benches, bollards and john the taxi driver

One of the cabs being driven around London today could well be the one that's guided around our streets by the cabby I like most out of all the cabbies I've never met (or even spoken to).

That man is John Kennedy, taxi driver, RMT activist, wire haired fox terrier lover and a blogger with what I find to be perhaps a peculiarly English fixation.

Maybe other countries have as many hobbyists as ours - as many model railway builders, as many collectors of rare beer mats, as many obsessive visitors of every single football ground. Until someone proves otherwise, however, I am choosing to believe that these kinds of drive to catalogue, create and collect around the margins of our ephemera are part of the distinctiveness of this island.

John's thing is to photograph and describe London's benches and bollards. He notices the stuff you walk past every day. I like that.