August’s monthly musings

25 August, 2023 Gibson Square 2 Comments

🚓 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.

Thinking allowed

Rough sleeping

24 August, 2023 Gibson Square 4 Comments

When I started The Knowledge I was shocked to see so many rough sleepers in shop doorways. Now a cross-party group of London Councils report that nearly 170,000 people in London are homeless, i.e. they’re living in hostels, bedsits, or other temporary accommodation. That’s an increase of about 17,000 from last year and means that one in 50 people in the city are now classed as homeless. Most depressingly, “the organisation estimates that this includes more than 83,000 children”.

Puppydog tails

Johnson’s London Dictionary: Pie and Mash

23 August, 2023 Gibson Square 2 Comments

PIE AND MASH (n.) Traditional East London delicacy topped by a green liquid described as liquor despite the absence of alcohol.

Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon

Puppydog tails

London’s first photo

22 August, 2023 Gibson Square 4 Comments

This is thought to be the earliest surviving photograph of London. It was taken in 1839 by Monsieur de St. Croixin, a Frenchman who had set up his camera behind the statue of King Charles I. The featured image is from approximately the same position nearly 200 years later.

M. Croixin’s choice of location brings us to the vexing question of just where is London’s centre. It is a quandary that has perplexed geographers, cartographers and general town-planning nerds for generations. In the strictest geographical sense, it should be where lines intersect between the four furthermost locations which would, surprisingly, make the Shell Centre buildings on the Thames riverside just outside Waterloo Station London’s actual epicentre.

The official point, according to The Carriage Office, which is the arbitrary starting point for The Knowledge is the King Charles I Statue in Trafalgar Square, the very spot chosen by the photographer.

In 1649 John Rivett, a brazier, was ordered to destroy the King’s statue by Cromwell, but he buried it in his garden and made a fortune by selling souvenirs allegedly from the metal. He gave it back to Charles II upon the Restoration of the Monarchy, and presumably, he was rewarded for his loyalty.

The image shows the statue behind railings (presumably to protect it from Republicans), these have since been removed and the surrounding pavement turned into a mini-roundabout.

A ghostly form of a Hansom cab driver (the vehicles had only appeared on London’s streets some five years earlier) is seen on the right, waiting outside what is now the Trafalgar Theatre. Was this cabbie the first Londoner ever to be photographed?