🚓 What Cab News

Transport for London has revoked 327 Private Hire Vehicle driver licences in 2022 for non-medical-related reasons. In that total 39 licences were revoked for serious sexual offences and a further 26 for ‘other’ sexual offences. Other reasons for minicab drivers losing their licence in London include drink or drug driving (19), driving disqualification (122), dishonesty (46), non-sexual abuse or behaviour towards passenger (12), being arrested or charged for a serious offence (9), fraudulent identifiers (14) and violence (7).

🎧 What I’m Listening

On Sunday the 23rd my phone exploded with a test for an emergency warning. Apparently, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, and the Netherlands have a similar system. But we’re British, surely we needed Corporal Jones telling us: “Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring”.

📖 What I’m Reading

John Grindrod has written the secret history of our green belts, Outskirts is the first book to tell the story of Britain’s green belts, a fascinating social history, a stirring evocation of the natural world, and a poignant tale of growing up in a place. Part autobiography and part history of our green spaces.

📺 What I’m watching

I was contacted by Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire, who have recently restored a cabmen’s shelter which stood outside Bradford Exchange railway station from 1879 to 1973. On their site, they have produced a virtual tour of the shelter.

❓ What else

I’m not one to talk about health, but on 6th November 2021, I experienced an event. After my excellent GP had ascertained I wasn’t going to peg out any time soon, I was referred to a consultant. Last week, after nearly 18 months, I received my first and only (telephone) consultation. Having paid NI for 50 years and thankfully hardly ever troubled the NHS, one wonders just what are politicians’ long-term plans for this exemplary institution.

🚓 What Cab News

Black cab fares are going up by 7.6 per cent next month, and the reason being given is “to ensure there are enough cabs available to help women get home safely”. The argument goes that if cabbies stand to make less money at night, then fewer of them will work those hours, which means there are fewer options for women looking to get home after dark. Maybe, just maybe, if TfL hadn’t done its darndest to create an uneven playing field between cabs and private hire, those undertaking The Knowledge wouldn’t be at their lowest levels in a generation. Just saying.

🎧 What I’m Listening

A weird London podcast returned on Valentine’s Day. Season 6 of Subterraneans began with an episode about the Aberfeldy Estate in Poplar, and lingering spirits, mould and the housing crisis – so romantic. If you haven’t been introduced to Subterraneans yet, download it on your favourite podcast app.

📖 What I’m Reading

The geek in me thoroughly enjoyed John Grindrod’s Concretopia a book about – well, concrete. I’m now reading Iconicon – Wimpey homes; Millennium monuments, riverside flats; wind farms; out-of-town malls, the buildings designed in our lifetimes that encapsulated the dreams and aspirations of our culture. John Grindrod reveals the sobering realities.

📺 What I’m watching

Atlantic Crossing, is the story of Norway’s Crown Princess Märtha, who fought for her country and her marriage during the tragic events in the early years of World War II, with the excellent Sofia Helin in the lead role. The series portrays Märtha’s journey from Norway to the White House where she sought refuge and became close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Crown Princess tried to convince Roosevelt to save her country and Europe from Nazi Germany at a time when American voters were strongly opposed to being drawn into another world war. Although this production was first broadcast in 2020, the parallels of today’s invasion of Ukraine by Putin can’t be ignored. Amazing engineering.

❓ What else

I’ve taken out a subscription to London in Bits. If you’ve ever read The Big Smoker, which then became the Londonist, these are the people who started these blogs. Unfortunately Londonist, apart from the odd article, is now a giant advertising board. While London in Bits, on the other hand, produces a newsletter writing about both the beautiful and the infuriating parts of the capital. As they say in their blurb ‘something that’s interesting, funny, surprising and worthy of your inbox’. I have to agree.

🚓 What Cab News

In December a cab driver was pulled over in Aldwych by Met Police officers after he was spotted driving whilst rolling what appeared to be a cannabis joint. The cabby then tested positive for cannabis during a roadside test. With a softly-softly approach to drugs in London, I suppose it was inevitable that some idiot would tarnish the Black Cab trade.

🎧 What I’m Listening

I’m still working my way through the previous Ladies who London podcasts. Sadly one of the presenters, Emily, is leaving. The good news is that Alex Lacey will continue with this amusing and informative podcast.

📖 What I’m Reading

For 10 years I’ve been reading Christopher Fowler’s eclectic London blog, writing about books, films and observations all analysed with his wit and practised prose: “Plastic carrier bags floated around the traffic lights at the end of the Strand like predatory jellyfish.” Advance cancer has now put pay to writing for this consummate wordsmith.

📺 What I’m watching

My favourite London hotel is Claridge’s, which for me, has an understated elegance, I just love its Art Deco foyer. A BBC documentary – The Mayfair Hotel Megabuild – follows an extraordinary project to add a five-storey basement, hand-dug by very skilled Irish miners, incorporating two swimming pools and three new floors added to the roof to provide 72 new rooms and luxury suites, all the time keeping the hotel open for guests. Amazing engineering.

❓ What else

Apparently the priciest road in the country is Phillimore Gardens in Kensington & Chelsea, where the average house will set you back £23.8m – or 83 times the national average property price. Just one street outside the capital makes it into the top 20, Titlarks Hill, a private road in Sunningdale, Berkshire, which took 12th place with an average price of £12.3 million.

📆 What date

The Last Post: In 9 years time CabbieBlog will have its last post uploaded. To be precise, on 29th February 2032 at 13.50 GMT. By that date missives about London will have been regularly posted for nearly 24 years. On that leap year day, assuming I’m still alive, I’ll be approaching my 85th birthday, and old enough to take retirement from all this cyberverse malarkey.

🚓 What Cab News

Transport for London has increased the number of private hire vehicles on the capital’s roads by 2,505 in just one week. If the newly licensed minicabs were all lined up together in three lanes of road space, it would stretch nose-to-nose between Paddington and Kings Cross Stations.

🎧 What I’m Listening

I was sad to read the death in November of Andrew Nickolds who wrote the long-running quirky comedy sitcom Ed Reardon’s Week on Radio4, drawing on the ups and downs as a freelance hack. Well worth a second listen.

📖 What I’m Reading

Leadville by Edward Platt, in 1995 the author stopped his car and took a stroll down Western Avenue. In the 1920s it was a tree-lined suburban boulevard but now it’s an urban nightmare. The book focuses on the lives of the people who live there, of suburbia, the dreams of its inhabitants, and of our senseless and all-consuming love affair with the motor car.

📺 What I’m watching

A favourite piece of trivia of mine: When on 23rd June 1951 Soviet spy Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to Moscow they enjoyed a leisurely lunch at the RAC Club just ahead of MI5. So when ITVX screened A Spy Among Friends starring Damien Lewis and Guy Pierce I just had to watch the box set.

❓ What else

Here’s something that I didn’t expect to write: Westminster City council has painted some walls in Soho with a water-repellent layer designed to stop people pissing on them. Apparently a council source explained: “outdoor urination is on the rise post-Covid, but if anyone tries it on these walls then they will get ‘soaked’ in their own urine”.