QUIET FERRYMEN OF THE OLD CITY

I took a cab in London today. Well, the tubes were all messed up and I didn’t fancy walking an hour and a half. London buses frighten me, and honestly, you’d have to pay me to get on a Boris Bike.

Sidebar: Are they still called ‘Boris Bikes’? I mean, that man’s had at least two jobs since being Mayor of London, and it was a while ago, wasn’t it? Has the name stuck? Does it matter as long as you know what I’m talking about? Questions for another day.

“Where you goin?” said the cabbie, whistling through his teeth. I told him, then climbed in the back, reflexively saying “Cheers mate” as I clicked the door shut.

“We’ll have to go vía Oxford Street,” he said chirpily, “Then er, maybe we can work it out together.”

That’s a bit cheeky, I thought. A bit like the waiter inviting you to pop out to the kitchen and help the chef flip your steak. What a treat.

Anyway, his cheeky, chirpy London ways got me wondering. Where do cabbies live? There’s no way they all live in London any more; I mean, as much as I’d like to think that they get home to Whitechapel or Hackney, pop a flat cap on a hook and whistle happily while the trouble and strife boils a kettle on the tinpot stove, I doubt that’s been the reality since about 1955.

So where do these quiet ferrymen of the old city go at night? Is it posh flats now? Or grotty ones in the grimy suburbs? Do they take their cabs home with them to leafy streets in Surrey and Kent only to stream into the Big Smoke in the mornings, like conquering heroes in the chariot races who chuckle at the congestion charge and thank their lucky stars?

“Down here I think, mate,” he said, swinging the cab around some roadworks. The long, busy street of high rise buildings stretched familiarly before me through the windscreen, as ever, untouched by sun, and burbling with cyclists, car horns, and hurried commuters.

This is all the world for this guy, I thought. This gigantic, ridiculous city. He seemed happy enough. He gave me advice about putting my phone away so it wouldn’t get stolen by passing thieves on scooters (“It’s rife mate”) and wished me a good day as though I were a gentleman in a top hat, and he were perched on the bench of his hansom cab, ready to click a nag into motion. I thanked him. Still no idea where they all live though.