Category Archives: A window on My World

A window on My World

November’s monthly musings

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🚓 What Cab News

Tom Hutley has been working on a No Traffic Lights Challenge across London. Not counting pedestrian crossings, is it possible to get around all 22 boroughs featured on The Knowledge without using traffic lights? After many trials and changes in mapping the route he’s produced this YouTube video: Can you DRIVE across London without lights?

🎧 What I’m Listening

WizCast is a podcast by Dean Warrington, founder of WizAnn Knowledge School. Rujel and Sal completed with 12 appearances and both did it in around 2 years. From Rujel’s first appearance to his suburb appearance was 364 days. If you want to be a London cabbie, WizAnn School is a good place to start.

📖 What I’m Reading

I thought I’d check out the competition for my book, by buying second-hand, Mark Syme’s book, Knowledge Boy: How to Make a London Taxi Driver. I am trying to track down Mark to contribute to a London Grill.

📺 What I’m watching

Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius, I’ve been banging on here about the 400th anniversary of the publication in London of Shakespeare’s First Folio. The BBC has made this spellbinding drama-documentary demonstrating the Bard’s ability to relevant for us all today. It should be compulsory viewing for all year 9 school children.

❓ What else

Some typically ‘like’ nearly everything I have posted, presumably simply because they want to support my work and want me to feel good about uploading these regular missives. But when I choose the ‘like’ option, sometimes I’m really just saying, “I acknowledge and affirm your existence.” Why don’t they have a button just for that?

📆 What date?

Big Ben’s First Bong. On the 31st of December 1923, the chimes of Big Ben were broadcast on the radio for the first time by the BBC, I’ll be writing about that on my Substack platform.

A window on My World

October’s monthly musings

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🚓 What Cab News

Many businesses and women have expressed their concerns about the scarcity of black cabs in the City at night. While black cabs are allowed to cross Bank Junction during nighttime, the various restrictions in the City during the day and other limitations have led drivers to increasingly avoid the Square Mile altogether. The ‘Cabs Across Bank’ campaign calls for action to ensure the safety and accessibility of transport options for all individuals, particularly women, in the City.

🎧 What I’m Listening

It’s a radio comedy that should strike a note with every blogger, I’m now listening to the 15th series of Ed Reardon’s Week who’s trying to survive in a world where the media seems to be run by idiots and charlatans.

📖 What I’m Reading

Last month publisher Frances Lincoln allowed me to review Jack Chesher’s London: A Guide for Curious Wanderers. Now I’ve been lucky enough to have been given another publication from the same company. This time it’s an enormous tome – London’s Underground: The Story of the Tube by Oliver Green. This updated publication will take me some time as the coffee table book is very large.

📺 What I’m watching

Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio’s writing debut, Cardiac Arrest caused controversy due to its realistic depiction of hospital life. The series was twice nominated in the Best Original Drama category by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and topped a poll of UK medical professionals as the most realistic medical drama of all time.

❓ What else

Beneath the bonnet, CabbieBlog has been reformatted. Copyright infringement trolls are searching out miscreants, to ensure this blog stays online, posts that may inadvertently have used a copyrighted image are now password-protected. If you wish to peruse an old post contact me for access, I’ll interrogate the images and give you a personal password.

📆 What date?

400 years ago in London during the latter months of 1623, Isaac Laggard printed The First Folio, the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays seven years after his death. Shakespeare wrote around 37 plays, 36 of which are contained in the First Folio. Most of these plays were performed in the Globe, an open-air playhouse in London built on the south bank of the Thames in 1599.

A window on My World

Postscript: London Mapping

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Occasionally we’re going to have a rummage around previous CabbieBlog posts and attempt to grab a group to view them from a different angle.

In the 1930s London really was put on the map for between 1933 and 1936 four novel cartographic representations reached the public’s attention.

In 1933 Harry Beck’s tube map famously ditched the need for geographical accuracy. He alone realised that all passengers needed to know was how best to get between stations, not their precise locations, or how you arrived there. Apart from being groundbreaking, and later much copied, the map was much more elegant than its predecessors, with all lines running either horizontally, vertically, or at 45 degrees to the layout.

On 3rd October 1934, the day which London Transport renumbered many routes from the former Metropolitan Police ‘Bassom System’ of numbering, into its own sequence, following the acquisition of most of the London independent operators, a map showing all of London’s central bus, tram, trolleybus routes which had started in south-west London a few years earlier and Green Line coach services, which were lettered, was published. Unlike Beck’s map, this needed the geographical locations and therefore was much larger.

In 1936 the first A-Z became available. It was the inspiration of Phyllis Pearsall, who reputedly walked every street in London to compile her maps, a feat I find hard to believe. Apparently, in the early days, she had to personally fulfil orders by running around town with a wheelbarrow – kind of putting the cart back into cartography.

When Waddington’s bought the rights to Monopoly in 1935 the positions on the English version of the iconic board had to be assigned. London was the choice of location and so somebody was tasked to seek out the appropriate ‘Properties’. The onerous job of travelling by cab – surely the reason the Old Kent Road was the only property Sarf of the River – to seek out the board’s positions fell to Waddington’s managing director, Victor Hugo Watson and his secretary Marjorie Phillips. It would be a stretch to call the game a ‘map’, but its idiosyncratic arrangement of streets and stations is certainly one of the most famous representations of London.

Just why was it felt necessary to produce, in the space of four years, these visual aids in London? One factor could be a population explosion during this decade from 6.5 million at the turn of the century to 8.5 million by the mid-30s. With so many people in the capital, and with the building of Metroland ever more were commuting to and from work, there was a pressing need for better cartography.

I can’t think of any other representations of London that have endured, the Tube map can just still be recognised with its modern additions, the A-Z is the go-to reference for aspiring cabbies, and we still have an integrated bus network requiring a visual aid to get around. As for Monopoly, since the game was created in 1936, more than one billion people have played it; making it the most played, and argued about, board game in the world…and did they have to include on the board among the roads and utilities where they stopped off for tea at The Angel Corner House Tea Rooms?

Here are the previous posts links:
Harry Beck’s tube map
Phyllis Pearsall’s A-Z
Monopoly

A window on My World

September’s monthly musings

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🚓 What Cab News

If one had gained a degree or doctorate you’d have that qualification for life. No so TfL, should you allow your cab licence to lapse, having spent the best part of five years gaining your badge you’ll have to undergo this convoluted process:

A re-test will consist of an oral one-to-one examination with a Knowledge of London Examiner, with a duration of approximately 30 minutes. Drivers must demonstrate sufficient knowledge to be re-licensed, in addition to meeting all other licensing criteria. If a driver’s performance in the re-test is deemed insufficient, regardless of their score, they will be allowed to attend a further one-to-one examination within a specific timeframe determined by the examiner. This period allows for additional learning of the required information. However, if the driver’s knowledge remains inadequate following the second examination, they will be required to enter the Knowledge of London Examination system at stages 3, 4, or 5, as per the marking scheme outlined by TfL. Essentially, the driver will have to start afresh and work their way through the stages of The Knowledge once again.

🎧 What I’m Listening

I’m now up to Episode 170: Printers, Plague and Poets from Kevin Stroud’s excellent History of English Podcast. In this episode, he examined the connection between poetry and plague in the early 1590s. An outbreak of plague contributed to Shakespeare’s early career as a poet, and about an acquaintance from Shakespeare’s hometown who emerged as one of the leading printers in London and how his print shop influenced the development of English during the Elizabethan period.

📖 What I’m Reading

I’d been offered a copy of Jack Chesher’s London: A Guide for Curious Wanderers, with illustrations by Katharine Fraser. This is a beautiful book which I’ve enjoyed greatly. Thanks to the publisher Frances Lincoln for the opportunity, my review was posted last Tuesday.

📺 What I’m watching

Lev Parikian’s excellent weekly Substack – Six Things – directed me to watch the extraordinary work of Levon Biss, whose insect photographs are taken at extremely high magnification. One of the gadgets I treated myself to upon retirement was a Canon lens for macro photography to capture the most abundant animals on the planet – insects. You will never look at these invertebrates the same again.

❓ What else

For weeks they’ve been installing fibre optic cables, both above and below ground. Could this be to cope with the huge surge of data from Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ cameras sited all over our corner of rural Essex?

📆 What date?

Fifty years ago on 8th October 1973 from Gough Square just before 6 am Britain’s first legally authorised commercial radio station went on air. I’ve written all about it on Substack.

A window on My World

August’s monthly musings

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🚓 What Cab News

For 14 years I’ve been posting a daily piece of trivia on Twitter – sorry now X under @cabbieblog. Well, the 1st August’s: ‘The London Cab Trade is the oldest regulated land passenger service in Britain licensed in 1654 – 150 years before the horse-drawn bus #LDNTrivia’ managed, at the time of writing, to garner 3,369 views; 44 likes; 18 retweets, sorry reposts; and 4 comments. Possibly a record for this scribe.

🎧 What I’m Listening

We’re four days from Ulez and I’ve been listening to LBC’s Nick Ferrari. I know each presenter has a political bias, with an audience of like-minded listeners. It has to be said that Sadiq Khan isn’t the flavour of the month with this broadcaster, but I’ve yet to hear a caller agreeing with Ulez – or Khan.

📖 What I’m Reading

I’m now on book three of Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May books: Seventy-Seven Clocks: It’s late in 1973, strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during Edward Heath’s ‘Winter of Discontent’, and sundry members of a wealthy, aristocratic family are being disposed of in a variety of grotesque ways – by a reptile, by a bomb and by a haircut. Bryant & May, the irascible detectives of London’s controversial Peculiar Crimes Unit have little time to catch the culprit.

📺 What I’m watching

Our new neighbours have rewilded their garden (that’s a euphemism), and as a consequence of the overgrown vegetation a pair of foxes have taken up residence. It’s great to watch them every day.

❓ What else

Within hours of August’s start my wife received: ‘It broke fell and broke mum im so stressed out i dont know what to do i need your help x’. These spam merchants really need to improve their grammar.

📆 What date?

One hundred and fifty years ago on 23rd August 1873, the Albert Bridge opened. A toll bridge meant even pedestrians had to pay to cross. The toll houses, two at each end, remain, as does the notice to tell soldiers to break step.