Like the 21,000 other men (and approximately 220 women) who hold
the green badge of a London cabbie, Jamie Owens had to slave for
it: 21 months on a moped acquiring "The Knowledge" — a
detailed mental map of the 25,000 streets within 10 km of Charing
Cross, plus major routes farther out. For the last 10 years he has
been his own boss. "The beauty of the job is that if you want
to take a day off, you don't have to ask anybody, except maybe
your bank manager. If you have a lot of bills you've got unlimited
overtime." He has never been robbed. He says he has
"become a good instant judge of character" and has
learned to "let a drunk walk up to the cab while watching in
the mirror" to see if he's beyond the pale. Sometimes Owens
makes $60 an hour, sometimes $6.His traditional cab, a 1997 Fairway model (only two manufacturers remain), with chrome bumpers and a walnut dashboard, prompts couples to hire him for weddings. But he also totes an electronic organizer to download e-mail via his mobile phone, by which he monitors bookings arriving on his website www.london-taxi.co.uk. He started it as a hobby but it now gets 200,000 hits a month. A hot topic on its drivers' forum is the city's plan to regulate the 40,000 unlicensed cabs that siphon off an estimated 70 million fares annually.
Would Owens advise his own 10-year-old daughter to follow in his footsteps? "I'd prefer her to do something else — but sure. It's a good life."