Category Archives: A window on My World

A window on My World

Monthly Musings

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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.

📅 April’s posts and pages

Most read post – Ten things Londoners never do
Most read page – Taxi Tales

📈 Last month’s statistics

5,150 views (+93.2%)
4,899 visitors (+109.5%)
26 likes (±00.0%)
45 comments (-16.7%)
13 posts (-13.3%)

A window on My World

Monthly Musings

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March 2026

📖 A London Noir Classic

Stench: The axe in the head murder. It’s the mid-1980s and south-east London is a melting pot of crime and corruption. This debut novel takes you back to a time of striking printers, immoral journalists, unprincipled freemasons, corrupt police and a well-documented murder. The concise fast-paced direct prose serves to heighten the unfolding drama. This work draws heavily on actual events, and as the narrative unfolds the line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred. This meticulously researched work gives an impression that you’re a senior investigating officer reading the available evidence. The author’s Mickey Spillane writing style makes a refreshing change from the flowery language overused by today’s authors. Published by micro-indie publisher Black Rat Books.

💬 Geeks’ Corner

Well, it looks as though WordPress has finally discarded their original system, now only Gutenberg can be used in any editing. I’ve written code since the early 80s and I still find the ‘improved’ platform one of the worst I’ve encountered. Trying to write in HTML is almost impossible, as some characters are obscured beneath another section. Coupled with that, some of their flagship legacy widgets have been altered changing the date line and removing headings. Whinge over.

🚆 Mind The Map

How well do you know the Tube map? The Londonist pointed me in the direction of this infuriating game, in which you have to find six tube stations on a map against a stress-inducing countdown timer. Those of you who have no knowledge of, or interest in, London and its underground rail network, should look away now. Play it here.

🎥 Cabbie – The Movie

London’s black cab trade is set to feature at the centre of a new British action heist comedy film titled Cabbie. The producers have launched a crowdfunding campaign to begin filming a short pilot this spring, to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival ahead of a full feature production. The story centres on a working-class London character named Ed, whose father’s garage collapsed after ride-hailing services entered the market. Unable to secure finance to revive the business, Ed resorts to unconventional methods to reclaim what his family has lost. . .

❓ 40 Billion to One

The Knowledge school WizAnn have calculated that Knowledge boys and girls face the theoretical possibility of more than 40 million different questions during assessments. The premise is that with around 6,400 locations currently existing within the oral appearances section of the Knowledge syllabus, when those locations are combined into potential start and end destination pairings, the number of possible questions expands dramatically. The probability of any single specific question being asked becomes even smaller when multiple candidates are preparing at the same time. Analysis suggests that if around 1,000 students were studying the Knowledge simultaneously, the chance of any individual candidate being asked one particular route question could theoretically fall to around 40 billion to one.

📅 March’s posts and pages

Most read post – London Trivia: The customer is always right
Most read page – The Knowledge

📈 Last month’s statistics

2,649 views (-68.2%)
2,322 visitors (-69.0%)
26 likes (-16.1%)
54 comments (+86.2%)
15 posts (+15.4%)

A window on My World

Monthly Musings

6 Comments

February 2026

🌧️ Mushers’ Lotion

It’s probably the most boring news item this month, I’m talking about rain: greatest precipitation, regular frequency, continuous cloud cover; umbrella sales. So what’s mushers’ lotion, I hear you ask? A musher is an owner-driver, as opposed to a cabbie who rents his cab, and lotion is rain, said to increase business, thus helping to pay off the huge costs of buying a vehicle.

🇺🇸 Visits from our Colonial Cousins

Around the middle of the month, CabbieBlog received a spike in the number of ‘hits’ from across the Pond. According to my counter, on the 12th-13th, 4,060 people took an interest in my musings. They were almost certainly bots harvesting data, but this is unusual for America; usually, China is the culprit, taking it upon itself to do web data extraction.

🚘 Gone in 60 Seconds

My 19-year-old VW Golf has developed a fault that prevents me from locking the rear doors. Until my mechanic can fit me in, I’ve had to rely on security devices, which got me rummaging around my garage to find five old locks, some fitting my Mini that I owned in the early 70s – none fit. My purchase of a Tevlaphee steering wheel lock, which hopefully will keep thieves at bay.

🚓 Tom’s Trivia

If you haven’t had enough of the London cab trade here at CabbieBlog, Tom Hutley’s new YouTube video with Joe Dan Hirst gives 40 minutes of London cab facts.

🏗️ Lego Gallows Corner

A farce has unfolded since 23 June last year, when this important junction was closed and scheduled to reopen in September. Without suitable detours, driving around Romford has been horrendous, with 40-tonne lorries negotiating country lanes. The work was then promised to last 6 months longer than scheduled; nobody is holding their breath. Now a wag has dreamt up this Lego set, replete with a speed camera and the guide to the duration of the build at 10 years.

📅 February’s posts and pages

Most read post – Mr Ormes’s Parrot
Most read page – Green Cab Shelters

📈 Last month’s statistics

2,649 views (-68.2%)
2,322 visitors (-69.0%)
26 likes (-16.1%)
54 comments (+86.2%)
15 posts (+15.4%)

A window on My World

Monthly Musings

2 Comments

January 2026

👍 Buying a black cab as a private car

Last year, CabbieBlog had an unusually popular post. The iconic diesel London cab can be bought for anywhere between £1,000 and £20,000, and curiously, the post featuring the pros and cons of owning such a vehicle has, by some margin, become last year’s most read post. With the push to electric, it would seem many are fighting the trend.

🚦 Per-minute billing on rental bikes

Ask a cab driver their biggest complaint about London, and it’s more likely to be cyclists jumping traffic lights. Recently, I read a post by Matt Taylor who outlined the price difference between hiring a Lime bike where you stop at red lights vs. not stopping at red lights. It seems absurd that we can have a hire bike rental system that actively encourages people to jump red lights because of pay-per-minute pricing. These bikes have built-in GPS, so surely the charge should be calculated based on distance.

🇬🇧 Passport to Romford

The London Borough of Havering is starting to resemble an Ealing Studios comedy. Comparing two pieces of junk mail from Romford MP, Andrew Rosindell, shows how, before moving to Reform UK, the Conservative Party has been ditched; his former political party isn’t featured on the latest:
Andrew is convinced that Romford shouldn’t be in Europe, be a part of London, or within the embrace of the political party he’s been a member of since he was 14. He has proposed that “Havering Belongs in Essex – Not Greater London”. Andrew loves to use the coat of arms of the long-defunct Municipal Borough of Romford, so it appears on his flyer. I suspect soon we’ll have Romford passports.

🚓 In the slow lane

London has been ranked as the world’s slowest capital city for travel time, according to new research from TomTom. Ranking only behind Barranquilla in Colombia, where cocaine gang wars and murders are often blamed for hold-ups. TomTom’s data showed that drivers in London now spend on average 35 minutes and 7 seconds for a 6-mile drive, 38 seconds more than last year.

💬 Made an offer I couldn’t accept

I recently received Lalaine’s email from flippa.com, who claim to be the world’s largest M&A Marketplace, who enquired my willingness to sell cabbieblog.com, claiming to have looked into my niche and traffic ranking, and I have buyers in mind. As it was pointed out to me by a fellow blogger, it could be a scam: by acquiring my domain name and accessing my bank details.

📅 January’s posts and pages

Most read post – 10 things Londoners never do
Most read page – About

📈 Last month’s statistics

3,593 views (+94.5%)
3,179 visitors (+118.9%)
34 likes (-19.0%)
38 comments (+8.6%)
15 posts (±00.0%)

A window on My World

Flash Sale

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Today marks the beginning of a flash sale of my books. Read Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion, the memoir about me undertaking the knowledge or the first two Shelter Sleuths investigations. All priced for a very reasonable 99p each. Pop over to Amazon and download a copy here.