Irving Sellar Does A Guy De Maupassant
Prufrock in the Sunday Times reported that Irving Sellar, who developed the Shard, has his own table in the restaurant on floor 32.
He must only be following the reasoning of Guy de Maupassant, who often ate lunch in the Eiffel Tower. Wikipedia says this.
Maupassant was but one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians who did not care for the Eiffel Tower; indeed, he often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of any preference for the food, but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile.
So does Irvine Sellar feel like that about the monstrous Shard?
Clerkenwell Design Week
This week is Clerkenwell Design Week.
There’s still two more days if you want to have a look.
More CERN Photos
There are more CERN photos uploaded here to Flickr by other visitors from our Liverpool University Alumni Relations group.
I Don’t Dip In Olive Oil Anyway
This piece of EU legislation reported on the BBC must be the silliest. Here’s the first paragraph.
The European Commission is to ban the use of refillable bottles and dipping bowls of olive oil at restaurant tables from next year.
From 1 January 2014, restaurants may only serve olive oil in tamper-proof packaging, labelled to EU standards.
The Commission, the EU’s executive branch, says the move will protect consumers and improve hygiene.
It won’t improve my hygiene, as I’ve never anything in dipped olive oil and as very few places serve gluten-free bread, it will affect me about as much as the EU saying restaurants couldn’t use light blue tablecloths.
It’s ideas like this that mean UKIP and the other silly parties all over Europe prosper.
Let’s have some serious legislation that says that all restaurants must have a gluten free policy, shown on the menu.
By The River Rhone And Lac Leman
You’re never far from water in Geneva.
I tried to get a picture of the sun creating a rainbow in the fountain, but I failed.
Note that I have called the lake Lac Leman. My father said that he lived in the city for some time, when he worked at the League of Nations. He may or may not have worked there, but he was particular, that it was called Lac Leman. According to a friend, locals always call it thus. In some ways my father was secretive about his past, but the more I find, the more his tales ring true.
Geneva’s Flower Clock
This is apparently famous.
Geneva’s Flower Clock
I couldn’t get any good pictures as there were always masses of Asian tourists in front of it.
Around The Hotel
The hotel was close to the cathedral in the Old City and there were plenty of bars and restaurants.
The restaurant was just round the corner.
It was all very convenient.
Clear Naming Of Roads
Nearly every road in Geneva seemed to have a clear sign like this.
Clear Naming Of Roads
Coming from London, which has a similar policy, it annoys me, when I go places, where street names are non-existent.
It certainly made Geneva easy to navigate.
A Lost Bus!
This old bus was parked near the station in Geneva.
A Lost Bus!
Bonnybridge appears to be near Falkirk in Scotland.
CERN Humour
Research establishments are serious places, but it doesn’t mean they are humourless ones.
CERN Humour
When I worked at ICI’s Research Establishment on Runcorn Heath, the big joke was signs using the newly discovered Dymo machine in mock German.
When I was at Liverpool University in the mid-1960s, the old cyclotron that James Chadwick had built pointed towards the mound on which the Catholic Cathedral has now been built. One wag told me, that they weren’t going to floodlight the cathedral, as it would glow in the dark.
I heard a similar remark on Saturday.
The Anonymous Widower 