Taxing

I get quite a few cabs for work. This is not me boasting. Far from it. This means that my job (which often involves training people) means I have to lug large containers full of stuff from office to office. And when there's too much stuff to reasonably carry on rush-hour public transport, I tend to jump in a cab.

This is fine.

Except every black cab driver in the world seems to have originated from the East End. Again this is fine, I have no issue with this. Bear with me. The part where it starts to niggle is how at 7 a.m. every single time, on picking me up from the East End the cab driver feels it necessary to inform me about my local history. These points always include:

- How the area has changed

- Ooh, isn't there a lot of immigrants these days?

- How that building over there used to be the fire station

- Did I know the Kray twins used to live there? (of course I fucking did. I've lived here for four years and had every sodding taxi driver in the world point it out to me)

- Have you ever had a beigel from that shop?

- That used to be a supermarket, you know (how exciting)

- Cockneys was a good lot. Not many of them left nowadays. They was a good lot. Rough but good. (Apart from the bastard who lives in the flat underneath me. He's just a noisy git. But I suppose there are always exceptions).

I have to pretend to be interested every single time. Good news is though, I now do a mean tour of Bethnal Green for visitors and know some really useless facts that I can bore anyone with if they outstay their welcome.

(My little brother is visiting this weekend. I am preparing the fact sheet with quiz questions as we speak.)