The Latest Doggie Accessory
Thry’ve just shown see the latest doggie accessory on BBC Breakfast; the iCollar with a GPS locator and other sensors? We had a setter who needed that, who roamed all over the stud, but never left it, so was often difficult to find.
My youngest also needed one, as he used to go everywhere following the horses on his own about seven.
Some of C’s divorce clients probably wished they could have locked such a device on their partners, so they could track their movements. I suspect someone is working on it.
Bringing Home The Sunday Papers
I get The Sunday Times on a voucher. So when I moved here, I found a shop perhaps four hundred metres away that took them.
The about a year ago, a new Asian shop opened much closer that took the vouchers, so I changed my allegiance.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I happened to go past the second shop, just after the schools had chucked out. All around the shop young people were drinking cans of crap lager and smoking.
As my house is on the way back from the shop to an estate near me with a reputation, that sighting probably explains why there is a succession of beer bottles and cans on front walls down the road. I haven’t had any recently since my new garden with its berberis was completed. Some still enter my garden though and use it as a urinal.
So as I don’t frequent shops that sell alcohol and tobacco to minors, as the latter probably helped the premature deaths of my grandfather, father and youngest son, I stopped using the Asian shop.
Generally, I’ve been going to the Sainsburys Local in the Essex Road for my papers. But yesterday, I went back to the original shop and got third degree about why I don’t go.
I’ll probably still use the first shop again, but today, as I needed some other things, I took a bus to the littleWaitrose at Highbury Corner. The only problem I had was tip-toeing through the broken glass outside the pub that is on my route to the bus stop.
Broken Glass Outside The Pub
They really ought to tidy up after the customers have gone. Most days, I suspect they just leave this sort of mess to our excellent street cleaner.
My First New Year Resolution
Over two years ago, I said I was looking for a short-sleeved dressing gown.
I still am!
After just chasing several things on the floor with my sleeves, it’s time, I bought an ordinary one and cut the sleeves down.
It’s not as though, I can’t afford it!
A Project Management Led Approach To A New Kitchen
I said in this post which I called Reflections on Surviving Another Year, that 2015 will be the Year of the Kitchen.
I should say that I’ve only once done any real project management, but I did spent much of a working life reasonably successfully providing software solutions for project managers to use.
So let’s look at my kitchen today.
It’s a bit of a mess, but I know where everything is.
The problems are in addition to those highlighted in the pictures..
1. There is not enough space to put everything.
2. Where is my frying pan? It’s actually in one of the cupboards.
3. There are not enough electrical sockets.
4. The light is terrible.
5. I have only one sink with cheap and nasty taps.
6. The cooker hood is broken.
7. I don’t use the dishwasher, but it doesn’t work well.
8. My style of cooking uses a lot of spices and they get everywhere.
9. There is no freezer in the kitchen
I can also lay down a set of objectives about the design and installation of the new kitchen.
1. It must be capable of accepting a new AGA City60, after completion, if I should so desire. As all this requires is a flat floor, a 600 mm. wide space and a 32 amp connection, I could buy and fit one tomorrow.
2. Everything must use standard size cabinets.
3. There needs to be a button I can press, that activates a force field to chase unwanted visitors out.
4. I’m not without a sink, cooker or work surface for food preparation for more than a few days.
5. It would be nice if the freezer problem could be fixed early.
These inevitable lead to a series of work modules.
1. The area in the living room, where I would effectively create a workshop extension on the other side of the hole in the wall. This section would have a small under counter freezer, a set of drawers and some storage space. It would also cover up the central heating manifold.
2. The upper part of the wall behind the cooker, where I would replace the broken cooker hood and the two wall cabinets. A subsidiary objective here, would be to create more space to keep things out of the way of future modules.
3. The wall containing the sink by the window.
4. The side of the kitchen facing the living room.
5. The worktops and what I do to join the two halves of the back-to-back in-the-hole shared worktop. I have a very different idea for this.
The whole sequence might change, but if I do Module 1 first, it does tidy up the living room and allow me to finish it, get me a freezer and more space in the kitchen. I also don’t lose the cooker or the sink.
Reflections On Surviving Another Year
As I sit here typing at the computer and watching Graham Norton, I can take comfort in surviving another year. Nothing remotely serious happened, although I was badly effected by the incredible heat of the summer, which was made more unbearable by Gerry’s terrible roof.
So the roof and my bathroom are now fixed and 2015 will be the Year of the Kitchen. I’ve already press-ganged a Project Manager and someone to install it, who although he is not reliable, I know will deliver at some point. I also don’t have any communication problems with my schizophrenic other half. I remember Nobby and myself having a discussion about whether all great programmers have two personalities; one to do the programming and one to do the testing. We felt on balance they do!
C and I had some good New Years and some bad ones. I always remember this good one for selfish reasons, but the Millennium was great in Deya. In fact some of the other good ones were totally unplanned and a party or good time just happened. Just as the bad ones did! The worst one was probably, when C died just before Christmas and my advice to anybody in that situation, is to think carefully how you handle that difficult time. Everybody is different and we all respond to the same situation in different ways. So we must make a selfish decision. Something that like me after forty years of living with someone in a great deal of harmony, was not easy.
I did go away to Venice that we loved a couple of months after C died, just to prove I could travel abroad alone. I would advise people to do that! You certainly learn a lot about yourself, when you’re alone in a foreign country.
C had the language skills, the knowledge of food and wine, and I had the camera and I like to think she trusted my practical skills.
A couple is a sentient being with two brains and four of most things, like hands and eyes. Think how many small simple jobs need three hands for a start.
Eyesores On Haverstock Hill
Hampstead is a very posh part of London, but walk down Haverstock Hill and you see some of the worst buildings in London.
The church is having the cheek to object to the hospital building a new research centre.
A better solution would be to demolish both the Royal Free Hospital and St. Stephen’s church and use the enlarged site to build something that fitted better into the area. Like a prison or a factory making garden gnomes.
Seriously though, the hospital was built in 1974 and it can’t be many years until, it will need either severe refurbishment or replacing.
This would surely give a chance to improve the whole area.
The church is the sort of building, that gives the heritage industry a bad name. Wikipedia says this about its restoration.
A lease on it was awarded to the St Stephen’s Restoration and Preservation Trust in 1999 and, after this body raised over £4 million from English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund, local businesses and individual donors, it has restored it to a usable condition in three phases.
I’m sure all of those who play the lottery loved that their money went towards restoring an eyesore like this. I don’t play the lottery as it is a tax on the poor. I do object though that English Heritage put money in, as that could be part of my taxes. If individuals want to waste their own money on a building that would serve best as good hardcore, that is their own affair.
The Crystal Reindeer
This Christmas art was at the back of Broadgate.
Strangely, there was no details of the artist.
The Gherkin And The Light
The sun this December has been astounding.
I was trying to get a picture of the light reflections on the Gherkin and the other buildings and took these images.
Sawyer And Gray At Highbury Corner
Highbury Corner is a bit short of eating places that appeal to me. Over the past couple of months, I’ve passed a new cafe called Sawyer and Gray on my way to the bus stop to get the 30 home.
Today, after coming back from my travels to the station and after buying my Sunday Times in the littleWaitrose, I ventured inside to have a cup of tea.
I liked what I saw and decided to have some scrambled egg and smoked salmon for an early lunch.
It was very good and I shall go back again. When Kings Cross and Euston have got their escalators fixed, it will be very convenient for a sustaining drink on the way home from a trip up north.
Note that the restaurant is a bit of a Tardis and as it has a basement with seven tables, it’s a lot bigger than it appears from the street.
A Waste Of Space
The photographs show the central island at Highbury Corner.
Note that a couple of these pictures were taken over several days and in some, workers would appear to be tidying it up.
Surely something better could be done with this green space. Walk for about ten minutes and you come to Newington Green, which is a green space with a cafe in the middle of a busy traffic interchange, that has improved immensely in recent years.
Two points.
1. One thing that needs sorting is the position of the bus stand for the 277, which is totally in the wrong place.
2. The memorial garden to those that died in the V1 attack is tucked away and might be better moved to the middle, if public were to be allowed access.
With a bit of imaginative thinking, Highbury Corner could be a green space to welcome people to the thriving Upper Street.
The Anonymous Widower 