🚓 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.

🚓 What Cab News

I was rather surprised to watch Tom Hutley’s latest youtube video. Here he’s found a piece of film travelling around London in the 90s, at the time I first drove a cab. It’s remarkable how much has changed and Tom’s commentary of the changes is very surprising. Recommended.

🎧 What I’m Listening

Tom Hutley was a guest on the podcast WizzAnnCast discussing cabbie’s books – and thanks for the mention by the way – I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to start listening to Dean Warrington. A great listen if you want to understand or start The Knowledge.

📖 What I’m Reading

I’ve just finished Christopher Fowler’s The Water Room and it is a great romp around London’s [spoiler alert] underground rivers. So I thought I’d reproduce TfL’s Pride poster campaign including a fabulous map of London’s lost rivers.

📺 What I’m watching

East London Boy Jay Blades has been making a show for C4 – Britain’s Best Beach Huts, and whilst in Dorset this example amused me, with its nod to TV’s greatest comedy.

❓ What else

This diary entry from diamondgeezer made me laugh:

Tue 6: Today, as temperatures soared, I was privileged to be in attendance at London’s annual Please Carry Water With You In Hot Weather ceremony. Two members of TfL staff appeared at the far end of the Central line platform at Holborn station, the junior acolyte clutching freshly-printed rolled-up posters. The elder used his radio device to alert staff further up the line that the religious objects were ready, then handed them to a train driver for safe transfer to the next two stations. I missed the unloading ritual at Chancery Lane but at St Paul’s a member of staff graciously accepted the offering, checked that it had the sacred text “St Paul’s” scrawled on the back in pen, then processed serenely up two sets of escalators and delivered it to the control room. I imagine a prayer was said and the poster splashed with holy water, and when I came back a few hours later it was on proud display in the ticket hall.

📆 What date?

Seventy-five years ago, on 22nd July 1948, bread rationing came to an end. With Ukraine, Europe’s bread basket still at war with Putin, is Harrods’ Roquefort and Almond Sourdough Bread priced at £20 per loaf, under threat of being unavailable for us all?

🚓 What Cab News

I’ve recently received this email from British Airways: “From trips to the airport to rides across town, getting around with Uber will help you get away sooner. If you haven’t already, simply link up your Uber and British Airways Executive Club accounts.” So there you have it, flying the flag with Uber.

🎧 What I’m Listening

Listening on BBC Sounds – Fever: The Hunt For Covid’s Origin, a chaos of cover-ups, coincidences, and conspiracy theories, this is one of the biggest questions of our time: Just where did Covid-19 come from?

📖 What I’m Reading

Christopher Fowler, who has recently died, wrote a series of detective novels featuring the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London’s longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May who with their wits, idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets solve London’s most perplexing crimes. I’m reading book two (of 18) The Water Room.

📺 What I’m watching

Playing out on Drama TV is Just Good Friends, it was written by John Sullivan who was starting to write at the time Only Fools and Horses, it has all the clever hallmarks of this brilliant wordsmith.

❓ What else

I have this ritual when booking into a hotel, probably because I’ve watched too many 1970s disaster movies, the first thing I check out is the fire escapes. So when Zedwell Hotel opened “London’s first and only underground hotel experience”, I was naturally curious as to how guests could evacuate above ground onto Tottenham Court Road. The hotel is, of course, spinning this as a feature, billing itself as a place “designed to prioritise sleep, positive health, and overall wellbeing.”