Black taxies are legally required to be able to turn within a circle of 25ft - that’s a really tight spin, enabling them to execute a U-turn in the narrow roads of London. The law came about because of the small roundabout at the Savoy Hotel - at least, that’s how the story goes! This is also one of the only roads in the UK in which you drive on the right hand side. Again, tradition - and perhaps a pinch of poetic romance - says that it was to allow ladies disembarking a Hansom cab to step down straight to the pavement, and avoid the road.
I love half-mythical facts like this, which point to the long history of the trade. I wrote a poem about a London cab’s ability to ‘turn on a sixpence - read it below!
Turn on a Sixpence
Can I turn a poem on a sixpence?
Take you from:
reflecting on the epic scale of a supernov
its vast energies radiating out in a stream of light
and how your life is part of this beautiful whole Universe to:
the fraction of a second when bad news lands in your body
and a space is clawed open
into which grief rushes in
as quickly as a cab spins through
the tiny roundabout at the Savoy Hotel?
The trick being to help you realise that
despite the G-force and potential for whiplash
you are basically in the same place
just facing another way.
Perhaps the force of such a sudden literary manoeuver
would leave you flattened into your seat
unable to speak back
until we complete our circle
and set off more gently again.
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