London; A vernacular portrait

People say there is no greater sight than that of the sun rising over Trafalgar square, Big Ben and The Mall. Fettering up through the musky morning haze like some cosmic deity, just checking in to see if London hasn’t been consumed by the darkness yet. I’ve got to admit, even still, such a vision is enough to overwhelm me the way only a natural wonder such the Grand Canyon or a exploding pulsar ever could. But it’s nothing but a polished veneer ladies and gentlemen, all predicated on bullshit.

It’s 4:40am. I couldn’t sleep at all so thought I’d come into London early. Fair trade coffee in hand and laptop open, it’s hard to get any cognitive baring on any task, let alone the one that I’ve set out to do with this article. Where do you even begin? In terms of my day, I start where I usually do, around the back of Trinity Square opposite the Tower of London. There’s four or five hotels within close vicinity so you’re usually off quick and the work can take you anywhere. But it’s 4 in the morning, so there isn’t much going on. So as I sit around and gather my thoughts, there’s nothing to be heard, no birds, planes or inane chatter, just the sporadic rumble of muted tires in the near distance. Now and again you hear footsteps over jaded concrete nearby, the sound of a wayward drunk or city-based vagabond dragging their way into work. It’s as peaceful as it ever gets, but from here on out the frenetic energy begins to build. Maybe that’s what the rumbling noise is from? The city storing up static energy like a Tesla coil, preparing to unleash it in an onslaught of manic chaos within a matter of hours.  

But still, for now, I’m at peace, as is London… The area where I’m sat is surrounded by huge, stonewashed buildings built with bricks the size of houses and propped up by Grecian columns that seem to go on forever. This area is where ship merchants and trading companies use to be based, and the various monuments such as the statue of Neptune and the merchants memorials to the dead pay testament to that. Now? Well, as I said, they’re hotels… Filled with insincere smiles and lemon scented, mass-produced hand towels… If nothing personifies what London was and is fast becoming, look no further than that. That’s all I find myself ever saying now when I’m giving tours to enthusiastic punters…

“That’s where they use to…”

“Back in the day…”

“You see that building there? That’s where so-and-so use to…”

Can you see a pattern yet?

The Denizens

If there’s one perspective you get doing the job I do, it’s on people. Their anxieties, their fears, their hopes, their dreams. It’s what I love most about what I do. Customers don’t just use my cab to get to A-to-B, they use it as a confession box and you get to the see the full spectrum of humanity and the emotions that consumes them. I’ve had all sorts in the back of my cab. From run-down ex-cons who though skint, still give you a £20 tip to the super-rich who don’t even talk to you, just glare through gold-tinted specs that act as reality distorters, making them perceive you and the cab as one in the same. Inanimate. And the over enthusiastic out-of-towners, fresh out of uni with more ideals than sense and mesmerised by anything remotely ethnic (I love this place, the people are just sooooo real around here!) and the begrudged old-time aristocrats in their straw hats, bitter and angry at what they’ve seen happen to their beloved empire.   

And then the night comes…

This is when the real freaks venture out from the docile cracks, spewing forth onto the city like a plague of dopamine fiends. City workers and bureaucrats, tourists and street thugs on peds plucking phones from hands like fruit from a tree. If you want to see a true spectacle, go for a drive through London on a Friday night around 11. Us brits think we can handle our drink, but we really can't. People finish work, head straight down to a trendy roof top bar for a couple, a couple turns into 20, and next you know they’re hailing little old me down to take them home. Which I do without question, as long as they’re not so smashed up they can’t even tell me where they need to go (that’s the usual barometer for me)… But after 2, that’s where things become dark and twisted, as all the clubs spill out onto the streets, the neon lights fade, and the city morphs into a physical embodiment of a come down. The streets become lined with wounded, suit and tied avatars, stumbling drunkenly, loaded and bloated on cocaine that ain’t even worth the benzocaine it’s cut with. And they’re the lucky ones. One of the sorriest sights I think I’ve seen is a young woman at a bus stop on City Road. She was paralytic, laying down on a concrete flower bed, covered in sick and one gag away from death.  The thing that disgusted me the most though was the half dozen people stood around her, not noticing a thing and neck deep instead in their phone screens. They were probably too busy virtue signalling on social media to even notice. I didn’t stop neither to be fair, I had a coked-up punter on board who was too busy talking about his childhood pet dog Waffles to find the right moment to. Looking back, I wish I had stopped. But then again, being a young man and knowing how easily it is to get accused of certain things, sometimes it’s best to just mind your own business especially when it comes to helping inebriated women out. If that ain’t an indictment for the times we live in, I don’t what is.

The Consultant Class

The economic gains from the past 30 years are based around a single philosophy, and that’s skimming off the top. You’ve got to admire the transformation, and it really is a credit to the city’s ability to shape shift and adapt. But all that wealth and assets we manage, hardly any of it is ours now, and the few institutions and companies that still are will soon be sold off no doubt for short term gain of shareholders. Instead, our expertise now lies in being international middle men, skimming commission fees and bonuses on transactions that no-one ever questions. That’s the future of the city in a post Brexit world. London will become a international halfway house, culturally as well as economically, made attractive through our tax haven status and the time zone we inhabit. We offer hardly any value now, both in terms of innovation or produce, and most growth industries are consultant and data analysis based. Every prick and their grandad is a consultant on Linkedin, a social media platform dominated with so called “entrepreneurs” who’s only breakthrough is in the art of doublespeak-bullshit. “Jeremy Irons, PHD in ergonomics. Entrepreneur and CEO of Livefirm, a company specialising in the consultant of consultants who consult consultants on how to efficiently consult consultants on the benefits of consulting consultants. Hobbies: Denial, holding self-appraisals for myself, water-rafting down Regents Canal on the backs of the underclass”

Right you are.

Don’t be offended if you fall into this bracket. I don’t begrudge you, rather I respect you somewhat. You’re merely making the system work for you, and if that involves convincing gullible middle managers in the public as well private sector that they need your apparent “expertise”, then good luck to you. But lets not beat about the bush. It’s a loophole in the free market, where value and the successful marketing of your own fictional value reap the same rewards.

The Billionaire Dream

It’s no coincidence that London is the city that most billionaires call home, more so than Hong Kong, LA, Paris and New York even. Why is that exactly? Well, it’s a beautiful and vibrant city, there ain’t no doubt. But isn’t just Hyde Park and Harrods that draws them here, it’s the fact that London is practically one big shop window for the super-elite. From skyscrapers to sub-prime apartments, and airline jets to house-hold institutions, everything is for sale, and when you’re ready to purchase, they’ll be an army of self-sacrificing checkout staff ready to answer your beckon call. That’s the real driving economy behind London, being bell-boys for the people with real wealth.

The hotels are starting to turn over and I’m about to get a customer, so I’ll have to leave this for now and come back to it later. In fact, to prevent this turning into a full-blown Dickensian diatribe, I’m going to break this down into parts according to the things I witness and the people I meet over time. Please don’t get it twisted, even with it’s faults, I wouldn’t want to be living in any other time in any other place. London is engrained, living within, haunting me as well as defining who I am. It’s a consequence of studying the city to such a degree that you have a map of the place inside your head, along with over 100,000 points of interest. You get an overview of the comings and goings, what makes the city tick and the underlining driving forces at work behind this great emerald city we call home. It fascinates me, and I hope there’s some point to sharing this with you, even just for entertainment value alone.  

As the saying in the cab trade goes, “Be lucky!” ;D