London 1924

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England 1921 - A summer holiday at Staines

Germany 1921

London 1922

London 1923

London 1923, continued

London 1924

London 1924, continued

London 1924

One day I had to pop down to King's on some club business and a medical student friend asked me if I would deliver a package to a colleague of his. I airily replied, "Yes, shove it in my sidecar." When I went to start up, I found I had a puncture, so with no time to mend it then and there, I grabbed the package and a detective novel lying on the seat of the sidecar and walked to Tottenham Court Road to get a bus. Now the package was not heavy, it consisted merely of a gas jar with a rubber bung at the top. It was simply a cylinder of glass, about ten inches high and about 2 inches in diameter. There was rolled round the cylinder a single sheet of paper held in position by a thin rubber band. My trouble was that rubber band, because having taken my seat just inside by the conductor, I put the cylinder by my side, opened my detective novel and that vintage rubber band broke. The jolting of the bus allowed the paper to unwrap itself. I was torn from my novel by the screams of two dear old ladies sitting opposite me, one of whom proceeded to faint. The conductor rang his bell incessantly. The bus was by then stationary, outside Shearn's and unfortunately opposite Tottenham Court Road police station, to which the driver was promptly despatched by the conductor. The contents of the jar was about a hundred human eyes, required for medical purposes at King's. I and my jar both went quietly into the station opposite, where there was a lot of talk about behaviour liable to cause a breach of the peace, commiting a nuisance and even indecent exposure but I held firmly that that was going too far. As the old lady had recovered and no one wanted to press charges, they let me go.

London 1924

Because Father was friendly with Dick Hawkins, he was able to arrange for me to take the Metropolitan Police test for applicants who want to hold a London taxi-driver's licence. I strongly suspect that my father concocted the whole thing to get me taken down a peg.

At the appointed time, I reported at Scotland Yard to pick up my examiner and off we set in my father's 16-20 H.P. Wolseley touring car, the same car I had driven in top gear up Holland Park Avenue (which my father's chauffeur had failed to do) and received ten shillings for doing it. For years I had been discovering London with my sister in the sidecar and knew it well, including such names, common among taxi-drivers as "The Cat House" for the Empress Club in Dover Street founded by Queen Victoria to house her ladies-in-waiting. Nor did I have any trouble when told to park in the centre of the road between St. Georges' Hospital and Hyde Park and then "proceed to the National Gallery without turning or bearing to your right." In the days before one-way streets it could be done. In fact I had no trouble at all and the examiner did not say but gave me to understand that I might have passed. At any rate we were on our way home along Birdcage Walk, between Wellington Barracks and St. James' Park and were entering Parliament Square at the north-west corner when the examiner said to me, "We are just back in nice time - what is the time, by-the-bye?" Believe it or not, I looked up at Big Ben to find out. I told him that was cheating. As we turned north into Whitehall, suddenly he said "STOP". I did and he banged his head on the windscreen. Stationary in the middle of Whitehall he jumped out to examine the front wheels, to see if they were pointing towards the kerb. I got out as well and he agreed they were pointing to the kerb. I turned right and dropped him at Scotland Yard, where before shaking hands, he told me that I had failed the test. I admit that I did not pass, but I will be damned even now if I will admit that I failed.