Monthly Musings

April 2026

📖 A brilliant notebook

In May 2011, the Filofax Flex was launched, a modular, ringless organiser designed to bridge the gap between traditional ring-bound planners and modern notebook folios. Much slimmer and lighter than traditional Filofax organisers, allowing it to lie completely flat when open, featuring a structure of internal and external pockets that offered multiple permutations of pencils, notebooks, diaries, year planners and jot pads. Also, the top and bottom slots even made the folder reversible for both left- and right-handed users. Unfortunately, it wasn’t popular and was discontinued by the end of 2014. With my old one written to destruction, I’ve had to purchase another secondhand from eBay.

👃 Tube station smells

Long before COVID-19, I developed an olfactory dysfunction, where even strong smells weren’t definable. So I was fascinated when top London geek, Matt Brown, discussed on Lev Parikian’s Six Things Substack podcast the Tube Station map he had produced of smells. Yes, apparently Waterloo-Lambeth smells of ‘rodent’, a mousy smell; Warren Street has hints of ‘sooty milk’; Marylebone conjures up ‘Scalextric sparks’; while my favourite is the aroma of a ‘sweaty cardigan’ at Embankment.

🔥 1666

Listening to the excellent TimeTable London podcast, which a recent episode featured Jonnie Fielding, founder of Bowl of Chalk Walking Tours (No, me neither), he also mentioned writing a book, which is a rather good thriller with The Great Fire of London as its backdrop.

🏗️ Gallows Corner

This important junction, with no realistically feasible detour, which closed in June last year for work to replace the flyover that was scheduled to last 12 weeks, has opened after 11 months of chaos in the surrounding area. At least 40-tonne lorries will stay on the A roads and not the country lanes of Havering-atte-Bower. STOP PRESS: Opening delayed – again

🦆 Sam & Ade Go Birding

According to actor Sam West, birdwatching exists on a sliding scale of geekery ‘bird watching’ is what normally adjusted people do when they stare at the sparrows through the kitchen window; birding is more organised, involving making drawings and lists, noting what you see and where. This is a rabbit hole I’ve dived down since seeing my first kingfisher. ‘Twitching’ is the hobby at full stretch, with enthusiasts dashing around the country to spot rare visitors, ticking off the entire catalogue of 636 British species plus any foreign intruders. A bemused Adrian Edmondson accompanies Sam in this C5 series.