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Avoid like the plague

A blinking nuisance

A blinking nuisance

It’s that time of year when the tourists start migrating to London. Thousands of them descend on the streets forming long conga-lines each one of them intent on following the leader, but unlike native Londoners they [...]

The toughest place to be . . .

was contacted last year by the BBC inviting me to apply for the new series of ‘toughest place to be’, in which they planned to take a London cabbie out of his (or her) comfort zone [...]

The Cabman’s Nemesis

The Cabman’s Nemesis

Today we have a guest post from Heather Tweed which first appeared on the Public Domain Review site, under the title Mrs Giacometti Prodgers, the Cabman’s Nemesis. Here Heather Tweed explores the story of Mrs Giacometti Prodgers [...]

Dead boring

Dead boring

It’s the stuff of a science fiction writer’s dreams. Excavating in London one finds something buried that should have remained entombed forever. In the late 1950s BBC Television transmitted the Quatermass trilogy, culminating in Quatermass and The [...]

Chinese Takeaways – Second Helpings

Chinese Takeaways – Second Helpings

Be it Boris; Ken; Bikes; or Cabbies, nothing it seems polarises Londoner’s opinion more than rickshaws. When last writing about these three-wheeled wonders I received more comments than for almost any other subject. So at the [...]

Boney’s Body Parts

ll cabbies know the location of Napoleon Bonaparte’s nose but few would have realised that at Christie’s in 1972 an appendage belonging to the Emperor of a more personal nature appeared at auction. Bonaparte died in [...]

Rats in a trap

Rats in a trap

Old petrol stations never die . . . they just refill; or so we have seen these past few years in London. First they display their shiny yellow, green or blue and red corporate colours, and [...]

Paris Syndrome

Paris Syndrome

For some Japanese tourists their first taste of Europe has proved overwhelming. Coming from a culture that espouses civility and respect, they had expected European capitals to have the same degree of controlled manners as that [...]

Rich men’s basements

Rich men’s basements

Recently I was taking a couple home after they had been to the theatre. They were the quiet, courteous generation that grew up in the 1930s and 40s, expensively well dressed in a subdued way rather [...]

Raising the dead

Raising the dead

Just outside the City’s northern boundary on City Road you will find Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, where office workers go to eat their lunch. Here in this little oasis of tranquillity the small path traversing the [...]