Two Greedy Italians
Antonio Carluccio has said tonight, that his religion is food. So tonight he and Gennaro Contaldo are exploring Puglia looking at religion and food.
But Gennaro did come up with this glorious recipe. I’ll try it sometime. It’s gluten-free too.
Antonio seems to be rather dismissive of the religion and is much keener on the food. I’ll drink to that! As I sip a gluten-free beer!
Branas Boxes Bite Again
I have a new delivery of some IKEA furniture tomorrow and to finish it off I need some more Branas boxes.
As I was going to have a coffee with a friend in Covent Garden, I thought that I might go on from there. But getting to Covent Garden had been difficult on the Piccadilly line as someone had stupidly been hit by a train at Southgate. So the obvious route back to IKEA at Edmonton which involved using the Piccadilly line to Manor House and then a 341 bus, was probably a no-no!
So I decided after my coffee to take the circular route from Embankment of a District line train to Wimbledon and then the Tramlink to IKEA at Ampere Way. Afterwards I intended to continue on the tram to West Croydon to get the London Overground to Dalston Junction.
The Chimneys at IKEA Croydon
The two chimneys of the old power station that give the road its name are still there.
As are the concrete blocks, that sit in the pedestrian entrance to catch the drunk, the lame and the elderly.
Welcome to IKEA - Again!
They may have been moved since I last visited the store.
I did have a nice lunch in IKEA before I bought another eight boxes.
Or should I say seven and four-fifths boxes? As when I checked out, a bottom was missing! I did check them, as I’d been caught once before, but I obviously didn’t check well enough! It meant another walk through the store as punishment to get a replacement. At least I didn’t take it home and now will be plotting a return.
IKEA at Croydon at least has one advantage over Edmonton. It is easy to take a trolley to the tram stop. Not that I did as many had done and dump it somewhere awkward for pedestrians, but I was able to leave it in a handy trolley park to shorten the walk considerably.
From Ampere Way I took the tram to West Croydon to get the East London line to Dalston Junction.
Overground Directions at West Croydon
The picture shows the excellent signage at the West Croydon interchange.
I actually changed trains between West Croydon and Dalston Junction, at Surrey Quays, so that I got on a train that ended its journey at Dalston Junction, which meant I only had a short walk to the lift.
It was then a couple of stops on a 38 bus home.
It would be so much easier, if I could buy the Branas boxes online in fours.
Rabbit Awareness Week
To celebrate Rabbit Awareness Week, I ate an excellent rabbit in Arbutus last night.
This restaurant is surely one of the best places to eat gluten-free in the UK. The chef, Anthony Demetre, is I believe a coeliac, so you never have any trouble choosing something to suit your taste.
The restaurant, despite its location in Soho, is not as expensive as some I could name. In fact, because of the way they sell wine in 250 ml. carafes, it often works out to be extremely good value.
Range Rover Evoque
I went to a launch on the Range Rover Evoque at Earl’s Court last night. In some ways it was a bit of a waste on me, as I don’t drive, but a friend thought ashe might buy one, so she thought she’d take an engineer along.
I won’t comment too much about the vehicle, but I think it will sell well, especially if the 58 mph claimed for the diesel is obtained by real drivers. If I hadn’t had the stroke, I would probably have at least given one a test drive to replace my X-Type Jaguar estate. But it will never match the style and panache of my Lotus Elan.
What annoyed me was the presentation. It was all about style, with plenty of scantily-clad boys and girls, lots of lights and very little substance about the tjings that matter in a car. They didn’t even have any brochures!
Ten or so years ago, the lights would have caused me to have a headache and lose my vision. But since, I’ve been gluten-free that doesn’t happen anymore to me. So perhaps, it was a good test that my brain and eyes are working well in unison. But if I had needed to leave the presentation, it wasn’t obvious how I would have done it.
When I was shown the Discovery 2 or 3, it was an invite to a nice hotel and then I was given a map to take it for a drive. I didn’t buy one, but it was much more persuasive than a horde of scantily clad ladies.
Dalston Junction Gets a Step Nearer To Being Fully Open
I went past Dalston Junction station this morning and the Southern entrance can now be used by pedestrians. Not only does this give me a safer route to the trains, without fighting my way through all the obstructions on the Kingsland Road, but it’s a couple of minutes quicker.
The Almost Fully Open Southern Entrance at Dalston Junction Station
There is still a wire fence, but according to the staff, I sopke to, it will remain open.
It also means that if you want to change at Dalston Junction to or from a 76 or 149 bus say, then it is all very quick and easy, as there is a light-controlled crossing across the Kingsland Road.
All the station needs now is the opening of the bus stand in the station itself, the extension of the 488 route and another light-controlled crossing over Dalston Lane.
Incidentally, it has been announced that there will be more trains on the North and West London Lines. So a trip to Earl’s Court will be just one across platform change from Dalston Junction.
A Year On
It is now over a year since I had the stroke in Hong Kong and as you know I’ve now moved to London, just round the corner from where my grandmother was born in the Balls Pond Road. In fact, I drink in the pub, where my great-grandfather might have wetted her head.
So how am I feeling?
Bodily, I have few issues.
My nails used to be firm and hard, but now they are soft and brittle. My toenails are actually worse than my fingers. My nails were always soft before I went gluten-free and I used to bite them badly and my skin too. I’m not biting them now at all.
Q 1. Could it be that as my body is repairing itself from the stroke, it’s using up what I need for healthy nails?
I have an almost cramp-like pain in my left lower leg, which is very like the pain I got, when I trod on a razor shell on the beach in Norfolk in the summer of 2009. It tends to get worse at night.
My left humerus is also painful a lot of the time at the same place where it was broken by a bully at school. I think as the nerves for my arm and hand pass close to the bone, it affects them at times.
I did have pain at the end of my spine, but now that has virtually gone unless I sit on the wrong sort of chair. This again was an old injury, which was very much aggravated by the hospital bed in Hong Kong. I should say that I always sleep face down because of the end of my spine, which curls outwards and I get less cramp in my lower leg, which I’ve always had since a child. I can still feel the cold lino, which I used to put my foot on to cure it.
It’s almost as if my old physical problems have come back!
Q. 2 Does your brain develop new pathways to get round the pain from injuries?
Q.3 When you have a stroke are these pathways knocked out? So if so, it would seem you need to develop them again. One psychologist at Cambridge, who worked with stroke patients thought this could be the case.
Facially, I haven’t too much pain, but my scalp and left hand side are rather tender. My skin actually feels like it did at times before I went on a gluten-free diet before I was diagnosed as a coeliac. One of my main symptoms of coeliac disease was chronic dandruff. It went immediately, I changed to a totally gluten-free diet.
In fact, at some times, I feel like I’ve been glutened. Not seriously, but my motions are rather loose nearly all the time. Full tests at Addenbrooke’s have shown that there is nothing serious there, although I haven’t had another endoscopy to see what my gut is like.
Q.4 Is this connected with any of the drugs I’m taking?
On advice from my previous GP, I do take calcium tablets with added vitamin D, as it was slightly low. But a Dexascan showed everything was fine.
I have just re-read a post on this blog, which was a pain diary, describing how I was trying to control the terrible pain I was having last summer, with codeine and paracetamol. It wasn’t that successful and a few days later or so, I collapsed and ended up in Addenbrooke’s. Nothing was done and I just struggled on. And then a few weeks later, I ended up having a fit like symptom, when I was putting on my coat. I can remember feeling a bolt of pain in my humerus and then I went into oscillation. It’s funny, but I may remember something similar happening, just after I broke the bone, as I walked home from school. Addenbrooke’s put me on Keppra to stop it happening again. It hasn’t.
Q.5 Should I keep taking the Keppra?
I incidentally take it with vitamin B6 to avoid any side effects, but also as I’ve been advised by a Dutch doctor to take B6 anyway, as he feels that coeliacs should take it to reduce the risk of strokes.
Because of the pain and because it felt like someone was pouring awful muck down my throat, I went to see an ENT specialist to see if my sinuses were bad.
He found everything clear, but thought that I was suffering from a serious pollen allergy. Now as a child, I was very sickly and was always off school. In my first year at Grammar School I virtually missed all the second term. Gradually it got better and it really improved when first we went to live on the 11th floor in the Barbican and later when I started flying aircraft for pleasure.
I’ve also had some bad winters and springs before, but not as bad as this one, when for much of the time, I just couldn’t breathe. Although in the last twenty years or so, I’ve lived on top of a hill with a strong westerly wind and my late wife and I could afford to take holidays in the sun in January. Funnily, my cardiologist,said that everybody should take two weeks in the sun every winter. I did try to do this in April by going to Greece and backpacking around the islands, but was irritated by everyone smoking all the time.
I know from travelling around the UK in the last year, that when I get out of the pollen I feel better. For instance, I went to Barnsley in March on a breezy day to see the football and felt a lot better that day. On the other hand, I walked past a tree-shredding machine at Euston a couple of weeks ago and it set me off coughing for half-an-hour.
Q.6 So why should all of this reaction to allergens get so much worse after the stroke?
On the other hand, in 2009, I was travelling to Holland a lot in the spring and suffered worse than I had done for years. I put it down to different pollens at different times. It was almost as if I got used to the English ones and then when I went to Holland, a load of different ones set me off.
Some days it’s so bad that all I can do is lie down indoors and listen to the radio. On the other hand, when I went down the London sewers, it helped my breathing immensely.
So how am I managing otherwise.
I have no problem getting around on buses and trains and of course by walking. I did fall over on a bad pavement in Upper Street in March, but haven’t hardly stumbled since, especially since I was fitted properly for a pair of trainers. I have no problems using the top decks of buses and climbing up and down ladders.
I like cooking and do quite a bit, although, as there are now so many Carluccio’s with a gluten-free menu, I am lazy quite a bit of the time.
I do eat a lot of soft comfort food, like bananas and ginger cake between meals. But my weight is still the same as it was five or six years ago.
My only problem with cooking is that my left hand diesn’t seem to like hot or cold, although the finger movement is now almost back to normal. I notice this most with my typing, where although I type mainly one-handed, I now use the left properly for the shift. Incidentally, I’ve always typed with my right hand, because of my bad left arm.
My eyesight to the left isn’t good, but in the last month or so, I’ve been able to play table tennis again, something that I couldn’t do a year ago. On the other hand, it does seem to be worst, when my eyes are streaming from the allergies.
On a mental state, what more is there to say, other than that I’m here. I made a good fist of a lecture at Liverpool University, so my brain can’t be that awry. Although, I do forget things on a short-term basis. But then I always have to a certain extent. But the long term memory is intact!
Why Did London Ever Buy the Bendy Buses?
One of the bus routes, the 141, near me, has some double-deck buses that are about ten years old. So they are not in the best of condition, but they don’t break down and take passengers, both able-bodied and disabled with ease.
Today, I was on a new Dennis Trident and from where I sat in the front, I could see the warranty plate. The chassis and bodywork got twelve years, the engine three and the gear-box five, which struck me as a firm statement of reliability by the manufacturer.
I also have the 73 or seventy-free near me, which are younger than the older 141s and are starting to look rather tatty. Given their accident record and the fact that passengers, drivers, cyclists and pedestrians don’t like them, it always puzzles me, why anybody would be stupid enough to buy the damn things in the first place?
Especially, as they are Spanish-built, whereas both Wright and Dennis Alexander buses are assembled in the UK.
What really shows up the bendy bus to me, is when I go shopping at Upper Street. I have a choice of six direct routes home, but I rarely catch a 73. I usually go in the morning, when bus loads are low, so on return on a double deck bus, I usually am able to walk easily to the back of the bus and sit with my shopping bag on the seat next to me. So I have comfortable ride home. On a bendy bus, space is so much more cramped, that I either put the bag on my lap or block the aisle with it. I have heard that new London buses will have seats wider than the legal minimum at 440 mm. For a small person like me, that means I can sit on a window seat with my shopping outside and not block the aisle seat.
Travelling With a Horse
Well not really, as the pony wasn’t allowed on the train.
I do remember a news story many years ago, where someone took a billy goat to a Scottish Island, by train from London. It travelled as a dog.
A Pedestrian Collision Avoidance System
They are talking on BBC Breakfast about the sort of sound that electric cars should make.
As someone, who for a few months had very limited vision to the left, I can sympathise, but really do we want to negate one of the big advantages of electric cars; the fact that they are silent, which I think makes people drive them slower.
So could we do something better to stop collisions between vulnerable pedestrians and vehicles. And of course between cyclists and vehicles too.
With airliners they have a system called TCAS or Traffic Collision Avoidance System. It works well, as you don’t get too many collisions between airliners.
So could something simpler be used by pedestrians and vehicles that they might not see or hear.
In it’s simplest form a vehicle would emit a coded electronic signal with perhaps a range of say twenty to fifty metres. Pedestrians would perhaps have a wristwatch-sized device that made some sort of sound as the vehicle approached. I would suspect that smart phones could also be developed to be pedestrian devices.
Thinking about this idea, it would have other implications.
- You could just drive up to your garage door and a detector programmed with your vehicle’s code would open the door automatically.
- Systems could be used to make car parks more user-friendly. All you would have to do is drive in and out and the system would bill you automatically.
- Vulnerable pedestrians, such as the blind and deaf, could also carry an emitter, which could be received by vehicles to warn them that the person by the side of the road had limited vision or hearing.
- There could also be an emergency mode, so that say if a pedestrian was feeling unwell or had a probe, they could immediately call help from those near at hand. In fact borrowing from flying rules, you could have two levels of emergency; serious and I just need a little bit of help. The latter might be used by say someone who was blind or a bit confused, who perhaps was lost in a strange town.
- One of my biggest problems is those in scooters, who drive them fast in places like shopping malls and come up behind me. I was nearly run over in Canary Wharf yesterday, by someone going far too fast and only avoided trouble, because the lady driving it, hit a man, who called her a stupid idiot in a very loud voice. A device warning of fast traffic from behind would have avoided that problem.
The possibilities are endless.
I doubt it will happen though.
The Anonymous Widower 