A gentleman gets in at Victoria, and asks for the RAC club, on Pall Mall. Halfway there, he strikes up a conversation, with his theory that all taxi drivers are from Essex. No, Sir, I'm a counter-example. He instantly recognizes a fellow intellectual, and informs me affably that he was once the British chess champion, and is going to watch the annual Varsity match at the RAC. Who's the best player you ever played? Spassky, Korchnoi, and Keres; they all won. That's fantastic! You played Paul Keres at chess? The best player never to be World Champion?

Later, chance brings me, via the East India club, to the unusually empty cab rank outside the RAC. I don't have to wait long when, sure enough, out walks a group of nerds, who want to go the short distance to Leicester Square. You're not chess players, are you? Playing in the Varsity match? Nonplussed that I know this. Yes, we lost. I understand; it sucks to lose at chess.

Royal Automobile Club?

royalautomobileclub.co.uk/


Did you see a Talbot 3.5 litre Drop-head Foursome Coupe outside?


talbot-35-litre/

I have always wanted one.

If you have to ask... Those clubs are so sniffy that they don't even put the name on the door. I am, consequently, still learning some of them.

Nice car. Ideal transportation for a picnic hamper and a machine gun in a violin case.

in oregon you would get soaked almost every day from fall to spring in that jalopy.

one of those old small beatup pickup trucks seem to be the vehicle of choice.

Some guy going to Notting Hill is a "coach" to CEOs of major world corporations, and has a theory of 60 levels of consciousness, and would I like to hear the definition of what the highest levels are? I'd love to. He starts using a lot of words: ego, vision, finish, ... Sounds like Scientology to me. But do I have a goal in life? Hell yes, I do. So he listens to me, and at the end of the journey he asks what I took from our conversation, and I can't think of anything, but I should have said he was a good listener. Good listeners probably also make good manipulators and cold-readers. He gives me a big tip, his email, and informs me that I am a leader, and that I have vision and am ahead of the game. Later, I look him up on the internet, and somewhat to my surprise, he really is a big-time coach to CEOs of major world corporations. Is there much difference between those at the top and those at the bottom?

Yes there's a huge difference - those at the top got very lucky over a period of time which their egos attributed to their innate brilliance, while those at the bottom didn't and remained unchanged.

I bet that's not what the CEO coach tells his clients.

As if by a miracle, a lady gets in on Rochester Row, asking for the top end of Old Bailey. I'm on my way over to the cab hire company in Bethnal Green, and it's even in the right direction. Parliament Square is not deserted, but beginning to shade the ballpark of eerily quiet, and Victoria Embankment is empty.

The cab company is a super-macho environment. They speak to each other like dirt, and can barely adjust when dealing with a paying customer. I don't much like going there, but they do get the job done and could not have been more accommodating: half-price rent for the moment, and one day's notice if you want to take a couple of months off. It's the drivers on long-term rental contracts or hire purchase deals who have a real problem right now, lined up on ranks that normally no one even goes on. Either that or drive around empty streets burning more money. Even Selfridges shut yesterday, the #2 destination after Harrods.

I get a job on a way home too, all the way to Balham. The passenger is one of those cavalier, boomer types I have been reading about in OOT. We both are in a position to regard the situation as an opportunity. Who knows, maybe if enough people take a step back from all the **** they are working so hard to consume it will make the world a better place LOL.

No garlic in the supermarkets recently, but go to the unfashionable end of Bethnal Green Road and you'll find it in abundant and cheap supply, piled high with ginger, chillies, rice and tinned tomatoes. I wonder if small businesses are able to cope better than large ones. Uber dropped 20% today.

No garlic? - is there a vampire epidemic in London. Queue up Warren Zevon's great song.

Human idiocy is pandemic*, you ain't changing the world Lastcard. But you know that, I think.



*since at least the "neolithic revolution", so called.

eat all the garlic you want. its good for you but dont come within ten feet of me.

uber will replace all the cabs in this country at some point. getting in a cab and hearing how sick his mother is or how little he made in tips today gets tiring. and having to make sure he doesnt take the long way around.
not all cab drivers do that but enough to make getting in a cab a desperate act.
plus cab drivers get 40 to 60% of the fare here usually, and then expect a big tip.

I guess. However, market forces alone cannot dictate the cost of taxi travel in central London. Regardless of how cheap the labour is, or even driverless cars, the price has to be kept artificially high in order to limit the amount of traffic. I wonder if that economic phenomenon has a name.

I have also had several New Yorkers comment on how comparatively honest we are.

Sure I do. I am not convinced that means you should stop trying, however.

stick with it charlie. good things come to good people

I never stop trying. Hell, without wonderful people like me this world Would be so much poorer and woebegone. Like Uncle Fred in the Springtime, I’m here to spread sweetness and light.

I do wonder how far gone I am, because other people don't interest me like they interest other people. My mother was born during an air raid during the Blitz, grew up with rationing, and still is freaking out slightly. If you're in your 80s, you've probably got something like an 8% chance of dying next year anyway. WTF is wrong with me?

Not far gone at all.

Stress creeps up on you, I suppose. The sight of empty streets and supermarket shelves plays tricks on the mind. No space at the cab company, so just keep hold of it for free at the minute. Driving home, the bells of St Clement's are ringing out Oranges and Lemons, and in that moment I am Winston Smith, Mr Scrooge, and every Londoner who ever lived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_and_Lemons

The spring blossom juxtaposed with the sense of impending doom. I have been listening to the Byrds a lot recently.

The two ladies wearing face masks in front me in the queue for the supermarket are keeping such a distance from each other and everyone else that's it's unclear whether they are in fact in the queue. Oblivious, they spot Reg on the other side of the road. Clearly a player from their estate, he ambles over grinning, making a cross sign with his fingers, his face coronavirus red, and stands talking right next to one of them, ignoring that the queue is moving again.

No problem. There is a coronavirus sign at the entrances to Battersea Park saying about social distancing and that Dogs must be kept on a lead. All dog owners are exempt from it, however, because their pets understand fluent English and have such amazing personalities. It doesn't matter; concentrate on the bigger picture.

byrds.... all time top group.

I don't give a **** about the virus. It's good not having to work. An interlude in which I get to do what I want, which does not include being bought and sold in the marketplace. At least driving a taxi you don't have to pretend to enjoy that. Society is bad if you get on the wrong side of it.

What I want, what I have spent the week trying to do, is to understand the geometry of the n-cube. A Platonic solid, no less. Maximum symmetry. Religion meets logic meets aesthetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_Woolnoth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucif...us_Hypercubus)

Three comments:

St Mary Woolnoth would be an excellent establishment for a pub. Let's buy it and put it to some good use.

Salvador Dali had a hypercube installed in his brain at an early age.


Good for you. I feel exactly the same.

Well, there is a kiosk just inside the door of St Mary Woolnoth, selling light refreshments. Lying on a global financial hub, they probably need the money for the roof or something. When I visited, some City **** sheltering from the rain was there talking too loudly. The sacred and the profane, I have almost come to expect it.

I have not got far with the n-cube during lockdown. I emailed an expert out of the blue to ask whether it is worth continuing. Intellectual cul-de-sacs, you've got to watch out for that ****.

Get a Gun and know how to use it.

I hope to visit before the year is out.

I have wondered about the meaning of the saying "home is where the heart is". Does it mean that where home is is where the heart is, or that where the heart is is where home is? At any rate, I had wrongly presumed that I knew everywhere within at least a two-mile radius of Enfield Town. I was born there, attended school there, lived for the entirety of my youth within the borough, was an energetic child who ran and cycled all over, and was allowed out alone for long, late hours at an unbelievably young age. Minute information lies dormant deep within the brain for decades. Names of roads you've been past but might never have been down. Graeme Road, Bycullah Road, Ladysmith Road. Maybe the pathways of childhood are more fixed. Home is where they talk exactly like you.