The Taxi Diaries

Okay, so, I must confess I've been sitting on my heels for quite some time over this project, it's a sort of 'blind faith' venture into documentary filmmaking, something that has sparked my interest over the past few years. After becoming obsessed with documentaries such as 'Trekkies' (a inside look into the fanatic and somewhat touching fanbase of one of entertainment's most successful television series) 'Wal-Mart, The High Cost of a Low Price' (the astonishing truth behind a brand that has been built on what many call slave labour) and of course 'The September Issue' I've become much more observant of the people around me, and in particular, London taxi drivers.

The quintessential London taxi is one that puts itself higher than its contemporaries in other leading cities. The London taxi is elegant, black, chic to blend in with the night and match the urban pallet of creams, silvers and greys in the city's landscape. It's not like the yellow bugs you see crawling around Manhattan in New York, with seats that sink in to the very framework of the car and are (at least for me) absolutely impossible to manoeuvre into in a short dress and heels without horribly giving away one's modesty. Add in the effects of alcohol and you've got no hope. The London taxi is spacious and open, with places to put your feet up and extra seats that fold up or down. They are, in the best sense of the word, re definable, for every customer. All in all, the best way to get around our favourite city.

My interest in the taxi drivers of London all started one day when I hopped into a taxi going home and instead of getting on the mobile or zoning out with the ipod I casually asked the driver 'So, how's your day been so far?' To my surprise (I think we all have the misconception that taxi drivers are grizzled specimens of rather heavy-set men with tattoos on their forearms) he replied very eagerly, and from there we embarked on a long-winded conversation that took me from his childhood dream of wanting to be a detective to his present day job as a cabbie. He was a really sweet bloke, and as we pulled up in front of the old homestead, I actually felt a pang of regret that we had arrived so soon.

More and more of these little trips kept occurring, and after a few test runs I knew exactly which questions to ask to get the conversation going. The things those boys have told me.... girls being sick after a night out, falling asleep, not remembering where they live, not to mention the startling amount of sex that goes on in the back of cabs these days. It's made me think twice to play around with the fringing of the seats or make my usual smiley faces on the windows. One polish guy even said he'd been bribed by a man in the City to come back to the guy's flat and spend the night for £200 if-you-know-what-I-mean. Some of these boys have been driving taxi's for over thirty years, others, not even three. Some have families with six kids, all under the age of twelve, others are quite lonely, marriages having broken up due to the long and unnatural hours of the job. The rides can be quite solemn at times, recounting tales of people they've picked up or places they've had to go. I had a guy who said he was positive he'd witnessed a drug deal, the well-dressed gentleman he picked up asking to go to a remote council estate, asking the cabbie to wait, and coming no more than 5min later out he door, remarkably ruffled and in a hurry to leave. It's astonishing how many people treat their taxi drivers like agony aunts or psychiatrists. People hop in, burst into tears and all these boys can do is offer the best advice they can. It can't be easy when you've got a woman distraught in the back after finding out about another miscarriage, or a guy who's just gone bankrupt and doesn't know how to break it to his wife and teenagers. In some cases the stories become very sad, like the driver who told me of picking up a young lady 'no more than nineteen, same age as me daughter' who, taking off her sunglasses, revealed a huge, purple swollen eye that had been beaten and bruised badly. Turns out she was a country-bumpkin who had come to London just a few months before to try and make a living in the high-profile city, but had fallen into the wrong crowd, meeting a not-so-nice guy who ended up becoming her pimp and had beaten her up. The cabbie got so emotional when he was telling me, that tears began welling up in his eyes, and he said how after hearing her story, and how ashamed she was, and how she couldn't bring herself to tell her parents, he'd driven her to a hospital and gotten her help.

After I heard that, I knew I had to do something. These amazingly touching real-life stories were being poured out to me daily, and there was no way I could share them. So, after doing some research on-line (yes, London's Best Friend traversed the unusual territory of amazon and comet.com) I purchased myself a 'flip' video camera and kept it in my bag, whipping it out to record (best I could) the interesting journeys.

I must say the most interesting thing is finding out about these men's lives, they open up completely, talking about their relationships, their opinions, everything. I had one guy giving me advice on love, and how 'I've got to make my boyfriend wait, cus, after they've 'ad it, they not gonna want to wait no more!'

Now we must allow for progress here, I am at present a bit of a novice, thus the quality of these short films is lest we say, not very much suitable for the 'big screen' (yet=) but below is taster video clip from the in-the-making 'Taxi Diaries.'