Taxi Driver Online

The Times (London)

September 11 1985, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Spectrum: Confessions of a street-wise cabbie

BYLINE: PEARSON PHILLIPS

When Bernard met Joyce after coming out of the Royal Artillery back in the 1950s it was pretty obvious he'd end up as a cab driver. He didn't have a trade, did he?

Her mother's side were all cabbies. Uncle Fred, Uncle Arthur, Uncle Charlie and Uncle Ben. Then there were the cousins, three cabbies and two married to cabbies.

So he went down to Kingsland Waste - a bit of a market area, off the Kingsland Road down Dalson way. He bought an old push-bike for 15 shillings, fixed a board on the front, and set off to do 'The Knowledge' of London, which according to a columnist called Monty in Taxi - The Voice of the Cab Trade requires 'an intimate knowledge of inner London's 100 square miles of streets, as well as a more than nodding acquaintance with the 1,000 square miles of Greater London suburbs'.

With Joyce breathing down his neck and a bit of help from one of the uncles (who was strong on Islington and Hackney but a bit rusty on Streatham, Balham and the East India Dock Road) he got through in six months. (Some people take three or four years nowadays and there is a 70 per cent drop-out rate).

He has been cabbing for 35 years now, starting at the time of the Festival of Britain, with one of those old beauties with a hood that folded down at the back, and a horn that you honked by squeezing a big rubber bulb. He has brought up two sons on it, both with degrees.

I did not learn all this by squeezing on to one of those flip-down front seats and parleying through a crack in the glass partition at the back of the cabbie's neck. We were in his sitting room (nice wine rack, Spanish holiday souvenirs on the mantel-piece), removed from the stressful battle of egos which invariably seems to surround the deceptively simple business of taking a taxi. How does life look from the other side of that sliding glass Iron Curtain?

Bernard Stubbs is a big, grizzly bear in his early sixties who first came to London as a country boy from Wiltshire. But you wouldn't know it. He says the two words 'Labour Party' with the same Cockney twang and much the same tone of scorn as Alf Garnet Esquire.

'Any cabbie who is broke must be plain stupid', is his opinion. But Bernard says he can take things a bit easy nowadays. No commitments. Not like some youngsters who have to find pounds 130 for the cab and their diesel every week before they can get around to paying for two kids and the mortgage. He has a half share in the hire of a cab with one other driver, that's called 'a half flat'. He does days, the other driver (a six-handicap golfer with a short game to polish up during the day) works nights.

He and Joyce have lived in the same Islington home all their lives. The whole house cost Joyce's father pounds 1,000, before the war. Now the area has been gentrified and you would be talking six figures for it. 'The change in the neighbourhood is handy', says Bernard. 'When I go to work I sometimes get a fare before I've reached the end of the street.'

So what does he bring in? This is a question which tends not to get an answer from the taxi trade. 'Like most self-employed people, I'm not too keen to talk about what I earn. But I look at it this way. I like to get my expenses over and done with the first couple of days of the week. Then I've got three or four days where I'm working for myself. Two days for the cab. The rest for me.'

There are perks, too. A little volume called The Taxi Drivers Compendium lists hotels which offer taxi drivers a commission for guests they bring along. The Central Park Hotel, Queensborough Terrace, I notice, offers pounds 3 for a double, pounds 2 for a single, cash on delivery. Some offer pounds 5 for a double.

All cabbies are conscious of only having reached this satisfactory state by going through the gruelling knowledge tests. It's the initiation ceremony which binds them together, Knights of the Steering Wheel. How do they do it?

'You've just got to go and look at places and get a picture of them up here', he says, tapping his head. 'Maps are no good. It's like you showing me a picture of your sister. Would I be able to recognize her afterwards in the street? Probably not. But if you were to introduce me to her, it'd be there. I'd always have an image up here. To me, looking at a map is like looking at a picture. You have got to see the streets to get a feel for them.'

At the start they were issued with a kind of Grey's Anatomy of London, called the Blue Book (although it has apparently changed into a white book). 'It had 18 lists, with 18 set runs in each list. We would work through them, a list at a time. Every month we'd be called for a test in a place we called 'The Dungeon', beneath the Lambeth Hackney Carriage Office.

'It was all done by police inspectors in those days, and they would be dressed in uniform like blooming Chinese admirals, with me standing on a little mat in front of the desk trying to answer the questions. They would take any one of those lists and ask you perhaps a dozen routes. They never said you were right. They never said you were wrong. If someone was really bad, all they would get was some remark like: 'If I was you, I'd keep on my bike'. They really weren't very nice people.

'If it went well enough you'd be told to come in once a fortnight, instead of once a month. And then they'd give you a 'Rec', which was 'Recommended For a Licence'. But that was only the start. Next came the suburbs, and the driving test.

The suburbs I did from a book. Sat there all day long, and learnt it like poetry.' He can still recite it, rolling out the street names in a flat monotone. 'Euston to Barnet? You'd go Camden Town, Highgate, Highgate West Hill, Finchley High Road, Tally Ho Corner, Ballards Lane, straight the way through to Barnet. King's Cross to Enfield? King's Cross, Caledonian Road, Hornsey Road, Muswell Hill .'

He got driving practise in a cab thanks to the British Legion, which ran a taxi school. Normally would-be cabbies have to 'wangle', which means paying for the borrowing of a cab to practise on.

At the end of it all he got his license disc, to be hung at all times from his lapel. He was then a 'Butter Boy', which is what cabbies of small experience are called. The big, solid, central cab firms do not want to know about them. He had to pedal down to Brixton to get a job .. in the provinces.

He did 15 years on nights, and loved it. 'It's another world from day work. Your fares are all out for pleasure. It was pub work, club work theatres, and Cafe de Paris, the Four Hundred, the Guards Club.

'When they came out of the theatres, the women were in long dresses, the men in evening suits. I used to love taking them. Different now. When they put their hand up they've got hair all over the place, shirts open down to their navel, scruffy trousers. Probably the same kind of people, but I'd rather have the old style ..'

He switched over to days because Joyce didn't care for spending nights alone. 'I found it a terrible wrench. A different world. At night, Waterloo to Kings Cross, five minutes, zoom. In the day it can take half an hour. Down to Clapham Common at night, no problem. But day-time, you're talking about an hour or more's work.'

Which is how we got on to the tricky subject of how he looks upon his fares. Does he show disgust if they want to go where he does not want to go?

'Well, I try not to. Although it probably shows. Many a time I've sat half an hour in a station and someone comes up and wants to go round the corner, and I think, my God, half an hour and I'm going to get about 80 pence out of it.

'It's the element of surprise that keeps you going, though. You never know what's waiting for you round the corner. You and I, both cab drivers, could be going down the Caledonian Road, say. And I'm being clever and turn up Copenhagen Street, aiming for Kings Cross where I'll get a certainty. You go straight on and, stupidly, you cop a fifty quid job to Southend. That's why I don't have the radio. You can accept a job on the radio. But how do I know what I might have got if I had kept going?

'A long job is nice. Thirty or forty quid in the net in one go. Whereas it could take you all day in little short jobs.'

And, of course, a nice juicy Arab will always be welcome? 'Arabs? Nonsense. I've never had anything on top of the fare from an Arab. Quite the reverse. Take them to the airport and they start haggling.

'I was in Queen's Gate. An Arab stopped me. Showed me on his card where he wanted to go. It said 'Private Suite of the Grosvenor'. That's nice, I thought. So he got in the back of the cab and he said: 'How much will it be from here?' No more than pounds 2, I said. 'I'll give you a pound'. You bloody will, my son, I said. 'I'll give you pounds 1.50'. So I told him to jump out as I wasn't taking him. Well, your guess is as good as mine what they pay for a private suite at the Grosvenor House.

'But the Nigerians are the worst. They may be used to bargaining, but I'm not. It just annoys me to think that I'm out there trying to scratch a living and they are staying in pounds 1,000-a-week apartments and trying to take 50 pence off me.'

This doesn't mean that cabbies are meanies, according to Bernard. 'We do a lot for charity, but the meter is business. We'll take handicapped children to the seaside on a day off but you won't find us wasting meter time taking the Mrs shopping during the week.

He says women are a bit funny, too, sometimes. 'The other day two ladies, very intellectual, well-to-do ladies, got in at Harrods wanting the Fulham Road. I get down the Fulham Road, I'm double parked, and they said 'Wait there'. I said it's impossible. I can't wait here. So what was it she called me? A slag, or something. I said you can call me what you like, I'm still not going to wait here.

'Another lady stopped me in Oxford Circus as I was coming home. Would I take her to Weymouth Street? I said sorry, no. She says: 'Why won't you take me? I said I didn't want to get involved in an argument, I would rather just say 'no' and that's that. And she took my number. I understand she should be annoyed because she can't get what she wants, but at the same time, I have to finish work. If she'd been going to King's Cross or Canonbury or somewhere, I could have taken her ...

'The law says that if you have your light on you have to take anyone if their destination is within a six-mile radius, or within one hour's working time - unless the driver has a reasonable excuse. Well, what's 'a reasonable excuse'?'

What is his ideal fare? 'Like any business, it's the turnover you've got to go for. Get'em in the cab and get'em out.

'What I like is a nice businessman, who'll have come up from Wey bridge, say, gets in at Waterloo, 'Good Morning, Cabby', wants to go somewhere in the City, sits back behind his paper. We get there, and I open the door for him and he says 'Thank you very much' and departs. I've given him a service which he values.

'Someone who knows what taxis are for.'
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And we still do.