🚓 What Cab News

Transport for London has increased the number of private hire vehicles on the capital’s roads by 2,505 in just one week. If the newly licensed minicabs were all lined up together in three lanes of road space, it would stretch nose-to-nose between Paddington and Kings Cross Stations.

🎧 What I’m Listening

I was sad to read the death in November of Andrew Nickolds who wrote the long-running quirky comedy sitcom Ed Reardon’s Week on Radio4, drawing on the ups and downs as a freelance hack. Well worth a second listen.

📖 What I’m Reading

Leadville by Edward Platt, in 1995 the author stopped his car and took a stroll down Western Avenue. In the 1920s it was a tree-lined suburban boulevard but now it’s an urban nightmare. The book focuses on the lives of the people who live there, of suburbia, the dreams of its inhabitants, and of our senseless and all-consuming love affair with the motor car.

📺 What I’m watching

A favourite piece of trivia of mine: When on 23rd June 1951 Soviet spy Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to Moscow they enjoyed a leisurely lunch at the RAC Club just ahead of MI5. So when ITVX screened A Spy Among Friends starring Damien Lewis and Guy Pierce I just had to watch the box set.

❓ What else

Here’s something that I didn’t expect to write: Westminster City council has painted some walls in Soho with a water-repellent layer designed to stop people pissing on them. Apparently a council source explained: “outdoor urination is on the rise post-Covid, but if anyone tries it on these walls then they will get ‘soaked’ in their own urine”.