Coffee And Seats At Manchester Victoria
The upgrade at Manchester Victoria station is approaching completion and as I passed through yesterday, the refreshment room was open and their were extra chairs everywhere in a Northern Rail promotion.
It’s just a pity that the coffee shop, just had to be those tax-avoiders; Starbucks.
Restoring Manchester Victoria Station
I took these pictures as I passed through Manchester Victoria station today.
Some might think, that we spend more time and effort on getting the heritage details perfect, than we do on improving the experience for passengers.
My only hope is that if this space gets used as a restaurant, then it gets one with a bit of quality.
Carlisle
When I got to Carlisle it was nearly four and too late to go the long way back to Preston via the Settle and Carlisle Line to Leeds and then the Calder Valley Line.
I think to be fair, if I’d planned the trip better, I could have relied on getting the 16:18 to Leeds and then the 20:05 back to Preston. But the Calder Valley Line is probably best done with the scenery illuminated!
So I decided to have a walk round Carlisle city centre and then get one of the numerous fast trains back to Preston.
The centre is compact with most places you’d want to visit within easy walking distance of the station.
What surprised me was the very big Marks and Spencer, which unlike Preston had plenty of gluten-free food, including sandwiches. The shop was several times better than Preston. I can now understand why Preston was found to be the most unhealthy High Street in the UK.
Am I The Supermarkets Worst Customer?
There has been a lot of reports lately about misleading special offers in supermarkets, like this one in the Independent.
As I’m a 67-year-old widower living alone, who because I don’t drive, has to carry everything home from the supermarket, I only rarely buy any bogofs, but then only with something that doesn’t have sell-by date like washing tablets, soap, tissues or bottles of cider or olive oil.
If I’m cooking a casserole that needs one onion, one carrot, a leek and say two hundred grams of mince then that is what I buy.
I also have given up on fresh herbs and use the dried ones in pots , as I don’t like throwing the unused ones away.
As I regularly complain about the bags in Waitrose at the Angel, they must consider me a bad customer, especially as I usually enter with a half-full bag of bread, biscuits and lemonade from the Marks and Spencer next door.
The UK’s Unhealthiest High Streets And Gluten Free Food
In this report on the BBC, they published a list of the healthiest and unhealthiest High Streets. This is the unhealthiest list.
1. Preston
2. Middlesbrough
3. Coventry
4. Blackpool
5. Northampton
6. Wolverhampton
7. Grimsby
8. Huddersfield
9. Stoke-on-Trent
10. Eastbourne
Of these I have only ever been looking for gluten-free food in the first four and Wolverhampton.
In the first four, I drew a blank even in Marks and Spencer on getting anything tasty, except for a gluten-free quiche in Middlesbrough. Although, I did get a gluten-free pizza in Pizza Express in Preston and a Polish gluten-free pastie using a cabbage leaf in Wolverhampton.
What makes things worse in these places, is that none has a Marks and Spencer Simply Food at the station. Preston is so bad at the station, that when I got stuck there once after football in Blackpool, I went home via Piccadilly, so that I could have supper in the Carluccio’s there.
It would be interesting to see how many coeliacs have been diagnosed in these towns.
Where Has Waitrose’s Grated Parmesan Gone?
I do a lot of recipes which use a breadcrumb and parmesan crust like this salmon based on a Mary Berry idea.
Mary Bery’s Salmon
It is quick and delicious and only needs some cream cheese, a lemon and the salmon to be purchased.
Usually, I keep the parmesan sealed in its container in the fridge.
The Last Of My Waitrose Parmesan
I only ever use a little, so one pack lasts a month or so.
Recently, Waitrose have stopped selling the parmesan and the only alternative was some in a round packet.
I’ll never buy that again, as within a few days of opening, it had gone mouldy.
I want the original parmesan back.
It is wasteful and grossly immoral to buy food, only to throw most of it straight in the bin.
A Dreadful, But Totally Avoidable Train Journey
As a coeliac who avoids gluten and also because I’ve had a stroke and am on Warfarin, I have to be very careful about my diet. For this reason I plan my pit-stops well when I travel by train. If I do change trains, I usually arrange this at a station like Birmingham New Street, Cambridge or Leeds, where I know there is a good M & S Simply Food or a selection of restaurants that I trust.
The last couple of days, I have been in Scotland and on the way back I saw Ipswich Town play at Middlesbrough.
As Middlesbrough is a particularly difficult town for suitable food, I decided to come south as soon as possible after the lunchtime match. I did get lunch of sorts from the M & S in the town.
Quiche And Lemonade On A Bitterly Cold Day
It was bitterly cold and I ate it in the gardens in from of the Crown Court. But hey, two of my family’s bloodlines are Jewish and Huguenot and I reckon at times, they’d have found my simple lunch a veritable feast.
A couple of weeks before, I’d tried to book a First Class ticket from Middlesbrough to Kings Cross, but found the prices rather stratospheric, so in the end I bought a reasonably priced First Class ticket from Middlesbrough to Peterborough changing at York, from where I could get a Great Northern train into London.
I had assumed that the difficult availability of tickets was because of the England-Scotland match at Twickenham and at no time did the on-line booking process on East Coast inform me of the real reason for a ticket shortage.
It was only, when I caught the Virgin Trains East Coast train at York, did the staff inform me of the reason. The East Coast Main Line was subject to engineering work and we’d be using a diversion.
Unlike some other companies, East Coast’s gluten-free offering is non-existent, so I was getting hungrier by the hour, as we were shown the delights of the GNGE in the dark.
As the train was going on to Kings Cross and there were plenty of empty seats, I asked the conductor if I could buy a ticket to complete the journey on the train, rather than decamping at Peterborough to purchase a ticket for another train.
Astronomic prices were mentioned, which bore no relation to the twenty pounds or so, my phone said I would need to spend on-line for a Standard Class ticket. So I got off and bought a ticket in the Booking Office for around ten pounds for Great Northern. Incidentally, the Off-Park Single with a Railcard for East Coast is £14.75. So where did a price of three times that come from?
I finally arrived in London six hours after I left Middlesbrough. To cap it all, the only gluten-free food left in M & S at Kings Cross was one packet of sandwiches.
I could say the sandwiches were stale to add colour to this tale! But they were excellent!
If the works on the line had been flagged up when I tried to book the ticket, I would have only used East Coast as a last resort. After all, I could have gone via Sheffield or Manchester, where I can at least get something to eat. The Booking Office clerk at Peterborough had told me that they have to tell personal callers that there are problems! So why not on the web?
The conductor on the train, said it was all my fault, as I should have gone to Kings Cross, to read all the information about engineering works. Doesn’t that remove one of the advantages of booking on-line?
If you say you want to collect a ticket from a station that is not the starting point of your journey, the train purchase web sites ask you if this is what you want to do. Surely, a warning if there are works or likely delays on your route could be similarly indicated.
The real losers in this tale are Virgin Trains East Coast, as they had an empty seat between Peterborough and Kings Cross, for which I would probably have paid a reasonable amount. Next time I go to York or Doncaster where there is an alternative, I will also probably use it.
A New Route To Legal Services
I passed this cafe in Hampstead yesterday on Haverstock Hill.
A New Route To Legal Services
I suppose that The Legal Cafe might make a sensible profit on the coffee and cakes.
Serail Cooking – A Simple Chicken Curry
This recipe came from The Times on Saturday.
Matt Tebbutt was right, in that I used a big slug of Geeta’s Mango Chutney and this really made it a delicious curry. I also used some of St. Helen’s Farm Goats Milk Double Cream, as it comes in small pots, so there is less waste, which helps to stop my fridge getting cluttered with bits and pieces.
So to make this curry, all I need to purchase is one onion, a pack of Waitrose Chicken breast chunks and the small pot of double cream. Hopefully, I’ll have the chutney, garlic, tomatoes, chicken stock cube if I use one to hand, and the coriander in my little herb garden. There will be some spare chicken, but as it’s such a useful ingredient for cooking, it won’t stay in my fridge for long.
Serial Cooking – Chicken, Spinach And Tomato Stew
This is another recipe from Lindsey Bareham in The Times.
It was certainly worth cooking.
Note how to avoid cutting the chicken, I used some chicken chunks from Waitrose.
The only tricky bit was skinning the tomatoes in boiling water. But I’ve done it twice now and it’s not that difficult.
The Anonymous Widower 