Assembling My New IKEA Kitchen
I like putting flat pack furniture together.
The pictures show some of the units as I assemble my new kitchen.
IKEA says that assembling the frames is a two-person job. But if you think about it, if this one good-handed pensioner can put it together, then everybody can, especially with a helper.
My rules for success in assembling furniture like this.
1. Assemble the furniture in a large space, preferably on a carpet, close to where the furniture is to go.
2. If like I do, you have to carry the parts upstairs, for the heavier units unpack them by the door, where they came into the house. I’m lucky, in that my integral garage opens onto the street, so IKEA just put all the boxes there. I unpack them there if needed.
3. Clear up all the endless cardboard packaging as you go.
4. Use little bowls to keep track of the screws.
5. Have a large pair of scissors handy to cut all the little plastic bags.
6. I also use a magnetic screwdriver, which is useful for picking up screws that get stuck in difficult places.
The only problem, I’ve had is that I put the wrong front on a drawer and couldn’t get it off. IKEA actually phoned me back within three hours of an e-mail, but I still can’t get the front off and in trying I cut a knuckle on my right hand. And of course, my left hand isn’t dexterous enough to put a plaster on it.
In the end I found that this drawer front problem is a common one and there a very good video. IKEA should put up an even better one!
Incidentally, after my cut knuckle, how many people end up in A & E with similar injury, because they live alone and there’s no-one to kiss it better?
Now here’s an offer to anybody living alone in the vague N1 area of Hackney and Islington. If you are thinking that say buying and assembling flat pack furniture is beyond you, why not contact me. Two brains and four good hands will be better than half the number.
It’s Not Just British Trains And Buses That Are Run By Foreign Companies
Some people, especially politicians, who’ve never run anything more difficult than an office with perhaps one employee, despair that a lot of our trains and buses are run by foreign companies. They think they should all be nationalised.
But then there’s this article from the Guardian entitled National Express To Run Nuremberg’s Overground Urban Trains.
This is the second such contract, National Express has obtained and the article talks about further contracts.
As an aside here, German trains have a lot of characteristics that we have long banished from our trains and buses, like bad customer service, as I experienced at Osnabruck.
Hopefully National Express will impose some of the excellent principles they use on c2c between London and South Essex.
Serial Cooking – A Simple Kedgeree
This simple kedgeree comes from Lindsey Bareham in The Times.
It was one of the best meals that I’ve cooked serially.
I only ate half and will pack the rest for my trip to Rotherham on Saturday.
BT Broadband’s Crap Football Broadcasts
BT now deliver their sport channels by broadband, which generally makes it unwatchable, unless you’ve got BT Infinity. Which of course is not available to me, as I’m too close to exchange. BT’s words not mine!
I often joke about what Brian Redhead said about the relative merits of radio and television.
If television had been invented first, radio would be the dominant medium, as the pictures are better!
Today, it’s absolutely true, as the pictures my mind are creating from the words on BBC Radio 5, are an order of magnitude better than BT’s crap pictures of the football.
I Thought Dinosaurs Were Extinct
I watched a lot of the debate the so-called three parent babies and am very pleased that the House of Commons voted in favour. The debate is covered fully in this article on the BBC web site.
I saw several men and no women put up ridiculous arguments as to why they were voting against. Several of these dinosaurs are listed as Roman Catholic on Wikipedia.
But David Willetts, Liz McInnes and Jane Ellison amongst others put forward sane arguments that carried the day.
No MP has any business to use principles of his or her religion to legislate for others in the UK, who do not share their faith.
So if a Jewish or Muslim member, wants to bring in a bill banning the eating of pork in the UK, they should have no right.
I am old enough to remember the birth of Louise Brown; the world’s first IVF baby. We look at IVF as commonplace and Robert Edwards won a Nobel Prize for his work in the field, but at the time it was controversial.
I believe that in a few years time, this technique, which is being developed at Newcastle University, will also enter the mainstream too.
Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph’s Guide To Energy Companies
This article in the Daily Telegraph entitled The Best Energy Companies You’ve Never Heard Of is a must read.
I swapped about fifteen months ago to OVO and don’t regret it one bit.
What nobody tells you is that to switch your energy supplier the first time, you probably spend an hour or so getting all the numbers of meters and other things you need to swap. Let’s say my big energy supplier didn’t cooperate.
But now in my profile on OVO all of those numbers are clearly displayed. So a second swap should be a piece of cake, if I needed to do it.
There are lots of these new small energy supplies out there, so when you swap choose one that suits your needs. Or perhaps one that is local to your residence or business!
Three Parent Babies
MPs are set to debate the ethics of so-called three parent babies today.
I was reasonably lucky with my three children and there won’t be any more, as I’m had the snip.
But I’m certain, that C, would have been distraught, if she’d produced a string of handicapped babies. I certainly would have been and any technique that stopped problems is to be welcomed.
So let’s hope narrow-minded religious minorities don’t stop the adoption of this technique.
It is interesting to read this article in the Telegraph, which gives the view of Lord Winston, who is an Orthodox Jew
On a related point, I have a genetic disease, but sadly I only found out about my coeliac disease, when I was fifty. If I’d known earlier, it might have meant that my son, who died from cancer, had been found to carry the disease, so perhaps he would have led a better lifestyle.
If it had been known to earlier generations of my father’s family, I suspect that the family wouldn’t contain the large number of childless females and those who have suffered from serious cancer that it does.
Ashford To Get A Signalling Update
This story from Global Rail News about the updating of the signalling at Ashford to allow Eurostar’s new e320 trains to stop at the station, is about a project that is one of whole host of small projects that probably should be done to keep our railways up to scratch.
Big projects like Thameslink, Crossrail and the Northern Hub, may seem to get all the headlines and money, but often smaller projects are very important to the smooth running of trains and trhe maintenance of existing services.
An Essex Girl Shows New Yorkers How To Behave
We often forget that Dame Helen Mirren was brought up in Leigh-on-Sea, although she was born in Hammersmith.
There’s a story in the Daily Telegraph showing her riding in state on the New York subway and the praise she has received for her perfect posture and behaviour.
Essex Girls may be the butt of jokes, but like Dame Helen, they are often blessed with strong wills to do the right thing.
The Eden Project, Geothermal Energy And Fracking
In Iceland last summer, I saw the benefits of geothermal energy, with one of the most spectacular being the amazing Blue Lagoon.
We don’t have any volcanoes in the UK, but in places like Cornwall and London Bridge station, projects are starting to test the feasibility of using heat from deep in the ground.
According to this article in the Glasgow Herald, the Eden Project is investigating geothewrmal energy. This is an extract.
Given the prominence of Friends of the Earth in the shale gas debate it often comes as a nasty surprise to local anti-fracking groups that most green groups do actually support drilling and fracking for deep geothermal projects. Only yesterday, the famous Eden Project in Cornwall announced such a project.
Today though, I read in The Times, that this £35million project is now under threat from an anti-fracking amendment in a bill in Parliament.
I suspect that the problem is if you wrote down all the science known by Members of Parliament, it would just about fit on a small postage stamp.
I wonder what will happen when politicians find out about the ground source heat pump at London Bridge could use fracking techniques, to enable it to be built properly and run efficiently.
The Anonymous Widower 