My Virtual Twin Gets a CBE
Katherine Hamnett and myself were born within a few hours of each other on the same day, so I think of her as some form of unrelated twin.
I’ve just heard her on the radio being asked what was the best thing, she’d done so far and she replied something like “Living” Afer the three years I’ve had, I’ll raise a glass of to that.
So good luck to Katherine and everybody else for that matter as we prepare to say good-bye to 2010, one of the more forgettable years of the last hundred years.
An Update on Honest Bread
The two main uses I have for bread is to make toast for quick snacks like beans or scrambled egg on toast or to make some sandwiches when I go to somewhere like the football and I know that a gluten-free snack, except for perhaps a banana, will be unavailable.
Genius bread fulfils these purposes, but Honest bread does not.
I ate some yesterday, with a friend who lives a lot of the time in France and we both agreeed it was much like brioche. Fine for some purposes, but not for our lunchtime scrambled egg.
She felt it would make a superb bread and butter pudding.
I doubt I will be buying it again.
Joe Brown Gets a CBE
Joe Brown, the rock climber has been made a CBE today.
I specifically remember Joe for a fascinating piece of television in the 1960s. It’s described here. I’ve still not found the Eddie Izzard link to the film.
Out-of-Country Parking Fines
There is a story today that says that councils are losing a lot of money because of the non-payment of parking fines by foreign drivers. Although, the story is a UK one, I suspect it’s a problem all across Europe.
This problem used to exist in the United States, but there it wasn’t out-of-country, but out-of-state parking fines that were the problem. They also had data-protection problems in that citizens wouldn’t trust Texas to say look up vehicles in New York.
In the end, a company came up with a solution that was acceptable to all parties.
They bought the tickets at a discount from the individual states, collated them and then sent them to their collection department in the state where the vehicle was registered. Obviously, they picked the juicy ones first, but the business model worked so well and profitably, that Lockheed felt it was worth buying the company.
Such a system would work well on an EU wide basis, with perhaps Switzerland added. But then the Swiss don’t get parking fines do they?
The Cap That Cheers
In most of my travels, I wear an Ipswich Town woolly hat, with the horse badge on the front. In the weather, we’ve been having lately, some form of head-gear has been essential.
But in a city, with many other clubs, has it even been a liability?
In fact quite the reverse and it has been accepted with warmth, in a city with lots of major clubs. One Spurs supporter on a Victoria Line train even said. “Don’t worry about the hat. We’ve never had any issues with Ipswich. Best of luck to you.”
That was typical! But then to many football supporters, the game and the chat about it, is bigger than any individual club, even if they want their club to win at all times.
The Anonymous Widower 