Post by The Dark Knight on Aug 15, 2011 16:37:12 GMT
Wheels of fortune
After almost 20 years as a London cabbie, Catherine Michael has perfected the arts of beating traffic and picking punters, she tells Leo Benedictus
'Right, there's a coffee shop over there. Go and get me an Americano with milk." These are the first words Catherine Michael addresses to me when we meet beneath the shadow of the London Eye. She is just about to start her shift, and likes a coffee to get her going. Meekly, I go and get her one.
"Now," she says in a businesslike manner on my return, "do you want to ask me some questions, because I could tell you all about it." All right, does she really like driving a taxi around London all day? Some people could not think of anything worse. "I love it," she replies without hesitation. "But I love driving in London because I'm a cab driver. So I have no congestion charge, I use the bus lanes, I can cut people up absolutely dreadfully and nobody bats an ... oh, well, people do sort of go, 'Ugh! Bloody cab driver.'"
The coffee cannot have kicked in yet, but Michael is charged with energy. We are sitting together in the back of her cab, parked in the end of a large space that appears to be intended for tourist buses. As people and traffic swirl around us, she seems utterly at home, bouncing in her seat and talking well above the national speed limit.
"For me to get from A to B will take a fraction of the time it would take you because cab drivers all let each other in," she explains. Is there a strong camaraderie between drivers, then? "Oh yes," she agrees, pointing to a line of other taxis idling at rank on the other side of the road. "If right now I leapt out of here and clicked my fingers at them and said, 'He's just said something rude to me', all of those cab drivers would come over here and beat you up." How nice of them. And does the same team spirit extend to buses? "Right," she winds up to begin her explanation.
"The way it works is there's you lot, you lesser mortals who aren't doing a job, and there's us lot, which is bus drivers, chauffeurs, cab drivers, sometimes white van drivers too. We hate you, because you don't know where you're going and you don't know which lane to be in. Buses and taxis, we don't get on ... but when it comes down to it, professional drivers know we are professional drivers, and we are trying to get somewhere because we've got a passenger, so we help each other out."
And does that include minicabs? "We hate minicabs." Are they the vermin in this ecosystem? "Yes, they are the vermin. But having said that, on the Friday before Christmas we love them, because they take the shit. They take the guy lying on the corner of the road so drunk he can't even stand up. We won't."
Michael says she has loved the act of driving since she was 14, when she first got the chance to practise on private roads in the country. It was her ex-husband Sotos, however, who first suggested that she might like to do it for a living. He was a taxi driver, and after Michael had completed a business degree and given birth to their two daughters, a single cab seemed like a practical way of sharing the childcare and breadwinning between them.
It took Michael five years to pass the Knowledge, the famously stringent (and brain-enhancing) test of a driver's ability to find their way to almost any location in London without a map. At nights, Sotos helped her practise "call-outs", where he would name two places and ask her to call out the route from one to another. "You can almost divorce over that," she laughs.
After the couple did separate, Michael bought her own secondhand vehicle and found that the job was equally well adapted to her new lifestyle - even though she was now a single woman in a staunchly male environment. "I have had cab drivers say to me, 'I wouldn't let my wife do that,'" she explains. "But as a woman, it's brilliant, because it means you can go out there, be independent and earn the same as men."
In practice, this means that the pay varies widely depending on how many hours, and which hours, one is prepared to work. Some perks are available, however. Most customers tip, for instance, but only by rounding the fare up. Sometimes Michael also gets free theatre tickets from producers hoping that she will tell her passengers how good the show was. "But we also tell our punters if it's rubbish," she says. And then there is the £5 commission available for any taxi driver who takes an aimless but lustful passenger directly to a Spearmint Rhino club. Stringfellows also pays commission, but they used not to, Michael says, until she picked up Peter Stringfellow in her cab and had a go at him about it.
After nearly 20 years in the job, at the age of 53, Michael has found a very comfortable pattern of evening work. "During the day people are late for meetings and late for trains, so they take their stress out on you," she explains. "And it's the fact that I can wake up at 10am and watch Phillip and Fern, which is what I do."
At around 6.30pm she leaves her home in New Malden, deep in the capital's suburban south-west, and makes for the City, listening to Radio 4 and perhaps picking up a fare from her computer on the way. She then spends the evening ferrying executives (mostly) from their offices to the train station or their homes, filling any gaps with some cash fares from the streets.
Then, in the middle of the evening, come peak hours. "In the City, 99% of people are entitled to a free cab home after 9 o'clock," says Michael. "We call it 'the burst'." As this subsides, she begins to take in more cash from the salubrious districts, pausing briefly for a quick sandwich. Then generally she finishes around 12.30am, hoping for a final fare back in the general direction of New Malden.
A sharp beep from the road outside punches a hole in our conversation. An enormous tourist coach is wondering out loud whether he can get past us. Michael looks out of the window to assess the situation. "It'll be all right," she concludes, and immediately forgets the matter. "My job," she continues, as the coach driver begins to navigate his way into the space, "and you need to write this down, revolves around the skill of stereotyping - knowing who's safe and who's not."
In Michael's book, the stereotype of an ideal fare will be polite, wealthy, interesting and - best of all - late when she arrives to pick them up. "They're on the phone to New York for 20 minutes," she explains, "while I'm sitting reading, doing one of my languages, drinking a coffee, doing sudoku, with the meter running and no diesel being used."
When delayed City workers are not available, Michael likes to take her work from "the better class of drunk" to be found around the gentleman's clubs of St James's and the gay area of Soho. "They're brilliant passengers," she gushes about the second group. "I love them! If they want to snog each other in the back it doesn't bother me at all ... They've got lots of money, they're very polite, they're lovely!"
Fares to avoid, on the other hand, can be found almost anywhere on a Saturday night, which is why, Michael generally does not work at this time. "Male drivers love Saturday because they make lots of money," she says. "I hate it with a vengeance, because you're more likely to have a crash."
Like most taxi drivers, Michael prefers not to take passengers to poorer areas either, as it is here that most of the capital's uninsured drivers and taxi muggers are supposed to congregate. "I am obliged to take anyone, if I see them," she says pointedly. "But you do not have to take animals, or anybody who's drunk ... If it's St Patrick's Day, anybody with a Guinness hat on will never get a cab."
It is nearly time for Michael's shift to begin, but she agrees to allow me a quick peek into the front of her cab. Next to her computer terminal, which is already bleeping, the passenger side is a reflection of its lively, slightly eccentric owner. The footwell is filled with bits and bobs such as a sewing kit and a pack of disposable DIY masks.
"You get some anal cab drivers, they're called Gucci cab drivers," she explains. "And they'll have golfing jumpers, initials on the door, and everything's wood-panelled." She, I venture, does not seem to belong to this group. In fact, by some people's standards, the front of the taxi might even be described as messy. "Yes," she agrees, without a hint of shame. "I'm Sagittarius."
Source: The Guardian News
After almost 20 years as a London cabbie, Catherine Michael has perfected the arts of beating traffic and picking punters, she tells Leo Benedictus
'Right, there's a coffee shop over there. Go and get me an Americano with milk." These are the first words Catherine Michael addresses to me when we meet beneath the shadow of the London Eye. She is just about to start her shift, and likes a coffee to get her going. Meekly, I go and get her one.
"Now," she says in a businesslike manner on my return, "do you want to ask me some questions, because I could tell you all about it." All right, does she really like driving a taxi around London all day? Some people could not think of anything worse. "I love it," she replies without hesitation. "But I love driving in London because I'm a cab driver. So I have no congestion charge, I use the bus lanes, I can cut people up absolutely dreadfully and nobody bats an ... oh, well, people do sort of go, 'Ugh! Bloody cab driver.'"
The coffee cannot have kicked in yet, but Michael is charged with energy. We are sitting together in the back of her cab, parked in the end of a large space that appears to be intended for tourist buses. As people and traffic swirl around us, she seems utterly at home, bouncing in her seat and talking well above the national speed limit.
"For me to get from A to B will take a fraction of the time it would take you because cab drivers all let each other in," she explains. Is there a strong camaraderie between drivers, then? "Oh yes," she agrees, pointing to a line of other taxis idling at rank on the other side of the road. "If right now I leapt out of here and clicked my fingers at them and said, 'He's just said something rude to me', all of those cab drivers would come over here and beat you up." How nice of them. And does the same team spirit extend to buses? "Right," she winds up to begin her explanation.
"The way it works is there's you lot, you lesser mortals who aren't doing a job, and there's us lot, which is bus drivers, chauffeurs, cab drivers, sometimes white van drivers too. We hate you, because you don't know where you're going and you don't know which lane to be in. Buses and taxis, we don't get on ... but when it comes down to it, professional drivers know we are professional drivers, and we are trying to get somewhere because we've got a passenger, so we help each other out."
And does that include minicabs? "We hate minicabs." Are they the vermin in this ecosystem? "Yes, they are the vermin. But having said that, on the Friday before Christmas we love them, because they take the shit. They take the guy lying on the corner of the road so drunk he can't even stand up. We won't."
Michael says she has loved the act of driving since she was 14, when she first got the chance to practise on private roads in the country. It was her ex-husband Sotos, however, who first suggested that she might like to do it for a living. He was a taxi driver, and after Michael had completed a business degree and given birth to their two daughters, a single cab seemed like a practical way of sharing the childcare and breadwinning between them.
It took Michael five years to pass the Knowledge, the famously stringent (and brain-enhancing) test of a driver's ability to find their way to almost any location in London without a map. At nights, Sotos helped her practise "call-outs", where he would name two places and ask her to call out the route from one to another. "You can almost divorce over that," she laughs.
After the couple did separate, Michael bought her own secondhand vehicle and found that the job was equally well adapted to her new lifestyle - even though she was now a single woman in a staunchly male environment. "I have had cab drivers say to me, 'I wouldn't let my wife do that,'" she explains. "But as a woman, it's brilliant, because it means you can go out there, be independent and earn the same as men."
In practice, this means that the pay varies widely depending on how many hours, and which hours, one is prepared to work. Some perks are available, however. Most customers tip, for instance, but only by rounding the fare up. Sometimes Michael also gets free theatre tickets from producers hoping that she will tell her passengers how good the show was. "But we also tell our punters if it's rubbish," she says. And then there is the £5 commission available for any taxi driver who takes an aimless but lustful passenger directly to a Spearmint Rhino club. Stringfellows also pays commission, but they used not to, Michael says, until she picked up Peter Stringfellow in her cab and had a go at him about it.
After nearly 20 years in the job, at the age of 53, Michael has found a very comfortable pattern of evening work. "During the day people are late for meetings and late for trains, so they take their stress out on you," she explains. "And it's the fact that I can wake up at 10am and watch Phillip and Fern, which is what I do."
At around 6.30pm she leaves her home in New Malden, deep in the capital's suburban south-west, and makes for the City, listening to Radio 4 and perhaps picking up a fare from her computer on the way. She then spends the evening ferrying executives (mostly) from their offices to the train station or their homes, filling any gaps with some cash fares from the streets.
Then, in the middle of the evening, come peak hours. "In the City, 99% of people are entitled to a free cab home after 9 o'clock," says Michael. "We call it 'the burst'." As this subsides, she begins to take in more cash from the salubrious districts, pausing briefly for a quick sandwich. Then generally she finishes around 12.30am, hoping for a final fare back in the general direction of New Malden.
A sharp beep from the road outside punches a hole in our conversation. An enormous tourist coach is wondering out loud whether he can get past us. Michael looks out of the window to assess the situation. "It'll be all right," she concludes, and immediately forgets the matter. "My job," she continues, as the coach driver begins to navigate his way into the space, "and you need to write this down, revolves around the skill of stereotyping - knowing who's safe and who's not."
In Michael's book, the stereotype of an ideal fare will be polite, wealthy, interesting and - best of all - late when she arrives to pick them up. "They're on the phone to New York for 20 minutes," she explains, "while I'm sitting reading, doing one of my languages, drinking a coffee, doing sudoku, with the meter running and no diesel being used."
When delayed City workers are not available, Michael likes to take her work from "the better class of drunk" to be found around the gentleman's clubs of St James's and the gay area of Soho. "They're brilliant passengers," she gushes about the second group. "I love them! If they want to snog each other in the back it doesn't bother me at all ... They've got lots of money, they're very polite, they're lovely!"
Fares to avoid, on the other hand, can be found almost anywhere on a Saturday night, which is why, Michael generally does not work at this time. "Male drivers love Saturday because they make lots of money," she says. "I hate it with a vengeance, because you're more likely to have a crash."
Like most taxi drivers, Michael prefers not to take passengers to poorer areas either, as it is here that most of the capital's uninsured drivers and taxi muggers are supposed to congregate. "I am obliged to take anyone, if I see them," she says pointedly. "But you do not have to take animals, or anybody who's drunk ... If it's St Patrick's Day, anybody with a Guinness hat on will never get a cab."
It is nearly time for Michael's shift to begin, but she agrees to allow me a quick peek into the front of her cab. Next to her computer terminal, which is already bleeping, the passenger side is a reflection of its lively, slightly eccentric owner. The footwell is filled with bits and bobs such as a sewing kit and a pack of disposable DIY masks.
"You get some anal cab drivers, they're called Gucci cab drivers," she explains. "And they'll have golfing jumpers, initials on the door, and everything's wood-panelled." She, I venture, does not seem to belong to this group. In fact, by some people's standards, the front of the taxi might even be described as messy. "Yes," she agrees, without a hint of shame. "I'm Sagittarius."
Source: The Guardian News