you get to have a window into the world. make sure you look into it.

He liked one thing -- he liked blowing smoke in my face when i was playing.

Yeah. He used to sit in the same seat at the same table by the rail in the Horseshoe. I used to like asking those old-timers questions about the old days. A lot of them would talk to me. Johnny, not so much.

You Know; there is the distinct probability*, Phat, that you deserved it.


*however small

Aunty Barbara doesn't like everyone, and I am pleased that she is pleased to see me. She used to drive us over to Whitewebbs or Epping Forest after Sunday lunch at my grandmother's. I like forgotten memories. There was an outrageous cigarette burn by the edge of the table, which Aunty Anne did when it was new. I remember her as a smoker, and it was mentioned in her eulogy how her love of reading led her to ignore lit cigarettes. My mother was the middle of three, as was I.

Cousin Stephen would be there sometimes. We used to fight a bit as children, and then I didn't see that side of the family for many years, until recently, and he is easy to get along with. My mother's cousin John also showed up. A longtime owner of two remarkable cars: a Bristol and an Aston Martin DB5, which always get a mention in the circular he sends with his Christmas card. The DB5 was a car so glamorous that it seemed always about to collapse under the weight of its own beauty. No one had seen him for many years.

A gentle, decent, and to me lost world of roses in the garden and holidays in the caravan.

Your Aunty anything like the aunts in P.G. whodehouse novels?

The DB5 is a wonderful car, the body designed by the ****ing Italians as you should note. Was that a James Bond car, or something similar?

Nice reminiscing. Store it up for your autobiography, publish it online.

yea charlie you have some tales to tell, put them in writing.

Unlikely. She passed the 11-plus and went to a grammar school, as did my parents. The women on that side are great talkers, and my abiding memory is of her sitting on a dining chair, smoking and talking interminable gossip with my grandmother. Her family was as different to mine as were the 1950s to the 1960s, and it is difficult to be factual. They had a dog, a garden, a small boat, a model railway in the loft, and put the same house and birthday numbers on the football pools every week.

She had a cheerful and optimistic disposition, which she maintained in the face of illness in later years. My mother was asked to choose a piece of music she liked to be played at her funeral.

nice. and at my funeral all i ask is that no one pees on my grave.

Hyde Park is wide, and there is a road through the middle of it, and between Paddington and South Kensington it is ludicrous to go any other way. But that little road can get full of traffic, which empties slowly. How much traffic is variable and unpredictable. Maybe Google Maps or Waze can predict it, although I am unconvinced.

I was a motorcycle courier in my youth, and the traffic flow seems substantially the same now as it was then. The same bottlenecks, e.g. Knightsbridge, Earls Court Road, Camden Parkway. The city has an unmanageable inertia of its own. Countless memories of riding past poor fools in stationary traffic. But the memory can play tricks, and I don't know whether this road was similar.

Fate and Royal Ascot have conspired to place the Duke of Devonshire's chauffeur in the cab. I explain the Hyde Park dilemma, but he's been doing it for thirty years and quite understands. His knowledge of London is impressive. "This isn't going to be like in Remains of the Day, is it, sir?". Yes, an excellent book.

What types of parcels would you take as a motorcycle courier Charlie? Do you think with the advent of all the different phone apps for food and package delivery there is more money to be made in the courier world?

Parcels from photographic agencies, for example. Pre-internet days. The courier market is different now, as you observe, but I would doubt there is more money to be made. The same general economic forces are going to keep you near the bottom. It was not a good period of my life.

The poignant question, Charlie, then becomes: did you ever have a good period in your life? And responding, yeah when I was in the womb, doesn't count as most have a nine month gestation period of floating peace. So be honest and forthright and begin at least when you sneaked that first pint.

I think I've walk about or near the silly road through Hyde park. I remember thinking: this is a ****ing Park why do the stupid limeys have this roadway through the middle of it. Also there were private homes/residents in the park. Why are you brits so insane?

i have read everything in this thread,

all i can say is that the thread is amazing and hopefully, one day, i'll have time to engage in here properly.

I wonder, Charlie, if I've ever been in your cab. If so, it'd be a damn shame not to recognize that fact and celebrate.

There aren't many graves I'd piss on if given the opportunity. I can think of four or five people over the course of my life that have committed unforgivable sins at my expense and who I'd honor in this way.

In contrast there are three or four hundred to whom I intend to raise a glass and say "I wish I'd taken the time to know him better."

Me too. People take kindness for weakness, and I let it slide with them, until it becomes too obvious. I usually fall asleep by thinking of ways I could kill them. That's normal, right?

PM me for a tour next time you visit. That goes for all the righteous 2p2ers.

I lived in London for about six months in 2008. I quite liked it.

Maybe later this year Charlie; I'll let you know for sure.

Thanks. You're on the righteous list.

90 degrees in London today. The cab has air con, which emits cold air, but it's not air con like in Vegas, I would imagine. It's busy and there is money to be made, but I have made enough, a job to Chelsea brings me near home, and there is likely some wisdom in pacing oneself. A lady walks in the pub and orders a ginger beer shandy, which she drinks quickly. "It's peaceful in here.", she remarks on leaving. The intensity of driving almost non-stop for six hours in hot, snarling, city traffic is making itself apparent. Another day, another dollar. It really is the perfect evening for a shandy.

There must be some jobs where you're dealing almost exclusively with people at extreme times of their lives. I take a young guy from Chelsea & Westminster hospital to his home nearby, where he picks up his child, and I drive them back to the hospital.

"Is that a boy or a girl, sir?"

"A girl."

"How old is she?"

"One day."

"You're a new father?"

"Yes."

"How do you feel?"

"It's scary."

A young, American couple get in at Covent Garden.

"Wormolt Park, in Shepherds Bush. Not Wormwood Scrubs Park, the big park, but this park..."

He shows me on his iphone through the window, but I know where it is. A most unlikely place for them to want to go. If you've got money, a good way to see London is to get a cab along the Westway to White City. It's probably a journey that neither of them will forget. We arrive, and my curiosity gets the better of me.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you want to come here?"

"We're meeting a woman about a dog."

"Have you heard of the Sex Pistols? They come from here. And The Who."

"The Who as well? I bet they don't live here any more."

"No, they live in LA now."

Laughter.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/254...f-Britain.html

who is in l.a.

Who is on first

yes

https://youtu.be/kTcRRaXV-fg

might be the best skit of all time. certainly the most famous .