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Cities are all about transport, about moving around, careering around. Most of these journeys are banal little translocations; but they have their thrills. In Paris the buses used to have a charmingly perfunctory leather strap across the rear entrance; you just unhooked it and scrambled onto the swaying platform; in motion, bien entendu. Today in London there is still the modest thrill, unchecked (as yet) by nannydom, of leaning off the rail into the wind as your Routemaster judders round Marble Arch. Other thrills: the great urban water rides of the Staten Island Ferries, the Star Ferries of Hong Kong, Hegarty's ferries of Sydney ("Alright you kin get on now" says a laconic man in jeans: Shouldn't this be "All aboard"?) Not as bad as the cockney rustbuckets that still contrive to take tourists from the Embankment down to Greenwich: "Nah then, ladeez an'gen'lemen…you are nah abaht to pass under Wa'erloo Bridge. Look carefully an' yer'll see it tilts a bit to the left on account of it was built by women, cos all the men was away at war." Then there are the tuk-tuks of India and Southeast Asia, the funiculars of Naples, the "bondes" of Rio, the motorlaunches of the Bangkok canals, the dreamlike marble expanses of the Moscow underground, the strange little subways of Glasgow and Buenos Aires (to English ears so evocatively named: el Subterraneo), the lugubrious clanking and spitting trams of eastern Europe; the hyper-modern iridescent trams that slink through the dark Hapsburgian streets of Milan.

And finally a toast to the taxis of the world and their drivers; the strange intimacy you can establish with the backs of their heads, which contrast so curiously with the little identity photos on the dashboards, (next to the family photograph, the Bible, the Air freshener like a Swedish pine, and the swaying talisman or amulet that allows them, on your behalf, to take heart stopping risks with cosmic impunity. In Kuala Lumpur I was quite, quite safe: on the dashboard of my taxi was assembled a touchingly syncretic little altar. It was like this: in the centre a glowing Buddha, flanked by little red candles. To either side of each candle, guarding the Buddha, two figurines of Snoopy, wearing Stetsons and holding little six shooters.) Jarmusch in his tender film Night on Earth gives the taxi drivers of the world the tribute they deserve. For me one figure will always remain particularly intense: my taxi driver to Calcutta airport; an elderly disabled man of the greatest dignity who limped to his cab, hauling himself with difficulty into his driving seat and who ruled the traffic, with a half brooding, half piratical eye crouched over his beaded steering wheel like the Ancient Mariner. I just liked his style, particularly when at a red traffic light, to my horror, he eased himself out of his seat and limped slowly over the road to buy himself a single cigarette while the lights went green and the traffic backed up behind me and transvestite beggars scrabbled at my window.

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