I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.
Ben Okri (b.1959)
Monthly Archives: July 2024
London Trivia: In the swim
On 28 July 1906 the Tooting Lido, at 50 metres England’s largest public swimming pool, opened, with the catchy title of The Tooting Bathing Lake. It still holds the record as the UK’s largest fresh water swimming pool by surface area and contains a million gallons of unheated water. The alternating bright red, yellow and Green changing room doors are a popular film location. Brad Pitt’s boxing ‘pool’ scene in Snatch was filmed at the Lido.
In 28 July 1866 Beatrix Potter was born at 2 Bolton Gardens, she was looked after by a nanny, spending most of her time in the big nursery at the top of the house only seeing her parents at bedtime
On 28 July 1879 Kate Webster was hanged for murder of Julia Thomas whose skull was later found in Sir David Attenborough’s garden in 2010
From the early 19th century to the late 20th century Holborn/Clerkenwell was home to London’s Italian community and known as “Little Italy”
1769 – St Katharine Cree Church – man wins bet he can dig grave 10ft deep – but as climbs out to collect winnings it collapses and kills him
On 28 July 1964 Winston Churchill awoke at his London home to find himself no longer a Member of Parliament for the first time since 1901
The Phoenix, East Finchley is London’s oldest continuously working cinema. Opening in 1910 and restyled to it’s Art Deco glory in 1928
The Naval and Military Club known as the ‘In and Out’ refers to its previous home in Piccadilly with the in and out painted on the gateposts
As the boat race is taking place Spitalfields City Farm raise funds for animal feed by racing three goats: ‘Oxford’, ‘&’, ‘Cambridge’
In 1633 the Horse Ferry sank in the Thames with the weight of Archbishop Laud’s possessions en route to Lambeth Palace
Finchley Central on the Northern line was the local station of Harry Beck, who designed the Underground Map, it displays an original copy
The Great Fire of London 1666 raged for 5 days despite Mayor Thomas Bloodworth’s doubts when he declared, “Pish! A woman might piss it out!”
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
Previously Posted: A plug for Boris
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
A plug for Boris (28.06.11)
Boris’s dream of making London as quiet and clean as a convent during vespers drew a step closer recently with the disclosure that London now has 17,000 electric and electric hybrid vehicles registered in the capital, some 23.5 per cent of the nation’s total. The experts predict that by 2020 over a half million of these vehicles will be registered. It hardly is surprising with a 100 per cent discount on the congestion charge and nil-rate vehicle excise duty and that their use in London can only go northwards.
OK! I’ll put up my hands; I drive one of London’s worst polluters, even with expensive conversions and the phasing out of 15-year-old vehicles, London’s taxis still pollute far more than any electric vehicle ever would, and as someone with mild COPD I have more than a passing interest in improving London’s air quality.
Whilst London’s air might seem one of the best amongst capital cities around the world, the technocrats in Brussels have deemed that it’s not doing enough to meet EU-wide standards. As a city without any polluting industries or manufacturing, the vast majority, some 80 per cent, of London’s air pollution comes from road transport (with presumably the other 20 per cent from City Hall). Of this 80 per cent, it is estimated that emissions from London’s iconic black cabs make up 20 per cent, and this is the group that Boris is targeting in his Air Quality Strategy to help him meet strict emission targets.
To go down the electric taxi route taxi drivers (and Boris) have to overcome a number of problems, which you could call the four “Pees” no make that five Pees.
Price – Unlike London’s bus fleet we don’t receive any subsidies, being self-employed, we naturally don’t enjoy the generous benefits bestowed on other fleet operators. Current estimates for the price of an electric taxi are in the region of £60,000.
Plugs – In May of this year Boris switched on the Capital’s new Electric Vehicle Scheme, making it simpler for electric vehicle owners to charge their vehicles, and he is promising a total of at least 1,300 charging points by 2013. This is designed to overcome the major problem for any electric vehicle driver which is “range anxiety”, the term used by drivers of these vehicles when they need a charge. In the lead for long-distance running without needing a charge is the Smart fortwo, with a potential range of 84 miles – far shorter than the average cab is driven in a day.
Parking – No Londoner needs to be reminded of the parking restrictions and their draconian enforcement by local authorities. If London’s 24,000 cabs have to stop halfway through their working day to recharge provisions must be made away from the parking restrictions imposed by London’s Stalinist councils. You wouldn’t expect buses in a bus garage to incur parking enforcement, so why cabs?
Passengers – These have of late become an endangered species, making the cost of electric vehicles even more uneconomic for cabbies. But should paying customers to return one day they might find that because of an electric vehicle’s limited range journeys cannot be undertaken, and as they say refusal can sometimes offend.
Spending a Penny – An additional requirement now sadly lacking in London is the provision of toilets, and while parked and recharging your own and the vehicle’s batteries, proper provision should be given for eating and as the Americans call it a comfort break.
So for Boris: A good start but a lot more work to be done before you reach your clean air El Dorado.
London in Quotations: Richard Branson
When exploring London, you will come across lots of excitement by chance, so try to take everything in rather than just rushing around to all of the major tourist haunts.
Richard Branson (b.1950)
London Trivia: Workplace accident
On 21 July 1921 a coroner’s court jury returned a verdict of death caused by strychnine poisoning, on the death of Sir Alfred Newton. The chairman of Harrod’s had died in his store. It transpired that his indigestion medication prescribed by Harrod’s own pharmacy contained enough of the poison to kill a large number of people. The post-mortem discovered he had a weak heart and would not have lived much longer.
On 21 July 2005 explosions at two trains and a bus came exactly a fortnight after four suicide bombers killed 52 on the transport network, this time only the detonators exploded
The Queen can still exact the maximum penalty on souvenir traders using her coat of arms without permission – beheading
The first permanent bridge into what would become London was built near the site of London Bridge by Emperor Claudius’ Roman army in AD55
On 21 July 1964 Tottenham Hotspur’s Scottish striker John White was killed by lightning playing golf in North London
The 1782 Land Tax Act, as with all other Acts is written on vellum, at a quarter of a mile it is longer than Parliament
The corner of Lapstone Gardens/Mentmore Close, Kenton where Basil Fawlty thrashed his car with a tree, nowhere near the fictional coastal hotel
More than 42 million people have visited Tate Modern since Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s Bankside Power Station was converted and opened in 2000
London Fives is a dartboard game with 12 large segments counting down from 505, players standing 9ft away. Henry VIII was said to play it
4 Tube stations have names that contain the colour of the line the station is on: Redbridge, Stepney Green, Turnham Green and Parsons Green
Burlington Arcade built to remove an alleyway beside the mansion is patrolled by Beadles who stop whistling running and unfurling umbrellas
Early phone boxes were made tall enough for a man wearing a top hat to use them in comfort, later versions had sloping floors because people were using them as urinals
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
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