Around Liverpool’s Shopping Centre
Liverpool’s shopping area has changed a lot since the 1960s. The main change is that the buses no longer roar up the middle, like they used to and still do on Oxford Street in London. Liverpool shows just how poor Oxford Street is and how the latter would benefit from pedestrianisation.
I took these pictures on Friday afternoon and early on Saturday morning.
You will notice that buildings like Marks and Spencer are quite old, but well preserved. Although since the 1960s a lot has been torn down and rebuilt. And of course if you move towards the Pierhead, you come to Liverpool One, the new shopping area.
Sadly though the Kong Nam, where generations of students ate seems to have gone. In those days it was often you ate your Chinese meal with a bottle of Guinness.
The hotel above St. John’s market was the place, where C and I virtually had our first holiday without the children. It was terrible, but I could place the date exactly, as on the Saturday night, Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo. The link says it was the 6th April 1974. Breakfast was so awful, I can still see the restaurant manager wringing liquid out of the scrambled egg, when I complained.
92 Clubs By Public Transport Alphabetically in a Calendar Month – Day 29
Hopefully this will be the last day. And there is a match at Yeovil.
Hot Bananas
Apparently, according to Deborah Ross in The Times, yesterday, Morrisons put their bananas under special lights to ripen them. She didn’t like it and expressed it this way.
Do I look like the sort of person, who wants to be wiping banana from the ceiling first thing in the morning?
It was all very funny. But it made me extremely unlikely ever to buy anything in Morrisons. et alone a solitary banana.
As I don’t drive, I’m not sure how I could ever visit a Morrisons. Or an Asda for that matter!
But there must be something very un eco-friendly about ripening bananas artificially, so they are actually hot.
On the other hand bananas are very nice, baked in brown sugar and lemon and served with custard.
Two Proper Cups of Tea
The picture shows the two cups of tea we bought at the Markfield Museum.
Two Proper Cups of Tea
They had lots of things to eat, but not much that was gluten-free. The cafe also has free wi-fi, which is a must these days and seems to be in any pub or cafe worth visiting.
The National Cafe at the National Gallery
I had a good lunch with a friend at the National Cafe at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
They were quite happy to check the menu and modify it accordingly to make what I ate gluten-free.
Is Fred Goodwin a Coeliac?
The reason I ask this question, is that we have one important thing in common; we both hate pink vanilla wafer biscuits. In my case, I’ve avoided them all my life even before I was diagnosed as a coeliac and of course can’t eat the normal ones now. But I’d never write an e-mail about it, as Fred did and I reported here.
But hope is at hand, as Sainsburys are now selling Pink Panther gluten free vanilla wafers.
Who’s to know, if Fred might have liked them? If he had, the train crash that was RBS might not have happened.
The Man In Seat 28
The title is a direct crib from that excellent train website, www.seat61.com. Use it if you want to find out how to get anywhere by train.
I did get my sandwiches, after failing at the Angel this morning, in Liverpool Street station, and here they are laid out on the table that I didn’t have to share, as I sat in Seat 28 in Standard Class.
Marks and Spencer's Gluten Free Sandwiches
I should say that Liverpool Street now has three Marks and Spencer food stores and I got my lunch from the one in the Broadgate or western entrance.
They are certainly going to make football a lot easier for me, as now I won’t have to worry about lunch or supper. Especially as until now, Ipswich was a virtual gluten free desert. The Marks there is listed as selling gluten-free sandwiches, but I haven’t checked yet.
Seat 28, also gave a very good view of the Olympic Park, as it was on the left side going towards Ipswich. The seat also has a full window.
The Olympic Park from Seat 28
Unfortunately, if you want the best view, you’ll have to be up front with the driver. I’ve done this once and it’s the only way to travel.
I should say that the jouney home wasn’t as pleasant. I had deliberately taken a later train and I took a table seat in an almost empty carriage. But then three obese middle-aged men joined me, hemmed me in by the window and proceeded to talk loudly amongst themselves all the way to London. They talked mainly about rugby and beer. I may have interest in the first, but I certainly have no interest in the sort of beer they droned on about. I also didn’t like the way they talked about their long-suffering wives.
In the end I decanted from the train at Stratford and took the North London Line home. Perhaps, next time I don’t want to be disturbed, I’ll book First.
Today’s trip and my last one to Plymouth and Bristol illustrate that train catering is getting more and more irrelevant for many people. I haven’t bought anything except coffee, Coke or perhaps a water for months now. I either take everything with me, buy something from Marks in the station or make sure I eat well before travelling. As for example there is a Carluccio’s either in or close to St. Pancras, King’s Cross and Liverpool Street, it can’t be long before most large stations have a sensible gluten-free cafe. Most stations too have a coffee shop at least up to Starbucks standard.
I suspect that train catering will disappear completely within a few years. At the Zoo Late, you could pre-order Gordon Ramsey picnics. How long before someone does luxury picnics, that you pre-order and pick up at the station before you travel? They could even be delivered to your seat in First Class!
If you are a food supplier, the great thing about train passengers, is you get at least two goes to sell them food. Obviously, I bought my picnic today before I got on the train and I could even have bought a glass of decent wine in a plastic glass at Marks. But suppose, I’d been going to Brighton to walk on the promenade, I might have brought my lunch when I arrived. And if you’re changing trains at say Liverpool Lime Street, you could buy your food between trains.
So if you run a dedicated train catering service, you’ve got real competition!
So I think that in a few years, the food available to rail travellers will be very good and probably lightly alcoholic if you want a drink. The catering will certainly be better than that on the roads, where everything is over-priced and over-curled.
I think that some of the new trains are even prepared for the revolution. The new trains, I used to get to Cambridge a couple of weeks ago, are built with trays for laptops and/or snacks. All it needs is to make sure the litter is either taken out by the passengers or cleaned up at the end of each leg!
A Saturday Morning Routine
There are two radio programmes, I like to listen to on Saturday morning; Danny Baker and the unsporting quiz, Fighting Talk, as they appeal to my unusual sense of humour.
The trouble is that if I’m going to football, as I am today, it doesn’t really leave much time for me to get to the shops, as I have to leave by about midday to get the train.
So this morning, I got to the Angel, by bus at just after 8:30. I actually took a seventy-free, as if you sit at the back and get out of the rearmost door, it’s much easier to walk to the four shops, Carluccio’s and the physio, that I visit at the Angel.
Today, it was just Boots for some rat poison, Marks and Spencer for some gluten-free sarnies for the train and a beef Stroganoff for tonight and Waitrose for two large carriers of heavy stuff like alcohol and Coke. I went to Waitrose first and found that if I shopped immediately, could get it delivered before the start of Fighting Talk at 11:00. I think I rather caught them on the hop, but hopefully it’ll come on time. But I do have two hours of total float in my critical path, so if they come by one I’m OK.
The only problem, was that Marks didn’t have the gluten-free sandwiches, but then I’ll pass three of their shops that stock them on the way to Liverpool Street. If they don’t have any, then I shall complain. If there aren’t any, it’s probably because they are too good and all those food fadists on a gluten-free kick have snaffled them!
I was back home listening to Danny Baker by ten o’clock.
It sounds like I’ll be repeating this on Saturdays in the future.
The routine could be even better, if Carluccio’s opened at 8:00 for breakfast on Saturday, as they do in the week.
Update at 11:20 – Waitrose have just delivered, so I have plenty of time to catch the train to Ipswich, after scouring Marks for some gluten-free sandwiches.
Thinking about this post. When C and I lived near Newmarket we would go shopping early, often visit one of our horses in traing and then we’d generally be back home around eleven.
I suppose, I’m only repeating what we did together by myself. In some ways, it was easier in Suffolk, as Waitrose opened earlier. But then I had to carry the shopping from the car to the hall. Here, that is all done by the van driver from Waitrose.
Who said manners and service are dead.
Gluten Freedom For Coeliac Travellers in the UK
When I went to Plymouth, I bought a gluten-free ham salad from Marks and Spencer in Paddington station, to sustain me on the journey.
It was excellent.
Today, I had an egg salad sandwich from their shop in Moorgate. It was equally good.
They’ve even got a list on their web site of all their stores that stock the gluten-free sandwiches.
Travelling just got a whole lot easier for coeliacs in the UK.
The Coffee Obstacle Race
The worst and in some way the best part of the journey to Plymouth was getting down the train to buy a coffee. Obviously, on such a crowded train, you couldn’t have run a trolley, unless it was attached to the roof.
I had to travel through about six coaches to get to the buffet and to say it was made very difficult because of the junk in the aisle wouldn’t be too much of an understatement. Why is it that people load enormous cases, even a full size surf board and car seats, that would fit Cyril Smith, into the vestibules and aisles of a train? Strangely sitting though imperiously in this chaos was a pug, who politely got out of the way as I passed.
The buffet was quiet too and I bought my coffee with the sort of speed you’d expect from a typical Starbucks in mid-morning.
And then there was the walk back. I should probably have stayed in the buffet and drunk it there, but I do like a challenge. It actually wasn’t much of one, as of course, I’d got one of those excellent two-handled small paper carrier bags to carry my coffee. Why can’t other shops and kiosks use them more?
So although I indicated it was the worst part of the journey in some ways, it was also one of the best given the circumstances. The ride of an IC125 is so level and flat, that it made a difficult task easy. It would have been impossible in a Pendolino.
I did make a mistake and that was not to bring a stirrer. So I gave it a quick stir with my pen.
The Anonymous Widower 