🚓 What Cab News
Many businesses and women have expressed their concerns about the scarcity of black cabs in the City at night. While black cabs are allowed to cross Bank Junction during nighttime, the various restrictions in the City during the day and other limitations have led drivers to increasingly avoid the Square Mile altogether. The ‘Cabs Across Bank’ campaign calls for action to ensure the safety and accessibility of transport options for all individuals, particularly women, in the City.
🎧 What I’m Listening
It’s a radio comedy that should strike a note with every blogger, I’m now listening to the 15th series of Ed Reardon’s Week who’s trying to survive in a world where the media seems to be run by idiots and charlatans.
📖 What I’m Reading
Last month publisher Frances Lincoln allowed me to review Jack Chesher’s London: A Guide for Curious Wanderers. Now I’ve been lucky enough to have been given another publication from the same company. This time it’s an enormous tome – London’s Underground: The Story of the Tube by Oliver Green. This updated publication will take me some time as the coffee table book is very large.
📺 What I’m watching
Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio’s writing debut, Cardiac Arrest caused controversy due to its realistic depiction of hospital life. The series was twice nominated in the Best Original Drama category by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and topped a poll of UK medical professionals as the most realistic medical drama of all time.
❓ What else
Beneath the bonnet, CabbieBlog has been reformatted. Copyright infringement trolls are searching out miscreants, to ensure this blog stays online, posts that may inadvertently have used a copyrighted image are now password-protected. If you wish to peruse an old post contact me for access, I’ll interrogate the images and give you a personal password.
📆 What date?
400 years ago in London during the latter months of 1623, Isaac Laggard printed The First Folio, the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays seven years after his death. Shakespeare wrote around 37 plays, 36 of which are contained in the First Folio. Most of these plays were performed in the Globe, an open-air playhouse in London built on the south bank of the Thames in 1599.
On 29 October 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was executed at The Tower of London – his discovery of tobacco has been killing people since that time
Found a shed on Tottenham Court Road were the remains of 100 corpses victims of body snatching deposited there before being sold to surgeons
Tottenham Court Road stands on land leased to Queen Elizabeth I that came to be known as Tottenham Court because of its royal connections
The coffin of Dr. Thomas Barnardo was carried in funeral cortege on an underground train in 1905, one of only two occasions this is known to have happened
United States President Theodore Roosevelt got married in London, at St. George’s, Hanover Square. His wife’s middle name was Kermit
The historic Anchor Tavern on Bankside was the location for a scene for Mission Impossible starring Tom Cruise
Holy Trinity Church in Beechwood Road, Dalston is home to the annual Clowns Service attended by clowns in full makeup
Born in 1775 the inventor of the boxer’s uppercut, ‘Dutch Sam’ Elias, from Whitechapel trained on gin and lost just 2 of his 100 boxing fights
The last manually operated doors on Tube trains (pneumatic sliding doors were introduced on tube trains in 1919) were phased out in 1929
In the 18th Century John Harris, head waiter of Shakespeare’s Head, Covent Garden annually produced a Who’s Who of Whores
The 28-inch Greenwich refracting telescope is the largest of its kind in Britain and the seventh largest in the world
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