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A Licensed Black London Cab Driver I share my London with you . . . The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
London trivia

London Trivia: Dulwich hermit murdered

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On 28 December 1802 on this Tuesday morning, a young man discovered the corpse of the Dulwich Hermit, Samuel Matthews, outside the entrance to his cave in Dulwich Woods. His murderer was never discovered.

On 28 December 1594 the first performance of Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors took place in the hall of Gray’s Inn

Thief-Taker General Jonathan Wild sent more than 120 men to the gallows but was hanged at Tyburn for running gangs of thieves

When Camden’s Egyptian style cigarette factory opened in 1927 the road was filled with sand and opera singers performed Aida

In 1907 William Whiteley was shot dead in his Bayswater store by a young man claiming to be his illegitimate son

When Napoleon was thinking of invading England his failed attempt was mocked by an unusual ale house sign: ‘My Arse in a Bandbox’

The Grapes, Limehouse was the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ ‘Six Jolly Fellowship Porters’ in Our Mutual Friend

Pimms was invented in 1823 at 3 Poultry at the Pimm’s Oyster Rooms as an aid to digestion serving it in a small tankard known as a No. 1 Cup

Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, saved the Oval cricket ground from closure only six years after it opened, desperate for funds they had considered adding poultry shows to the venue’s activities

Before CrossRail was named the Elizabeth line, Belsize Park was the only part of the London Underground to use a Z in its name

Wall’s Sausages used to be located at 113 Jermyn Street, where the meat for their products was ground by a donkey operating a treadmill

‘Hobson’s Choice’ comes from the livery stable owner Thomas Hobson who would drive from Cambridge to the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street

CabbieBlog-cab.gifTrivial 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

Previously Posted: Blue is the new Green

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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.

Blue is the new green (13.11.12)

For a decade now I have been driving down Victoria Embankment watching as the soft incandescent Edison lights strung between lampposts slowly died of age one by one, and no one bothered to replace them.

Then the wet desolated pavement alongside the Thames was reminiscent of a late ’50s scene for a cigarette advert a lone man, stopping under a light, its gentle glow illuminating him as he lit up, to the familiar catchphrase ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’.

As the last of the old bulbs have spluttered and died a brave new lit world has replaced them – with that stark intense blue of the halogen bulb – and the string of lights between lampposts isn’t the only harsh light now to be found alongside the Thames.

Green was once the de facto colour of environmentalism when political parties adopted it into their name or their logo, but now blue has the right credentials.

Green is about trees and plants whereas blue is about oceans, rivers, lakes and the sky, ensuring adequate clean supplies of essential resources — air and water, it is also the colour of our planet seen from space.

One of the world’s biggest polluters – carmakers are now using blue as a colour and a word to express cleanness and efficiency – even for vehicles with petrol and diesel engines. Volkswagen puts a ‘Blue Motion’ badge on its most efficient cars; Mercedes-Benz adds a ‘Blue efficiency’ emblem to its environmentally friendly (and easiest to recycle) models. New Holland, part of Italy’s Fiat Group, even uses the name ‘eco Blue’ on its low-emissions range of blue tractors.

For sure, blue is more acceptable to right-of-centre political interests than the term green since that colour was appropriated by the left-of-centre parties in Europe.

So the ‘boys’ of City Hall have embraced those beautiful eco-blue lights. “You see”, they would say “lighting up the Thames hasn’t harmed a single polar bear using our blue energy-efficient bulbs”.

It started with the long overdue construction of the Hungerford footbridge with its blue lights surmounting the pillars, then the London Eye adopted it and now almost every bridge spanning the Thames is bathed in a blue glow. My cabbie colleague in his Capital Letters blog has dubbed the new Blackfriars Station, which spans the Thames and is illuminated with the ubiquitous blue lights as – Bluefriars.

London in Quotations

London in Quotations: William Wordsworth

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Private courts, / Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes / Thrilled by some female vendor’s scream, belike / The very shrillest of all London cries, / May then entangle our impatient steps; / Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, / To privileged regions and inviolate, / Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers / Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

William Wordsworth (1779-1850), The Prelude

London trivia

London Trivia: Fastest Knife in the West End

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On 21 December 1846 Robert Liston, the ‘Fastest Knife in the West End’, who could amputate a leg in two and a half minutes, carried out the first operation in the United Kingdom using ether, amputating the leg above the knee of Fred Churchill. His comment was, ‘This Yankee dodge sure beats mesmerism’.

On 21 December 1842 Pentonville Prison was opened, called the ‘Model Prison’ and with the aim to contain men in jail, although many would be transported to Australia

In 1841 the Metropolitan Police reported there were 9,409 prostitutes and 3,325 brothels known to the police across the 17 police districts

St Pancras station’s bricks are that famous red colour because they’re made from Nottinghamshire clay supplied by the Nottingham Patent Brick Co. Ltd.

St. James’s Palace and its park were formerly the site of a leper hospital for women dedicated to Saint James the Less, the palace was secondary in importance

Trafalgar Square was to have been called ‘King William the Fourth’s Square’ architect and landowner George Ledwell Taylor suggested its name

Charles I’s statute in Trafalgar Square stands on the site of the original Charing Cross marking where all distances from London start

Tradition has it that Pimlico is named after Ben Pimlico, a 17th Century Hoxton brewer who supplied London with a popular Nut Brown ale

Running between Old Street and City Road Bath Street recalls the location of London’s first purpose built outdoor facility the Peerless Pool

London has fewer bridges spanning its principal river than Paris but has 23 underwater tunnels more than any other city in the world

Arsenal were founded as Dial Square in 1886 by workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, but were renamed Royal Arsenal shortly afterwards

Bank is the only one-syllable station name and Knightsbridge is the only London street name with six consecutive consonants

CabbieBlog-cab.gifTrivial 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

Previously Posted: Twenty’s Plenty

1 Comment

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.

Twenty’s plenty (06.11.12)

Islington Council has a long history of discouraging the use of cars within its boundaries; passengers have told me of having their cars taken to the car pound one day after their residents’ permit expired.

Another wealthy resident said his cul-de-sac which was 100 metres long had 8 speed humps ‘to prevent excessive speed’.

The existing speed humps, which were designed to keep speeds below 20mph, have only managed to impair the emergency services. All the ‘boy racers’ went out and purchased wide-wheeled 4x4s and continued to drive furiously.

Islington’s next ploy was to build ‘pincer points’ which allow only one vehicle through at a time and construct innumerable pedestrian crossings on Upper Street. This has resulted in an 18 hour-a-day traffic jam with cars belching out noxious fumes and pedestrians resolutely refusing to cross at the designated places.

The slower a vehicle travels reduces the risk of injury to pedestrians, but so does observation and driving. In Islington you spend an inordinate amount of your journey looking out for obstructions installed by the council.

Vehicles are not designed to travel at 16mph (the speed you should travel as 20mph is the maximum), use far more fuel and increase their emissions at these low speeds. In addition many odometers are inaccurate at low speed resulting in drivers having to maintain a speed of 15mph.

If this north London council is serious about keeping speed limits below 20mph it can only enforce it by a complex system of average speed cameras, just how much would that cost the ratepayers?