by Craig Taylor
All the things that have happened to you, all them years. Where you’ve been and who you’ve been with. All the different people I’ve met. I always seem to get on with them. If I see people I always talk to people. That’s just what I do.
I wouldn’t move. I wouldn’t go out again. I like London. I wouldn’t like to live in the country. All that quiet.
LUDMILA OLSZEWSKA
Former Londoner
She has recently returned to Warsaw after spending a year working in a pub in Kilburn. Her voice through the telephone is rapsy, and I can hear her daughter playing contentedly behind her.
I remember the English weather, English cigarettes, grey skies, but sometimes beautiful skies, Oxford Street, Topshop. Irish men in my pub all day. They were so sad but also very funny, and also very respectful. They ask me what I was in London for. I said to them: money. I asked them why they came to London for. They said: money. They sit still for so long, all day, and some tell you things at the end of the night that you don’t want to hear. I remember the music, the light of the pub, the Guinness, the waiting for the Guinness. That was one of the first things I learned in London: to wait for the Guinness with them.
I would make time each day to call my daughter, Alexandra, who was 4 and living with my mother in Warsaw. I would text my mother to make sure it was a good time. It was hard to hear my daughter from so far away. She comes on the phone, she doesn’t always speak to me and I said, come on, say something, and there was her breathing and other small sounds but sometimes no words, and that is so hard to hear. Just sounds. It made me wonder if she knew it was me. She did. That is when you think, what am I doing in London? How much do I make? What do I have to do before I go home?
I remember the old churches, the London Eye, Shoot Up Hill, and many women who are well dressed, though not in Kilburn. My money, my toothbrush, my mobile phone, my sim card, my make-up, my shampoo, some clothes, some clothes I never took out of my bag. Primrose Hill once for an afternoon. I ate my lunch there. The buses. Always listening to Polish people on the buses. They think that no one understands them.
Where are you going, they asked at the pub when I left, and I said, I am going home. They knew about my daughter because they sat in the pub all day. Don’t leave us, one man said to me. What will we ever do without you? But they also told me going home was very important. They would like to go home to Ireland. Some had been in London for forty years. I said to them, go. I am going. I am finished with London. You should go too. They said, no, they could not go.
I miss the freedom of London. I do miss the mixture. I think I will go back sometime with Alexandra and show her the city. She will understand why I went. And perhaps why I came back.
SMARTIE
Taxi driver
The light has changed again. The afternoon has moved on, as have the young mothers, pushing their prams ahead. There are empty cups in front of us. There is less din in the Costa Coffee. ‘I’m great for reminiscing,’ he says. ‘I always think about the past and my wife sometimes tells me off. She says, move forward. I say, the future is the past.’
I stopped working in the City for good about ten years ago, and I started the Knowledge to be a London taxi driver. I know a lot of people who were traders in the City who are now taxi drivers.
Basically, I met somebody who I really wanted to be with. I met her through my DJ-ing, she was a friend of the guy who owned the bar that I was DJ-ing in. We met from there and we formed a relationship and she lived with me. And now we’re married, we have a son, and I became a taxi driver. I can honestly say that doing the Knowledge is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I love driving a London taxi. It’s the diesel engine really, the sound of the diesel. It doesn’t sound like any other vehicle. I suppose it sounds like an old chugger, an old banger, it’s just a diesel engine turning over. It’s a real individual sound. I mean the only other sound of a vehicle that I think is really individual is a Porsche engine. I used to have a Porsche Carrera before I had my son and that engine, when you started the engine over, there’s no other sound like it. It’s a purr. But the taxi engine it’s a real rattly sound, I love it. You can sense it chugging down the road. It’s just your normal diesel engine, but it’s a big engine. All London taxis were originally made in Coventry by the LTI, London Taxi International, and it was a British-made vehicle, so it’s all British parts and pieces. It’s an iconic vehicle. It’s a bit like the Mini car or the red phone box. If they ever got rid of the London taxi it wouldn’t be London.
If somebody said to me, what things remind you of New York, I would think, the Empire State Building, yellow cabs, Times Square. An American who’d never been to London, they’ll say Buckingham Palace, they’ll say Big Ben, they’ll say Trafalgar Square, maybe. They’re the things that remind you of London. Not many of them would say the London Eye, you know, the big wheel built for the Millennium. It’s not an icon in the way that people remember London. It’s just a big Ferris wheel, isn’t it?
There’s a lot of people out there that want to make London like Paris. They want coffee-bar culture, but this is London. When people come to London, they want the London they see in the films. They want the old-fashioned boozers. They want Jack the Ripper. They want Sherlock Holmes. Don’t ever try and be Paris; if you want Paris you go to Paris. If you want London you go to London. So that individual niche sound of the London taxi should never ever go, because yes, you can hear it, and so many people turn around when I drive down the road in my taxi and they hear the engine and they know it’s me coming to their rescue when they’re stranded in some back road. There’s a taxi coming.
Every Sunday night I work from eight o’clock at night to about one o’clock or 1.30 in the morning. I really enjoy it because I get the chance to see real London. I like looking at buildings. When I look at architecture, I look at how buildings have changed. I see things that remind me of when I was growing up. I look at areas that I used to hang around in as a kid, I might have been on a Red Bus Rover or I might have run through those streets being chased by a gang of kids.
Places like, for instance, the South Bank or London Bridge, which were full of burnt-out buildings back then. Places that I grew up with in Leyton that were derelict and we used to run through these houses at night knocking on people’s doors, buildings that were derelict where we used to let off fireworks and stuff. Those places are now all housing developments.
When I go out on a Sunday, I see all parts of London, I drive everywhere and I go everywhere, I still see a lot of things that remind me of its past. I go to places which are run-down, and I think, I wonder what that will be like in five years’ time? Will that still be the same or will it be different? It excites me. I still get excitement out of London. I suppose the day I don’t get excitement out of London will be the day I leave it, you know. My wife always says she’d love to live in the countryside. I like the idea of escaping all the nonsense of London, but you know what? My heart and soul are here in the city, really. So I think that’s where I’ll always be.
KEVIN POVER
Commercial airline pilot
The best part about viewing London is when you do what they call a Lambourne departure, when you leave from Heathrow. You take off on the westerlies, you hang a right immediately, turn back 180 degrees, fly downwind and then you make a climbing left turn and as you climb in the left turn you climb above London. That’s when you get this awesome view of the whole of London and you can see the view of the Thames coming in – just like the opening on EastEnders – and then it horseshoes round the London Eye and you look further on towards Canary Wharf and you see everything. It’s incredible. Sometimes they keep you slightly low over there as well, and if they’ve not got any London City or Biggin Hill airport traffic then you’ve got a fabulous view, you really have. Every single time you’re just staring at it. Obviously you’re flying the aeroplane as well, but you can’t help but have a quick glance because it’s just one of those places
where there’s so many things going on. There’s so many different things to look at. You can see why London’s been developed in such a way, really, because obviously back in the day it was all centred around the river Thames coming in and that’s the main reason why it’s all built up in that area and as it spreads outwards you can see the concrete fading away into the greenery. You can see Wembley for miles.
When you do a departure along the northerly from Gatwick, you get a real sense of humanity. As you climb out over the city, you can see masses of people down there, all the buildings and all the built-up area are lit up. And at night-time you’ve got the M25, which circles London, and you can see all these little beady lights that are dotted around in a very windy circle and you realize that it’s six o’clock and all those little beady lights are actual cars, and they’re all queuing around the M25. Day by day they’re down there and you just think of the effort, all the effort, just to get by. It’s a tough city. All those little dots, those beads of light, like a rosary, all those people, wanting to get in, wanting to get out.
The best thing in the world, I find, is where it’s a grim day downstairs and there’s a layer of cloud, let’s say at 5,000 feet or something like that, and so it’s dark and gloomy. You take off, you can see a little bit below, might be a bit of rain, a bit of drizzle, not a particularly great day in London. The climb out of London is tricky, but then you fly through this cloud, which takes almost five seconds to get through, and all of a sudden upstairs is blue skies, brilliant sunshine. You’re still listening to the London frequency but there’s this sunshine. You can see the dots of other airplanes. You do feel as though you’re leaving behind the beehive. You change to another frequency and you know it’s going to get quieter. But then, of course it would. You’re leaving the energy behind.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to each of the interviewees who found the time to speak to me.
Thanks also to:
Bella Lacey, Tracy Bohan, Euan Thorneycroft, Sara Holloway, Kelly Pike, Brigid Macleod, Michael Salu, Benjamin Buchan, Stephen Guise, Christine Lo, Anne Meadows and all the other excellent employees at Granta Books.
Matt Weiland, Shanna Milkey, Libby Edelson, Barry Harbaugh, Daniel Halpern and all at Ecco who brought this book to the US.
Orla Hickey, Paul Murashe, Leah Kirkland, Elliott Jack, Eliot Sandiford, Kuldip Sandhu, Candy Burnaine, Neal Price, Maria Stephens, Kate at Kalayaan, Stephen Kennard, Alexa Seligman, Joseph Chen, Rashad Ali, Abigail Stepnitz at Eaves and Max Knight.
Roger Warhurst, Kimberley Martin and Roger Protz at CAMRA.
Heather Richardson, Claire Henty, Sarah Darby, and a few other hardworking members of the NHS.
Vicky Harrison, Kathy Wade and Madeline Denny at Toynbee Hall.
Shamsul Islam, Davide Pascarella and Martin Gavin at Brent Council.
Bill Fishman, Sam at Hope Not Hate, Anne Kershen, Parvati Nair, Steve Livett, Ron Livett, Bruce Panday, Virginie Bigand, Catherine Byrne, Stephen Kennard, Victoria Lenzoi-Lee and Catherine West.
Heather Monley, Harriet Bird, Stephanie Cross and Alison Sieff.
Henry Besant, James Walker Osborn, Nicki Whitworth, Stephen Ferguson, Bill Clegg, Almir Biba, Carly Graham and Vicky Elliott.
Olivia Ware at NACRO, Jane at African Women’s Care, Mark Clayton, Anastasia Lenglet, Lucy Gilliam, Marie Phillips and Michal Skop.
Simon Prosser, Anna Kelly, Juliette Mitchell, Josephine Greywoode, Helen Conford, Sophie Robinson, Rosamund Hutchison, Ellie Hutchison, Jenny Lord, Jon Elek, Sophie Missing, Lottie Moggach, Tom Moggach, Matt Clacher, Paul Ewen, Jamie Fewery, Jean Goldsmith, Stuart Hammond, Lynsey Hanley, Jamie O’Brien, Philippa Harrison, Jessica Jackson, Erica Jarnes, Muzaffar Khan, Georgia Lee, Barry Lewis, Hannah Charlton, Adam Conn, Alberta Matarutse, Sarah Maule, the staff of the London Library, Ian McKellen, Michael Schmelling, Leanne Shapton, Deirdre Dolan, Jerome Silva, Laurence Howarth, DW Gibson and the staff of Ledig House, and Deborah Moggach, who made many excellent mid-book suggestions.
Dan Hancox, Phil Oltermann, Jakob von Baeyer, Des Yankson and Chris Lochery.
Liam Crosby, Peter Murray, Lucy Wilson, Lucy Harrison, Sian Anderson, Tim O’Carroll, Naomi Kerbel, Alex Young, Anthony Clark, Paul Wallman and Cassandra Hamblett.
Katy Baggott, Lelia Ferro, Hattie Crisell, Harvey Darke, Hamid Kabir, Romola Garai, Hamish McDougall and Andrew Buckingham.
Karl Robertson at Hawk Force, Nepal Asatthawasi, Funke Aleshe, Dean Allen, Gail Armstrong, Pam Baguley, Julie Bridgewater, David Charkham, Chipo Chung, Wendy Coumantaros, David Hawkins, Paul Davis, Jo de Frias, Michael de la Lama, Joe Dunthorne, Molly Murray, Patrick Neate, Cavey Nick, Sarah Neufeld, Phil Holly and Rosalind Porter.
Merope Mills, Katharine Viner, Becky Barnicoat and the staff of the Guardian Weekend magazine.
Paul Tough, for allowing me to reprint sections of the introduction, which appears in a different form on the website Open Letters.
My parents, Marian Luxton and Clare Taylor, and my brother, Skott.
Brian Haw, whose presence will be missed in London.
Jo Ralling, Paula Prynn, Juliet Munro and Geoff Guy, who picked me up in his car from Clapham Junction in September, 2000.
INDEX
accents, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Ackroyd, Peter, 1
acting, 1
Acton, 1
Adler, Margot, 1
Afghanis, 1, 2, 3
Africans, 1
air quality, 1, 2, 3
Alexandra Road estate, 1
Ambulance Service, 1
America, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
American Way of Death, The, 1
Americans, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Amsterdam, 1, 2, 3
Angel, 1, 2, 3
Angel of the North, 1
angling, 1
Angus Steak Houses, 1
anti-terrorism laws, 1
arguments, in public, 1
arranged marriages, 1
Arsenal FC, 1, 2
art, 1
galleries, 1, 2
sculpture, 1
Asperger’s Syndrome, 1
Australia, 1, 2, 3
Australians, 1, 2, 3
Baker Street, 1, 2, 3
Balham, 1, 2, 3
Bangladeshis, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Bank, 1, 2, 3
Barbican, 1, 2, 3
Barking, 1
Barnes, 1
barristers, 1, 2, 3
Bauman, Zygmunt, 1
Bayswater, 1
Bedford Hill, 1
bees, 1
Beijing, 1
Belfast, 1
Belsize Park, 1
Belvoir Castle, 1
Berkeley Square, 1, 2, 3
Berlin, 1, 2
Bermondsey, 1
Berwick Street Market, 1, 2
Best, George, 1
Bethnal Green, 1, 2, 3
Betjeman, John, 1
Big Ben, 1, 2, 3
Billingsgate Market, 1, 2
Birmingham, 1, 2
Blackfriars, 1, 2
Blackwall Tunnel, 1
Blythe, Ronald, 1
BNP, 1, 2
Bond Street, 1, 2
Borg, Bjorn, 1, 2
Borough, 1
Bournemouth, 1
Bow, 1, 2
Box Hill, 1
Boy George, 1
Brazil, 1, 2, 3
Brent Cross, 1
Brick Lane, 1, 2, 3, 4
Brighton, 1, 2, 3
British Library, 1, 2
British Museum, 1, 2
Britishness, 1
Brixton, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Broadway Market, 1
Bromley, 1
brothels, 1, 2
Brown, Dan, 1
Broxbourne, 1
Bryson, Bill, 1
Buckhurst Hill, 1, 2
Buckingham Palace, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
buses, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
control centre, 1
inspectors,
1
fare disputes, 1
vandalism, 1
Bushy Park, 1
Butler’s Wharf, 1
Caine, Michael, 1
Calais, 1, 2
Camberwell, 1, 2
Cambridge, 1, 2, 3
Camden Town, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
cameras, 1, 2, 3
see also CCTV
Campbell, Glen, 1
Canada, 1, 2
Canary Wharf, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Canberra, 1, 2
Canning Town, 1
Carmen Jones, 1
Carnaby Street, 1
carp, 1, 2
Cash, Johnny, 1
Catford, 1
Cavendish Square, 1
CCTV, 1, 2, 3
Cenotaph, 1
Centre-Comm, 1
Chalk Farm, 1, 2
Chancery Lane, 1
Channel 1, 2
Chanticleer pear trees, 1
Charge of the Light Brigade, 1
Charing Cross, 1, 2
Charing Cross Road, 1
Charles II, King, 1
Charlotte Street, 1
Chelsea, 1, 2, 3, 4
Chelsea Bridge, 1
Chessington, 1, 2
children, 1, 2, 3
and crime, 1
see also education
China, 1, 2, 3
Chinese, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
choirs, 1
Christmas, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
City Hall, 1
City of London
