Articles (1)
I was a London taxi driver for 58 years – here’s what I learned
I was born and brought up in London’s East End. Apart from during the war, when we got evacuated 30 miles outside the city, I’ve lived here my whole life. I first started driving a cab in May 1961 after becoming fed up working at the factory where I made ladies’ garments. I had never really given any thought to whether I wanted to be a cab driver, but a lot of my friends started doing The Knowledge, so I did too. I was 30 at the time, which was quite late to become a cab driver. I used to go out on my bicycle and learn the streets and suburbs of London using a map. It wasn’t easy, but it only took about a year to learn then, whereas now it can take four to five years – the city has grown so much. Eventually I got my badge and licence. The lower your badge number, the longer you have been driving in London. My badge number is 511. If you got your badge now, your number would be about 70,000 or 80,000 – and it keeps going up. ‘I’ve picked up Judi Dench, David Walliams and John Betjeman’ London has changed a lot in my 58 years as a cab driver. There are more motorways now, everywhere is a lot busier than it used to be, and there are so many one-way systems. If you don’t know where you’re going now in central London, you can just forget about it – you’ll just be going round in circles. But a black-cab driver will always get you out of trouble. In 58 years driving around London, of course I’ve had some famous people in my car (though I usually say everyone is famous if they pay me
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City envy: we want a chess bar like Oslo
A standard Friday night doesn’t need to end in a sweaty club, with you dancing badly to Cardi B. Norwegians have found a way of making going out more intellectually stimulating: they’ve made chess cool. Chess is increasingly becoming the game of choice to watch or play for the country’s young and trendy residents, and in Oslo they have the perfect place for it. The Good Knight is the world’s first chess bar, where every table has an integrated chessboard. Feeling brave? You could play against a bartender – but keep in mind one of them is a grandmaster who won the Norwegian Blitz Chess Championship. Then again, you may as well have a go: your ego will probably be less bruised from losing at chess on a night out than from being discovered asleep in your half-eaten kebab. Want more travel inspo? Here are the coolest events on earth in 2019.