Occasionally, just occasionally a rather strange series of events play out in a working day. My first job was to pick up actor Ralph Fiennes and take him to an editing suite in Soho. Within yards from dropping him off, I was hailed by a guy in a wheelchair. As I was lowering the ramp he told me, and you’ll just have to suspend disbelief here, he had just been asked by a beggar for £15. Whatever happened to “Got any spare change Gov’nr?” Half an hour later, in the back of the cab, I found a camera case with a digital camera memory card within, but no camera. I inserted the card into my own camera that I always carry for the blog. Returning to the rather swish restaurant where my fare was dining I proffered my phone showing the punters image to the Maître’d and got him to scour the darkened restaurant. Errant punter found I returned to my cab with a self-satisfied smug look and little else.
Protected: Terminal Decline
London in Quotations: William Butler Yeats
This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), letter to Katharine Tynan, 25th August, 1888
London Trivia: Lord Lucan vanishes
On 8 November 1974, Lord Lucan vanished without trace. The previous evening his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in the basement of his children’s home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street. As the police began their murder investigation, Lucan telephoned his mother, asking her to collect the children, and then drove a borrowed Ford Corsair to a friend’s house in Uckfield then vanished.
On 8 November 1429 the Duke of Norfolk crashed his barge into London Bridge, but survived by climbing a rope onto the bridge
On 8 November 2002 an arsonist burned down the Lock Keeper’s Cottage, Old Ford Lock, original location of Channel 4’s Big Breakfast
In Star Yard Holborn stands a late Victorian gents’ ‘pissoir’. Another one in is to be found in Twickenham, a similar example is in Regency Street
In 19th century London, middle class men lived to 45, workmen and labourers life spanned half that time and children were lucky to survive until five
It was at the Merchant Taylor’s Hall, in 1607 in honour of King James I, that the National Anthem was first sung
The West End’s oldest theatre, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, is also reported to be haunted by the Victorian music hall star and panto dame Dan Leno, whose spirit is said to exude the scent of lavender oil
You are allowed to use a camera in a London Royal Park, but not a tripod, nothing is mentioned about the use of a monopod
Richmond Golf Club’s 1940 rules: Known unexploded bombs are marked by red flags at a not guaranteed safe distance, a player whose stroke is affected by a explosion may play another ball from the same place
There are thirty-three bridges of all types across the tidal Thames up to Teddington Lock, a distance of just under 99 miles
Filming on location in the Underground costs £500 per hour (plus VAT) unless you have a crew of less than five
At 440 feet the village of North End on the edge of Hampstead Heath is the highest inhabited point in London
Trivial 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.
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