According to Diamond Geezer, blogging is endangered and outdated, because what’s the point of reading something when you could be listening to it instead?
Taking his advice I’ve made a podcast (well, strictly speaking, I just talked about myself, Sheila actually made the recording); All About You: Everyone has a story.
So instead of reading about a London cabbie and any eclectic capital centric subject that’s taken his fancy, how much better to simply sit back, press play and let my words wash all over you in handy audible chunks.
No longer will you need to find your reading glasses or pinch your smartphone screen so that the text appears in a legible size before you can read about The Knowledge. Instead, just press play and absorb my journey as a cabbie without expending any effort whatsoever.
Listen on your morning commute assuming you still have one, use it as your jogging soundtrack, mull it over during your afternoon tea break or use it as an aid to drift off to sleep. You can rewind should you want to further absorb my dulcet tones, or fast forward past any points you’ve already heard spoken by every London cabbie.
Although it may not be so great for you, because you have to invest half an hour of your day to listen to everything I have to say about London. At least with text you can read the first bit and skim down to get the general gist, or decide you don’t want to read any of the rest and go off and do something more productive. You’ll spend far less time reading something I wrote than I spent writing it, whereas with a podcast the time penalty is identical. Normally I spend hours writing text, cropping photos, checking references and adding links, but absolutely none of that is necessary to create an audio file. Instead, I simply talk for half an hour and Sheila edited and embed the file, which was brilliant.
I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as I’ve enjoyed making it. What I particularly liked was that the podcast only took half an hour to make, well it would have if my laptop hadn’t sounded like a train, necessitating a second recording using my iPhone.
And if that’s not enough of me, the inner workings of my brain (but not my brain’s size) are discussed in detail on the Every Little Thing Podcast.
On 30 July 1746 the last executed traitor to have their head displayed on a pike (his at Temple Bar) was Jacobite rebel Francis Towneley
The Lamb and Flag, Rose Street, Covent Garden dates back to 1627 being a favourite watering hole of Charles Dickens
Victorian publisher Joshua Butterworth left money for a ceremony at St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield to give alms and buns to poor London widows
It is thought that the ‘Window Tax’ brought about the phrase: “Daylight Robbery”, being robbed of daylight by taxation
Gieves (the name) of Gieves and Hawkes, 1 Savile Row was the inspiration for P. G. Wodehouse’s butler Jeeves, albeit spelt different
In 1251 a Polar Bear given to King Henry III by the King of Norway lived in the Tower of London and went fishing in the Thames
Cricketing legend W. G. Grace was a practising doctor who worked from his practice at 7 Lawrie Park Road, Sydenham
Early London and Greenwich Railway trains were made in the style of a Roman galley ship to fit in with the viaducts they travelled across
London’s oldest shop Twining’s in the Strand has been selling tea since 1706. Twining family home in Twickenham, Dial House is now a vicarage
One of the first (if not THE first) British suppliers of Doc Marten shoes and boots was Blackman’s, Cheshire Street, Bethnal Green
CabbieBlog 