London Black Taxi Cab diaries, no 6

As soon as I hit the Mcdonald’s on Rotherhithe New Road, I was confronted with a queue of non-moving traffic. I couldn’t think what could be causing it, but I took no chances and headed back to the Old Kent Road. The traffic news was that there had been an accident on Lower Thames Street! What, and it was affecting traffic that far away. I didn’t want to work anywhere near all this so headed towards Victoria. Where did my first job from Victoria Street want to go? Bloody Southwark Bridge! On the way up York Road another cab driver intentionally stopped next to me, which at first I thought was so he could have a go at me (what had I done that I had already forgotten about?). ‘What does your number plate say?’ came the unexpected query, ‘Stormcab’ I told Reggie and Ronnie Kray’s long lost triplet. He turned his head back towards the road ahead with a look that said ‘another stupid muppet wasting money on a number plate that doesn’t mean anything’. I was now embarrassed in front of my customer, so I through out ‘I have put a few videos on Youtube under that name. Immediately his face changed to that of someone who could have been my best friend ‘OH, DARTH VADOR, THAT VIDEO WITH THE TAXI WAS HILARIOUS’! I didn’t really want to correct him (it’s a stormtrooper actually) as I had just got my pride back. I then spent the next 5 minutes explaining to the customer what had just happened. A similar thing happened on Bishop’s Bridge Road, as I was about to drop off at Paddington Station. A burgundy TX4 was waiting in the rank next to me and the driver said ‘Alright mate’, I acknowledged ‘Alright’, then he said ‘I saw your Mercedes review on Youtube, you’re the reason I bought this… you are’. Thank god he looked pleased, because for a second I thought ‘oh great, is he going to tell me what an idiot I was’. Anyway, the point is, this guy could read what was on the number plate, so it’s not that obscure. The pubs in town were spilling over into the street because of the nice weather, and I thought I should really have my camera out. I told myself that I would wait until something convinces me that I should have my camera out; that something would have made a good little photo – Alan Davies getting into a cab in front of me!

London Black Taxi Cab diaries, no 5

On one of my many trips down Piccadilly I had a BMW 5 series blatantly jump the lights on me at Berkeley Street. I was angrily beeping and flashing him as I followed him, but soon realised he didn’t care as he was part of the huge contingent of Paparazzi trying to position themselves outside the Wolseley restaurant. I had conflicting reports from customers that it was Kelly Osborn, the Princes Harry and William, and Paris Hilton?!
Later I picked up a smart Asian man with a very pretty blond from a club in Kensington, and took him to Victoria. After dropping her he told me he couldn't believe he had pulled her, but had to be up in the morning so couldn't spend the night. He told me that at one point in the night this girl went off to the loo, and he went up for a dance with a slim and pretty girl who was already up dancing. When the blond returned from the loo and he went back over to her, she asked ‘do you know who that girl is? Kate Middleton’. One of my jobs was an Italian man who asked if he could pay by credit card, he also asked if I could take him to Heathrow at 5am. Now, I was trying to change my shift a bit ready for an up coming trip, but I couldn’t turn down a £50-60 job, so I accepted. It did tick over quite nicely until I got to the Washington hotel where he was, and luckily he did come out 15 minutes early. The bit that caught me off guard was when he said ‘terminal 5’; I’d never been. I tried desperately to get the map to the right page while I was stopped at lights to see where the building was located, but in the end I came to the conclusion that it would be very clearly signposted – which it was.

London Black Taxi Cab diaries, no 4

I picked up a well spoken women from Whitehall, who immediately asked if she could tell me about her day; I am happy whenever someone asks this. She started telling me how she tried to get her friend a cab on the Strand but couldn’t, then she tried to get one for herself… I couldn’t really follow her, but then she came out with ‘My husband has just left me after 7 years of marriage, yep, he was gay’. She went on to tell me it happened 2 months ago, so she was obviously still in shock at it all. They have 3 children together that are all under 2!! And he has known he was gay since the age of 8!! He may have been gay, but 3 kids in such a short space of time, wow.

London Black Taxi Cab Diaries no 3

A surprise was picking up Dave Berry on Berkeley Street. He flagged another cab down but l recognized him just in time to catch him. It was easy to see why he had done so well in the entertainment Industry; he was such a nice guy. He went to the same sixth form college as I did, then a couple of years later would drink at the pub I worked in. During the next couple of years I would pick him up a few times as a minicab driver, just as he was starting out his now successful career. I had recently sent him an email at XFM where he is a DJ, and he responded within a couple of days. He remembered from my email that I got married and asked me how I met my wife; and I asked whether it was true that he was dating a Sugababe, he was, for the last 5 years. I told him about my video editing hobby and that I would be making a movie for Comic Relief-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LAYrgqSk0&feature=channel_page&fmt=18

Just before we reached his destination he asked me 'are you not charging me? (the meter wasn't on) I said 'old times mate'. But then when he got out he handed me a £20 note and told me to put it towards my Red Nose Day donations. I also got a photo-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stormcab/3334805726/

Duplicity, short film review.

The film was a decent enough film, not too predictable, but mainly held together by the great cast. There was a particular part in the film that Mark Kermode had commented on which made me laugh when I saw it. Several scenes in the film were set in different cities around the world, and the way they presented each location was to show some footage of the place, followed by the name of the city. Also, each place was where something had happened in the past; so the sequence would be – footage, name, how long ago. The thing that Mark pointed out was after about 15-20 seconds of footage showing black cabs, red double decker buses, Big Ben, etc… ‘London’ came up, followed shortly by ‘3 months ago’! All the other places could have been anywhere in the area of the world they were, but London was BLOODY OBVIOUS. In my opinion the ‘3 months ago’ should have appeared at the exact moment ‘London’ appeared.

Confusing labelling on supermarket products

We went over to Sainsbury’s to do some shopping, where besides buying food for the next few days, we looked at the nutritional information of dozens of products. My wife would pick up something and say ‘what’s the fat in that?’, or ‘how much sugar in this?’ Myself, I was on some sort of crusade, I was looking at things to see if they were clearly labelled, for example, there was a pot of noodles that pointed out on the front that there was less than 5% fat. I looked at the nutritional information on the back and there was 7% saturated fat per pot! That’s more than a third of an adult female’s daily allowance. I couldn’t figure out where they got this ‘less than 5%' figure from. All I could see was that the actual fat content per 100g was 3.8g, so technically it was less than 5%, but you would be eating 7g saturated in a whole pot – really cheeky labelling. I also had another look at some of the differences with the fat content of dark and milk chocolate. On everything from chocolate digestives to chocolate bars, the dark chocolate versions were all higher in saturated fat!