C Would Have Laughed At This
When we were in Liverpool in the 1960s, Widnes was the butt of lots of jokes as it had rather a nasty smell.
C Would Have Laughed At This
So to see a block of flats in Islington given the same name made me titter. C would have laughed like a drain.
But compared to some street names it isn’t the most romantic place to live.
The next door block was called Tranmere.
White Van Gentlemen
I saw this van in the Holloway Road.
White Van Gentlemen
But they are parked in the bus lane on an Arsenal match day.
Is This The Reason Why You Should Swap To A Small Energy Supplier?
I’ve just been reading this article in The Times about the new energy supplier Ovo.
This is the paragraph, that caught my eye.
Ovo offers only two tariffs and has one structural advantage over its bigger rivals: in common with fellow start-ups such as Ecotricity and First Utility, it doesn’t have to put a government- mandated “green levy” on consumers’ bills because it has fewer than 250,000 customers. That means its customers are exempt from an average surcharge of £112 a year.
So it would seem that by changing to a small supplier, you’ll save over a hundred pounds a year. Obviously, if your chosen small supplier gets bigger than 250,000 customers, you’ll need to change to another small one.
Incidentally, I’m not in favour of green levies, as insulating houses is the responsibility of the property owner and wind turbines that of the builders! Not me!
This all sounds a good deal to me. I shall be investigating! Especially, as the fixed price deal with my current supplier runs out next year.
Art Under Attack
I went to this exhibition at the Tate on Thursday night.
It was the private view for members and the best bit about the exhibition was that you could see all the exhibits well, as there wasn’t many people there.
Or perhaps a lot of members had read the review of the exhibition in the Telegraph. It opens with this paragraph.
When some bright spark at Tate Britain came up with the idea of doing a show about the history of Iconoclasm in this country why wasn’t the plan strangled at birth?
And finishes with this.
This show may have been tripe, but as a nation, we can’t afford not to support the arts.
I didn’t think a lot to it either, but then I’m no expert and I went alone. However, I did leave with the impression, that the lady folded in Allen Jones‘s work called Chair, had an unlikely resemblance to the late Princess Diana. But then she was only eight, at the time the work of art was created.
Praise For Kings Cross From Down Under
One of my Internet alerts is for Kings Cross Square and I picked up this article praising the area from the Sydney Morning Herald web site.
Afterwards, Australian visitors, will only need to go to Highgate Cemetery to feel at home.
Dull-As-Ditchwater Television
The BBC has just started broadcasting proceedings in the Court of Appeal.
Judging by the excepts I’ve seen, I shall not be watching. It must surely rank for exciting content with BBC Parliament.
Why is the BBC wasting our licence fees on this dross?
The test card and Cambidge University’s first webcam, were much more interesting.
I did here a rumour that the Security Services wanted this coverage, as it is ideal to show to reluctant suspects. After a few hours of programmes such as this, they usually decide to tell everything.
A Pre-Match Meal In Ipswich
Yesterday, it was football at Ipswich at 19:45 due to SKY, so it was an early train to avoid the rush hour and a pre-match meal in Pizza Express on the waterfront.
PX is the only really coeliac-friendly restaurant in the town centre. I’ve yet to find a good Indian one, close to the football ground.
PX was heaving, so it does appear that the demand might be coming up in the town, which in my view and those of some of my friends is a restaurant graveyard. I always wondered if East Suffolk people go to bed early, ever since my father and I used to walk home from his club in Felixstowe at about 21:30 and see all the houses cmpletely dark.
But getting to and from the quay and PX in the dark is a walker’s nightmare, with uneven pavements and all sorts of barriers everywhere. How many drunks will tip into the dock?
However there did seem to be a lot of good development going on at the waterfront, but knowing Ipswich as I do, I doubt that it will be complete for upwards of five to ten years.
The quay might end up as a good place to go, but it’s not that close to the town centre, the railway station and the other attractions in the town, like Christchurch Mansion, the Wolsey Theatre and the football ground.
If ever a town was crying out for a free circular bus-route that ran around the town centre like Manchester’s Metroshuttle, it is Ipswich!
At least though the meal was good and walking down the hill to the restaurant from the station was easy, even if I didn’t find the quickest route back to the football ground in the dark. In the light, I’d have had the liths to guide me!
I shall go again in the light!
My Annoying Hand
My poor hand doesn’t seem to have the will to allow a plaster to stick on it.
The nurse at the surgery had a go this morning and his effort with steri-strips is coming to grief, as my skin doesn’t seem to offer enough grip for them.
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- The Strips That Won’t Stick
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- A Proper Dressing
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- Covered In A Cotton Glove
So I’ve now put a solid old fashioned lint patch and zinc-oxide plaster over the wound. I now cover it with a cotton glove to help stop the plaster being disturbed.
After all it is the Eve of All Saints’ Day.
I suppose the problem is that, as the wound is on the point of the knuckle, any movement stretches the skin. I think I might go to Rymans, if this doesn’t stick and buy a large rubber band.
It is all very annoying!
My New Shopping Bag
For some years, I’ve used some shopping bags, that were free with Waitrose’s Quick Check system. I no longer use the system and I don’t think it is available, in any of the branches near me. My last bag is on its last legs, but they do seem to work on the dreadful self-service tills at the Angel.They also are an easy one hand carry for my left hand and can generally cope with the biggest daily shop I do.
Yesterday, I was doing some shopping at their Canary Wharf branch and needed to carry it home on the Underground. As I didn’t have a bag with me, I didn’t fancy using a plastic carrier, as they aren’t good when they are full and I’m always frightened, that I’ll end up with shopping all over the tube or the bus. So I asked if they had any bags like the ones I used to use with Quick Check and they found this one at the back of a store.
My New Shopping Bag
I was charged two pounds, but I did get it home safely.
The trouble is it’s not trendy and modern. But it does have a large capacity and it does work well!
The Problem Of Living Alone
Yesterday wasn’t the worst of days by a long way, but it does illustrate the perils of living alone.
I had four jobs to do, when I planned my day.
1. Take delivery of my new television from John Lewis.
2. Go to the Regent’s Canal to prepare myself for the Ward Forum tonight.
3. Go to John Lewis to see if one of their kitchens would fit my requirements, when I replace Jerry’s terrible one.
4. I was also expecting the builder to come round to sort out when he would finish my half-completed bathroom.
That would all seem very simple.
But the builder and the television turned up at the same time, so I naturally asked him, if he’d help me put it on the wall. All it needed was to remove the old television, swap the bracket and then lift the other one on. But of course the old bracket didn’t fit and just needed to be drilled out. The sort of job, that I could have easily done, if I could find my Workmate, which is somewhere under the builder’s mess in the garage. The builder then left, leaving the old television on one sofa and the new one on the other.
So I decided to go for a walk along the Regent’s Canal and then when I got to Haggerston take the 242 bus to Oxford Street for John Lewis and lunch. But then I cut my hand on something and had to get it patched up. As I was a fair walk from home, I decided to go to my doctor’s surgery to clean myself up first. They checked the wound and put a plaster on it, so at least that bit worked. I then walked home looking for someone to drill out the plate. I didn’t find anyone, as most small engineering workshops have closed.
I then realised that I also needed to get a set of spare keys cut, as the builder has all my spare ones, so I walked around the corner to the local Locksmith. And there it was, sitting in the back of the shop, a proper bench drill. So I got the keys cut and the plate drilled so that it would fit the new television. And all for £14. Well done, Barry!
In some ways though, it was my undoing, as I now fitted the bracket and attempted to lift the television onto the wall. I could lift it with ease, but the constant stretching of the fingers in my left hand, meant that the cut opened up and the plaster fell off. This picture shows the location of the cut, which explains a lot.
My Poor Hand
I couldn’t mount the television, as it is a job that needs two hands and two sets of eyes, because the television blocks your view of the bracket.
So eventually, I set off for Oxford Street to hopefully go to John Lewis and have some lunch. The first bus to arrive was a 30 and I intended to take it to Highbury and Islington station to go to Oxford Circus. But the dreaded roadworks struck again and the driver couldn’t take a direct route, so he went round the houses before dropping me and perhaps twenty irate passengers at the station.
I got a train without a problem, but by the time I got to Euston, blood was now going everywhere, so at the next station I chickened out and went to A & E at University College Hospital, where I got it properly bandaged. I was also in and out in forty minutes.
I now have the problem of putting one television on the wall and getting the old one downstairs for the Council. If I could do just one of these jobs, I could at least sit on a comfortable chair.
You can really understand, how One Foot In The Grave got written. But it’s just so much more likely that things will go wrong, when you live alone. After all, if I still lived with C, she’d have cleaned up the first cut, ut a decent plaster on it, told me to take it quiet and probably made cups of tea for me all day.
I’ve now got the problem of strapping a plastic bag over my hand, so I can have a bath.
A Bath In A Bag Hand
It wasn’t too difficult. But this is probably because the fingers of the left hand work better in their bandage and I could cut the parcel tape before I put the bag on.
The Anonymous Widower 