You probably haven’t heard of the journalist Anne Kadet, for why should you as she lives in New York?

Anne writes regularly on Substack under the name Café Anne. Here she stalks the streets of the Big Apple finding interesting people to write about.

For the 100th post, she had a brainwave after being sent a $100 Christmas gift by an admirer of her project (she even has over 330 admirers willing to pay for her free posts).

She then decided to ask 100 New Yorkers for $1 of wisdom. At the end of this piece of random research, 64 gave their nuggets for free.

She then polled her readers on what to do with the remaining $64. Fifty-six per cent voted to fund another adventure. Now bear with me here, she decided then to divide the money four ways corresponding to the 4 poll options and using the percentage voted for each option.

This left her with $36 for the next adventure which she then opted to have two ‘adventures’.

Half of which was to be spent on an arbitrary taxi ride, and the purpose of this rambling post. Hailing a taxi near her home she asked the driver: “Could you take me in any direction until the meter gets to $18, please?”

Hoping to be taken to an interesting place with plenty of people worthy of writing about, the driver’s few words were to get her to confirm her request.

Little was spoken thereafter until they reached the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street.

“Is okay?” he asked.

Not really. They were at the city’s Civic Center, which is mainly government buildings—an unlikely spot for adventuring. As she said: “But what could I do?”

This got me thinking if a London cabbie had the same instruction. First, he would ask for confirmation, he would want to know why, ask her all about her blog, and then, using his knowledge of London, take her somewhere that was really interesting with people to interview.

So where would $18 (£14.21) take you?

Assuming this was undertaken during a weekday, starting from London’s topographical centre: King Charles I roundabout at Trafalgar Square this could get you for instance to Shakespeare’s Globe, London Zoo or Broadcasting House.

Plenty of scope at these places to talk to interesting people.

Or with the traffic nowadays 100 yards up the road to Charing Cross Station.