The bottom line of this perhaps rather long narrative, is not, as I initially started out as a perhaps green, green badge cab driver, who did not move to the valley of Diesel “Ilford” with the obligatory new cab, wife, mortgage and two kids.

No one more surprised than I at the realisation of what has materialised, a first hand description humiliation and deprivation of the British working class from the 1930's.

This erosion brought about entirely by deliberate policy of successive governments.. and the ten draconian years of Tony Blair who deliberately, for whatever reason, encouraged the influx of irrepresible waves of the World's disenchanted onto these shores, by doing so, creating a powerful, intimidating, devisive weapon against the indigenous labouring masses and a hard core of … crime, poverty and unemployment… the triple iron fist of all governments,plus Enron, 9/11, Afghan conflict over oil, Kosovo all emphatically used by Blair; any outcry was by "politically incorrect racists" as Dr David Kelly was to find to the cost of his life.

The differential between rich and poor, is greater now, than during the Middle Ages.

The Old Duchess

Things booming, money awash in the streets, I, still attempting to sell Nelson's Column to the Americans who were here in droves... it becoming unusual to find anyone other than Yanks in the back of a cab, anything, other than dollars in my hand. Apparently they had limitless amounts of money, hardly knowing what to do with it. They fought the Arabs on the pavement outside Harrods to get in a cab. One particular afternoon, must have been about four ... four thirty... such a scrimmage ... never usual bothering to look, whoever finished up in the cab, sitting down, the winner, so far as I was concerned.

This particular day, more shouting than usual, more rocking of the cab on its springs than usual ... deigned to look round at this mad clamor of humanity, to see an old lady going down for the third time. They were trampling on her. Pulled my big belly out of the seat, pushed my way into the melee, pulled the old dear onto her feet, straightened up her hat with the grapes and flowers on it, brushed her down, pulled the Arab contender with his two wives and five children out and drove slowly away enveloping everyone suitably in a cloud of black smoke.

The old lady, I noticed, dressed anciently but expensively... jewelry round her neck rings on her fingers. Did not come from Selfridges. She appeared unperturbed about her scramble in the gutter.


"The Bolton's driver",

She said in a very English, very controlled educated voice ... if you don't know The Bolton's, you're dead.

"Thank you so much for helping me ... isn't it frightful the way these foreigners behave ...!

She fiddled about with her clothing, pulled her large, black hat with the grapes and flowers, straight ... a bird fluttering its plumage. We were at the Bolton’s in five minutes ... about three bob on the clock. She placed a fiver very carefully in my hand.

"Driver, do you mind waiting a moment? ... I may have to go elsewhere."

At a fiver a time, I would wait for ever. She went up the steps of the huge house, the door mysteriously opening and closing behind her.

Time ticked by, the old clock clicked on... Finally, a man came out, obviously something to do with the household; someone out of "Upstairs Downstairs" ... Gave me a pound.
"Madam would like you to wait a few moments more"
Quite definitely I had struck pure gold.

It materialized that the lady was a Duchess of some sort. I am not up in that. What interested me was the amount of money I accumulated over the three weeks spent driving her about. She, having no more lying around on the pavements awaiting people to walk over her small, frail body ... taking a strange, perhaps distant liking to me. For reasons best known to herself, refusing to be driven in the immaculate Bentley that I had seen lurking about. ……preferring my old cab to it.
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