passengers, all chatting away. To keep things simple I took it straight along the river, up through the city then out along the Mile End Road, through Straftord and along the Romford Road. As we get to Ilford the passengers are being fairly quiet and whispering amongst themselves. The glass partition in the cab is nothing compared to the Bastille so I ask if everything is OK (Everything other than the £48 on the meter at this point). They say that they want to go to Newbury Park and show me a tube map with "Newbury Park" circled on it. I explain in my limited French that we are approximately "deux kilometres" from Newbury Park and point at the road sign confirming what I had told them.
A shrug of the shoulders and their hotel looms into sight over the rooftops. I drop them off and they manage to scrape together the £52.20 for the journey with an 80p tip. Personally I'd be happy paying out £10 per person at 1:30 in the morning to get along a tube line that had been out all day.
From there it was a short trip out to the M25, across Dartford Bridge and home with a happy feeling that I'd finally finished the day with a job in the right(-ish) direction.
Things could have been a whole lot different on the previous weekend. While waiting at The Island near Lancaster Gate, a young "lady" runs over to the cab and asks if I could take her to "Ssh-idcup". Lovely, a nice job in the right direction to end the night. That was as good as it got. She fell into the cab and quickly scrambled onto a chair saying "Go left, go left". Since going left would have seen me going into the face of three lanes of oncoming traffic I opted to let the knowledge lead me in the right direction. "Can you go round the block, my boyfriend's back there". So a couple more right turns later and we're back where we started.
"Keep going! I don't want to stop for that bastard", so I carry on driving, hopefully heading for the Bayswater Road and the route to Sidcup.
"Go round the block again", an instruction that I decline saying that it's all adding up on the meter. "Don't worry, I've got £20" she says. I tell her that at that time of night she'd be lucky to get to Shoreditch for £20, let alone "Sshidcup".
"But there's some mates of mine round the corner who have got my money." At this point I pull over on the Bayswater Road and suggest that she gets out of the cab, gets her money and finds another taxi. Surprisingly (or not) she doesn't argue and gets straight out of the cab. I suspect that it's not the first time she's tried to pull this particular trick. I end up only losing £3.80 on the clock and 5 minutes of my time. Could have been somewhere around an hour and £50.
These long trips got me thinking about longer runs out into the suburbs, maybe from town or even from Heathrow so today I invested in a ... dare I say it?... Tom Tom sat nav system. i've made a couple of short journeys around my home towns and have found it to be a pile of poop compared to my local knowledge, but it does appear to correct and learn fairly quickly. I'm sure that over the next few weeks it'll sit in the cab and not be used very much, but if it helps me on a trip to East Grinstead next weekend when my daughter goes to Guide camp, and on a poorly planned motorbike tour into Spain, then it will have been an experience. Don't think I'll bother with it in town since my fat fingers make so many mistakes on the small touch screen it would be quicker to walk than let me correct my errors. I might leave it on though and run it as a comparison. I'll let you all know how well it goes... or not.
btw, knowledge boys and girls. If you wonder why you have to learn things like how to get in and out of Cleaver Square in Kennington, I had a job to there last weekend. After the passenger had paid me he offered me the route out. I interrupted him say, "Bowden, Methley, Milverton". He smiled and walked away saying "Very Impressive". Not sure Sat Nav would have been as quick.
Looks like I might just be doing weekends and nights for a while. With oil prices on the increase and everyone generally talking about tightening their belts my wife and I thought it might be an idea for her to hold off the plans for me to go full time in the cab.
My first fuel receipt for the cab only eight months ago shows that the price of diesel was 96.9 pence per litre. I filled up yesterday at one of the cheapest local garages to me and paid 128.9p per litre, an increase of about 33 per cent. Compare that to the 4.5% increase that we managed to get from Transport for London on the tariff and you can see that we're starting to suffer a bit. Perhaps I'll become a fuel tanker driver and look forward to the 14% increase on a salary of around £40K p.a.
I know there are plenty of other things that will be hit by this huge price increase (others in the transport industry and indirectly, anything else that relies on the price of oil - just about everything if you look closely) but how do we resolve the problem. Perhaps the government could see people in transport as needing a fuel price reduction and let us by fuel at lower rates. Some hope. We could have an extra price rise on the taxi tariff, but that could just kill the industry off. People already moan that London taxis are the most expensive in the world so any increase may see them turn away from us and go towards other forms of transport. Perhaps in times of recession we just have to realise that we've got to work that little bit longer to keep our takings on a par with the "good times".
There is also news of a new taxi for London. Not saying that we don't need something as competition for LTi's TX4 but to bring out a vehicle that doesn't look like a London Taxi (regardless of whether it meets the conditions of fitness - 5 passengers, 25' turning circle etc) is going to leave the trade open minicab drivers and others buying similar vehicles, fitting a light dome and coming in to take work from us. How will passengers know whether they are using a genuine London cab or a cheaper (the new Mercedes is reported to be about the same price tag as a TX4) version that externally looks the same. And will they care, just so long as they get to their destination. Let's hope they get to the destination safely.
That said, it's bad enough that we have to battle against the legal minicabs, illegal touts and the rickshaws that form rings of steel around theatres at kicking out time, but more and more cab drivers are putting two fingers up to their own by jumping queues at some stations, picking up insight of ranks where cabbies are already waiting for work.
I ranked up outside Hamleys yesterday and in five minutes two cabs picked up jobs right next to the rank while I was there with my light on. I tried to get the attention of the drivers but they didn't seem to care that they were nicking jobs less than 20 feet from a ranked cab. Perhaps it's getting more dog-eat-dog out there. Let's hope that the majority of drivers keep up the etiquette than go for the other option.
Following on from my moan about non-tippers I decided to see if I could figure who are the best and worst tippers. There doesn't seem to be any real pattern to the type of person who tips and who doesn't buty I've found that Londoners tend to tip more than foreigners, and that Australians didn't tip at all over the past two weekends. Women are more generous than men (but we all knew that they are more caring and sharing than us blokes anyway.... didn't we?), and couples tend to tip more if the bloke is drunk and trying to impress.
Other than the couple I picked up from outside Liberty in Great Marlborough Street, going to Denmark Road in Camberwell last night. Not sure that he would have impressed anyone unless he was in a How-many-times-can-you-say-"F***"-in-one-sentence competition. She was a bit wobbly as she got in, he was even worse. Before we'd even got to Regent Street, a distance of less than 100 yards he'd shouted "Put some f***ing tunes on!". He then wanted to argue about what was good music and what wasn't, so I eventually found a station with a song he liked and turned it up so I couldn't hear him. Once in Regent Street he banged on the glass partition and slurred something in his best Sauchiehall Street aggressive drunk accent. I wasn't sure what he said but it was well punctuated with expletives, generally aimed in my direction. I pulled the cab to the kerb and told him that he could either calm down or find another cab. One slurred apology later and we're off to Camberwell, music turned up and intercom switched off.
I heard more from him as the journey continued, particularly some really nasty racist comments as we hit Elephant and Castle. I was tempted to drop him off there and then but figured I'd lose out on the rest of the fare so continued down Walworth Road towards the destination. We eventually got to the drop off point with £25.20 on the meter. He handed me two tenners and started "F***ing let me out of the f***ing cab, you c***". Clearly his day job with the diplomatic corps was frustrating him, especially when I told him that I needed another fiver. Another string of expletives and he realised that I didn't have my foot on the brake so he could have got out of the cab at any point. His girlfriend gave me four two pound coins and an apology while he stood at the side window streaming it with abuse and spittle. Hopefully I'll not have to deal with him ever again.
Luckily most other couples were a lot more pleasant than Wayne and Waynetta as I worked my way through a fairly slow Saturday night. As usual when it came time to think about heading for home I managed to pull jobs heading in West rather than towards the wonders of the new tarmac on the Gravesend stretch of the A2. The weekend before last saw jobs to Acton and Ealing on both nights with some help on the way back into town at Shepherds Bush. However, as I was preparing to head towards the O2 dome for a last job on Saturday, I picked up a couple on Regent Street wanting to go to Northcote Road near Clapham Junction. After dropping them off I headed back towards the West End and picked up almost immediately, a fare going towards Wimbledon, even further away from home.
I was tempted at this point to switch the light off and head for home, but I though that the next job MUST take me back in the right direction. I got as far as the Clapham Grand before a hand went out ... on the proper side of the road as well...
"Chessington please". Then a pause after the female passenger got in while the male stood outside the cab looking at me, then looking at her.
"Are you getting in this cab or not?". No it wasn't me asking the question, it was the young lady already on board.
With a tiny rebellion going on he mumbled "I dunno, you tell me" as he stepped in the back and slammed the door. I was tempted to comment about not taking it out on the vehicle but thought better of it since he had gone quiet and the only sound from the back was the lady sniffing back tears.
Time for the radio to go on again, and before too long she was screaming at him about his mates, his work and who knows what else. Luckily the TX2 is quite a noisy beast above 40mph so all went quiet again once we hit the A3. And it stayed quiet as peace descended on the pair and I started praying that they would get home before they did the whole "best part of breaking up is making up" routine in the back of the cab.
On the way back into town I managed to pick up five passengers at Putney Heath on their way to Clapham Junction, and then I crossed the river and found four people on the Kings Road heading towards Amika on Kensington High Street. As soon as I dropped them four more people got in wanting to go to China White's in Air Street. To avoid waiting too long at Piccadilly Circus they jumped out at the bottom of Air Street on Piccadilly and I started to head for home thinking I should switch my light off so that I don't end up going back west.
As I reached the lights at the top of Haymarket a lady with a broad French accent asked if I would go to Newbury Park. "Hang on" thinks I, "that's out towards the East." I checked with her and she said "Zee one on zee Zentral line". "Climb aboard!"
So we set off for Essex with five French passengers, all chatting away. To keep things simple I took it straight along the river, up through the city then out along the Mile End Road, through Straftord and along the Romford Road. As we get to Ilford the passengers are being fairly quiet and whispering amongst themselves. The glass partition in the cab is nothing compared to the Bastille so I ask if everything is OK (Everything other than the £48 on the meter at this point). They say that they want to go to Newbury Park and show me a tube map with "Newbury Park" circled on it. I explain in my limited French that we are approximately "deux kilometres" from Newbury Park and point at the road sign confirming what I had told them.
A shrug of the shoulders and their hotel looms into sight over the rooftops. I drop them off and they manage to scrape together the £52.20 for the journey with an 80p tip. Personally I'd be happy paying out £10 per person at 1:30 in the morning to get along a tube line that had been out all day.
From there it was a short trip out to the M25, across Dartford Bridge and home with a happy feeling that I'd finally finished the day with a job in the right(-ish) direction.
Things could have been a whole lot different on the previous weekend. While waiting at The Island near Lancaster Gate, a young "lady" runs over to the cab and asks if I could take her to "Ssh-idcup". Lovely, a nice job in the right direction to end the night. That was as good as it got. She fell into the cab and quickly scrambled onto a chair saying "Go left, go left". Since going left would have seen me going into the face of three lanes of oncoming traffic I opted to let the knowledge lead me in the right direction. "Can you go round the block, my boyfriend's back there". So a couple more right turns later and we're back where we started.
"Keep going! I don't want to stop for that bastard", so I carry on driving, hopefully heading for the Bayswater Road and the route to Sidcup.
"Go round the block again", an instruction that I decline saying that it's all adding up on the meter. "Don't worry, I've got £20" she says. I tell her that at that time of night she'd be lucky to get to Shoreditch for £20, let alone "Sshidcup".
"But there's some mates of mine round the corner who have got my money." At this point I pull over on the Bayswater Road and suggest that she gets out of the cab, gets her money and finds another taxi. Surprisingly (or not) she doesn't argue and gets straight out of the cab. I suspect that it's not the first time she's tried to pull this particular trick. I end up only losing £3.80 on the clock and 5 minutes of my time. Could have been somewhere around an hour and £50.
These long trips got me thinking about longer runs out into the suburbs, maybe from town or even from Heathrow so today I invested in a ... dare I say it?... Tom Tom sat nav system. i've made a couple of short journeys around my home towns and have found it to be a pile of poop compared to my local knowledge, but it does appear to correct and learn fairly quickly. I'm sure that over the next few weeks it'll sit in the cab and not be used very much, but if it helps me on a trip to East Grinstead next weekend when my daughter goes to Guide camp, and on a poorly planned motorbike tour into Spain, then it will have been an experience. Don't think I'll bother with it in town since my fat fingers make so many mistakes on the small touch screen it would be quicker to walk than let me correct my errors. I might leave it on though and run it as a comparison. I'll let you all know how well it goes... or not.
btw, knowledge boys and girls. If you wonder why you have to learn things like how to get in and out of Cleaver Square in Kennington, I had a job to there last weekend. After the passenger had paid me he offered me the route out. I interrupted him say, "Bowden, Methley, Milverton". He smiled and walked away saying "Very Impressive". Not sure Sat Nav would have been as quick.
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Starting Out
OK, a first attempt at writing on the web.
Actually, not really the first time, having published a football fanzine for a few years, along with its website. They say, there's a book in everyone. Well I certainly hope mine comes out soon. It's been really uncomfortable riding that scooter around London for the past three and a half years with that inside me.
Why ride a scooter for so long? Quite simple really.. the answer, not the author, although some might argue otherwise.
After having spent 7 years at home as a stay-at-home dad while our daughter grew up, I decided to think about a career for when she got a bit older. The prospect of going back into and office and selling things 9-5 (or for however many hour the job takes, as my last couple of contracts so quaintly phrased it) filled me with horror. To put all that work in for little return just didn't seem to suit me.
So, what job could I do where the hours are totally flexible and where I wouldn't have to be shut inside an office environment for the rest of my working life? I enjoy driving... yes, even in London... so why not think about becoming a cabbie.
To become a licensed hackney carriage driver in London, an applicant needs to demonstrate that he or she can find the shortest route between any two given places within 6 miles of Charing Cross Station in the centre of London. And all without the aid of map or sat-nav system.
The process of learning and demonstrating all this is known as "The Knowledge of London".
On average it takes a knowledge-boy or -girl, around three and a half years to complete the knowledge. All at their own expense, and all in their own time.
A list of 320 routes forms the backbone of The Knowledge, but is far from all you'd need to know. Once you've learned the routes, you also need to find places (known as points) on those routes. These can be restaurants, bars, museums, offices, stations, pretty much anywhere a passenger might as to go to.
The easiest way to find these points is simply to get out there and find them. It can be done on foot, or by car, but by far, the most popular way is to use a scooter or moped. You'll recognise a knowledge boy in town. Their bike usually has a perspex screen on the front normally with a map or a list of roads and points that they need to find.
And so for several years, in all weathers, a knowledge boy will be pounding the streets searching for somewhere that the examiners have asked in previous exams (known as "appearances"). Once all that bike work is done and you've worked your way through the appearance system you then have to learn 132 routes from the edge of the six mile radius out to the London Suburbs.
And that is the stage I am now at. I've managed to drive all of the routes adding another 1500 miles or so to the 24,000 I've already done (I suspect it would have been quicker and easier to have become the pilot of a 747). The next couple of weeks will be spent revising these runs before I go back up to the Public Carriage Office (PCO) where I will have to recite a few of them at the examiner's choosing.
Providing I'm successful, I'll then be given a final talk, presented with my badge and I can then start work once I've picked up my cab from the rental company.
And that, in a nutshell is what I've had to go through in the past three years. I'm sure these pages will tell you more about some of the details as I recall them once I'm in the job. Or perhaps it'll all just fall out of the already full dustbin that is my brain. Who knows?
Right! Revision beckons.
Actually, not really the first time, having published a football fanzine for a few years, along with its website. They say, there's a book in everyone. Well I certainly hope mine comes out soon. It's been really uncomfortable riding that scooter around London for the past three and a half years with that inside me.
Why ride a scooter for so long? Quite simple really.. the answer, not the author, although some might argue otherwise.
After having spent 7 years at home as a stay-at-home dad while our daughter grew up, I decided to think about a career for when she got a bit older. The prospect of going back into and office and selling things 9-5 (or for however many hour the job takes, as my last couple of contracts so quaintly phrased it) filled me with horror. To put all that work in for little return just didn't seem to suit me.
So, what job could I do where the hours are totally flexible and where I wouldn't have to be shut inside an office environment for the rest of my working life? I enjoy driving... yes, even in London... so why not think about becoming a cabbie.
To become a licensed hackney carriage driver in London, an applicant needs to demonstrate that he or she can find the shortest route between any two given places within 6 miles of Charing Cross Station in the centre of London. And all without the aid of map or sat-nav system.
The process of learning and demonstrating all this is known as "The Knowledge of London".
On average it takes a knowledge-boy or -girl, around three and a half years to complete the knowledge. All at their own expense, and all in their own time.
A list of 320 routes forms the backbone of The Knowledge, but is far from all you'd need to know. Once you've learned the routes, you also need to find places (known as points) on those routes. These can be restaurants, bars, museums, offices, stations, pretty much anywhere a passenger might as to go to.
The easiest way to find these points is simply to get out there and find them. It can be done on foot, or by car, but by far, the most popular way is to use a scooter or moped. You'll recognise a knowledge boy in town. Their bike usually has a perspex screen on the front normally with a map or a list of roads and points that they need to find.
And so for several years, in all weathers, a knowledge boy will be pounding the streets searching for somewhere that the examiners have asked in previous exams (known as "appearances"). Once all that bike work is done and you've worked your way through the appearance system you then have to learn 132 routes from the edge of the six mile radius out to the London Suburbs.
And that is the stage I am now at. I've managed to drive all of the routes adding another 1500 miles or so to the 24,000 I've already done (I suspect it would have been quicker and easier to have become the pilot of a 747). The next couple of weeks will be spent revising these runs before I go back up to the Public Carriage Office (PCO) where I will have to recite a few of them at the examiner's choosing.
Providing I'm successful, I'll then be given a final talk, presented with my badge and I can then start work once I've picked up my cab from the rental company.
And that, in a nutshell is what I've had to go through in the past three years. I'm sure these pages will tell you more about some of the details as I recall them once I'm in the job. Or perhaps it'll all just fall out of the already full dustbin that is my brain. Who knows?
Right! Revision beckons.
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