🚓 What Cab News

For 14 years I’ve been posting a daily piece of trivia on Twitter – sorry now X under @cabbieblog. Well, the 1st August’s: ‘The London Cab Trade is the oldest regulated land passenger service in Britain licensed in 1654 – 150 years before the horse-drawn bus #LDNTrivia’ managed, at the time of writing, to garner 3,369 views; 44 likes; 18 retweets, sorry reposts; and 4 comments. Possibly a record for this scribe.

🎧 What I’m Listening

We’re four days from Ulez and I’ve been listening to LBC’s Nick Ferrari. I know each presenter has a political bias, with an audience of like-minded listeners. It has to be said that Sadiq Khan isn’t the flavour of the month with this broadcaster, but I’ve yet to hear a caller agreeing with Ulez – or Khan.

📖 What I’m Reading

I’m now on book three of Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May books: Seventy-Seven Clocks: It’s late in 1973, strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during Edward Heath’s ‘Winter of Discontent’, and sundry members of a wealthy, aristocratic family are being disposed of in a variety of grotesque ways – by a reptile, by a bomb and by a haircut. Bryant & May, the irascible detectives of London’s controversial Peculiar Crimes Unit have little time to catch the culprit.

📺 What I’m watching

Our new neighbours have rewilded their garden (that’s a euphemism), and as a consequence of the overgrown vegetation a pair of foxes have taken up residence. It’s great to watch them every day.

❓ What else

Within hours of August’s start my wife received: ‘It broke fell and broke mum im so stressed out i dont know what to do i need your help x’. These spam merchants really need to improve their grammar.

📆 What date?

One hundred and fifty years ago on 23rd August 1873, the Albert Bridge opened. A toll bridge meant even pedestrians had to pay to cross. The toll houses, two at each end, remain, as does the notice to tell soldiers to break step.