London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
A little bit of London Calling news to get us started…
On August 28th, somebody, somewhere, pressed play.
And that press of the button was the half-millionth listen to a London Walks podcast.
Half a million.
Next stop, a million.
Though let’s not get too carried away. Half a million sounds rather more impressive than it is. We’re prolific here. Extremely prolific.
We’re closing in on our 2,000th London Walks podcast. Divide half a million listens by 2,000 podcasts and you get an average of about 250 listens per podcast.
The big boys would fall about laughing. They get hundreds of thousands of listens. Some of them get millions.
But you know what? I don’t care.
I love doing these things. I find things out. Every day, pretty much, London tells me something I didn’t know yesterday. And if a few hundred people scattered around the world are interested in the same things I’m interested in, well, that’s delightful.
And actually, quietly, steadily, the listenership is growing. Plenty of these podcasts now do considerably better than that lifetime average.
And while we’re talking numbers, today’s podcast is another little milestone. This is our 436th consecutive daily London Walks podcast.
Four hundred and thirty-six days without missing a day.
The old record was 420.
So the batting streak goes on.
Half a million listens. Heading for 2,000 podcasts. And 436 consecutive days.
And what are we doing to mark this historic occasion?
Cats.
Of course we are.
Because today I’m handing the microphone over to Ann, who does the niche walk of all London Walks niche walks.
Cat Tails: A Feline Take on London History.
Over to you, Ann.
Thank you, Ann.
And we’ll go out, appropriately enough, with our word of the day.
Tabby.
We all know what a tabby is. Or think we do.
It’s a cat with a particular kind of patterned coat. Stripes, spots, swirls, bands. Often that wonderful, distinctive M on the forehead.
And just to be clear, a tabby isn’t a breed of cat. Tabby is the pattern.
But here’s the thing.
The word tabby wasn’t originally anything to do with cats.
It was cloth.
A rich silk cloth with a watered, wavy, streaked appearance.
English gets the word by way of French. But follow the thread back further, and it takes us somewhere wonderfully unexpected.
Baghdad.
More particularly, to al-‘Attābiyya, a district of Baghdad famous for its fine silks. Cloth from there was known in Arabic as ‘attābī.
So there’s our journey.
A district of Baghdad gives its name to a luxury silk.
The silk gives its name to a pattern.
The pattern gives its name to the markings on a cat.
And eventually the patterned cat itself becomes simply a tabby.
Baghdad to Britain.
Silk to fur.
Two legs to four.
And from Larry, Chief Mouser at 10 Downing Street, to Ann’s feline London, that seems a pretty good place to curl up and call it a day.
Tabby.
Today’s word.
London Calling. London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.