🚓 What Cab News

If one had gained a degree or doctorate you’d have that qualification for life. No so TfL, should you allow your cab licence to lapse, having spent the best part of five years gaining your badge you’ll have to undergo this convoluted process:

A re-test will consist of an oral one-to-one examination with a Knowledge of London Examiner, with a duration of approximately 30 minutes. Drivers must demonstrate sufficient knowledge to be re-licensed, in addition to meeting all other licensing criteria. If a driver’s performance in the re-test is deemed insufficient, regardless of their score, they will be allowed to attend a further one-to-one examination within a specific timeframe determined by the examiner. This period allows for additional learning of the required information. However, if the driver’s knowledge remains inadequate following the second examination, they will be required to enter the Knowledge of London Examination system at stages 3, 4, or 5, as per the marking scheme outlined by TfL. Essentially, the driver will have to start afresh and work their way through the stages of The Knowledge once again.

🎧 What I’m Listening

I’m now up to Episode 170: Printers, Plague and Poets from Kevin Stroud’s excellent History of English Podcast. In this episode, he examined the connection between poetry and plague in the early 1590s. An outbreak of plague contributed to Shakespeare’s early career as a poet, and about an acquaintance from Shakespeare’s hometown who emerged as one of the leading printers in London and how his print shop influenced the development of English during the Elizabethan period.

📖 What I’m Reading

I’d been offered a copy of Jack Chesher’s London: A Guide for Curious Wanderers, with illustrations by Katharine Fraser. This is a beautiful book which I’ve enjoyed greatly. Thanks to the publisher Frances Lincoln for the opportunity, my review was posted last Tuesday.

📺 What I’m watching

Lev Parikian’s excellent weekly Substack – Six Things – directed me to watch the extraordinary work of Levon Biss, whose insect photographs are taken at extremely high magnification. One of the gadgets I treated myself to upon retirement was a Canon lens for macro photography to capture the most abundant animals on the planet – insects. You will never look at these invertebrates the same again.

❓ What else

For weeks they’ve been installing fibre optic cables, both above and below ground. Could this be to cope with the huge surge of data from Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ cameras sited all over our corner of rural Essex?

📆 What date?

Fifty years ago on 8th October 1973 from Gough Square just before 6 am Britain’s first legally authorised commercial radio station went on air. I’ve written all about it on Substack.