The Station Is Rising At Custom House Station
Some of the supports for the Crossrail station at Custom House have now been erected.
I met two Laing O’Rourke engineers, who were working on the project on the bridge and they said that in three months, a lot of the station will have been assembled.
They also said that the finish of the concrete was much better having been built in a factory than if it had been made on site.
Badgers Are More Important To MPs Than Stephen Lawrence
Ann Treneman in her parliamentary sketch in The Times was discussing badger day at Westminster.
She said that the Chamber was full of wildlife of another sort: at least three times more MPs showed up yesterday than for last week’s statement on Stephen Lawrence.
Do You Tip In Coffee Shops?
This article on the BBC web site talks about tipping in coffee shops and especially digital tipping in Starbucks in the US. Here’s the first paragraph.
Starbucks has modified its mobile phone app so that US customers can add tips for baristas to their bill. Is it normal to tip in coffee shops in the US – and could it catch on in the UK, asks Tom Geoghegan?
I usually tip if staff are pleasant and quick, often if it’s just a coffee, by throwing a twenty pence coin in the pot deliberately. I’ve only done this since I had the stroke and moved to London, so I wonder if it is my brain, saying here’s a little hand-eye co-ordination test that’s good for you! Although, I only do the action with my right hand and not my gammy left one!
In cafes, where I sit down and have a meal, I always pay by cash and leave the appropriate tip in change. I’ve found that in places I use regularly, this means that at busy times, the staff jump me up the queue and I get better tables.
Swastikas Everywhere
There is this article about the traditional use of swastikas on the BBC web site. Here’s the first paragraph.
Swastika. The word is a potent one. For more than one billion Hindus it means “wellbeing” and good fortune. For others, the cross with arms bent at right angles will forever symbolise Nazism. Yet England is seemingly awash with swastikas. Why?
I first came across their use in perhaps 1963. Several of us at Minchenden Grammar School were looking at old school magazines from the 1920s and 1930s. We were surprised to see swastikas used to separate paragraphs in some of the articles, in just the same way that you might use asterisks today.
I remember asking my father, who was a letterpress printer about this and he said it was common to use swastikas for this purpose before the symbol’s adoption by the Nazis. But he also said, nobody used it now, so he’d sent all his swastikas to be melted down, as they weren’t needed any more.
Ruin Lust At The Tate Britain
I saw this exhibition at Tate Britain, when I went to see the Richard Deacon exhibition a few days ago.
Today, Ruin Lust is reviewed in the Standard by their respected art critic, Brian Sewell. He says this.
But what is? Any ordinary bloke unwise enough to chance £10 on this exhibition will depart baffled and bewildered.
And he continues in the sane vein.
The Guardian describes it as a brilliant, but bonkers exhibition.
The Times calls it a fetishist take on property porn and gives it two stars.
I actually thought that both exhibitions, had a touch of the emporer’s new clothes about them.
Is Islington Council Run By Labour Or Sainsburys?
As I walked past Islington Town Hall today, there was a guy outside holding up a placard, bearing the title of this post.
Is Islington Council Run By Labour Or Sainsburys?
As I’m not an Islington resident and don’t know too much about the intracacies of the local politics, I was a bit baffled. Especially, as it seemed to be a one man protest.
I did find this story on the Islington Tribune site, so it could be about converting the cop shop in Highbury into a Sainsburys
Cauliflower Cheese Like My Mother Didn’t Use To Make!
I like cauliflower and as a child, my mother used to make cauliflower cheese quite often. So when I saw Lindsey Bareham’s recipe for a good cauliflower cheese, I just had to make it.
I started by cutting up a medium sized cauliflower into florets and grated about a 100 grams of cheddar cheese.
Cauliflower And Grated Cheese
I also took two sliced of Genius gluten-free bread, which after decrusting, I mixed with some grated parmesan in my Little Chopper.
Making Breadcrumbs
The cauliflower was cooked in boiling salted water and then drained and placed in one of my Le Creuset dishes.
Cooked Cauliflower
I then made a sauce by melting 25 grams of butter in a saucepan and adding 75 grams of gluten-free flour, a teaspoon of English mustard, about 100 grams of the water from the cauliflower and 200 ml. of milk. When it boiled, I simmered it for 5 mins and then stirred in the cheddar until it melted. It was then poured over the cauliflower.
Cauliflower In Cheese Sauce
Then the breadcrumb mix was added over the top, with a couple of knobs of butter.
Ready For The Oven
I then cooked it for 20 minutes in the oven at 220°C.
Cauliflower Cheese
I did make a mistake and cooked it at 240°C, so it was slightly over-cooked, but it was certainly very tasty. I’d also added slightly more mustard than recommended, but that was probably better to my taste.
It was very definitely, a good cauliflower cheese. I shall be cooking it again!
Heston Blumenthal Does Kettles
I needed to buy a new kettle, as my previous one had developed a non-opening lid. I eventually bought this one that had been branded by Heston Blumenthal.
I doubt he designed it, but it suits my purposes, as I have a low spout on my cold water tap, which means that this petite kettle is ideal for my atrociously designed kitchen.
It’s also lighter than my previous one. The only problem is that it could be a bit small, for some purposes like making pasta, where I tend to boil a large kettle of water rather than boil it in the saucepan.
Nationwide Updates It’s On-Line Banking
Nationwide has brought in a new on-line banking web site, which seems to go some of the way to meet some of my objections about lack of information.
As an example, I’d setup a single payment to pay a credit card bill for the 13th March. Until the start of this week, the money would have been debited from my account at midnight and marked in my account by an anonymous entry, just giving out how much I’d paid. But this morning, the money had gone from my account and the entry gave full details about the transaction.
So Nationwide seems to be getting closer to my ideal of a money transfer company, where I can collect all my incoming payments and organise all of my outgoings.
Not Everything Goes Up!
I’ve just got my new Council Tax bill. There is no change for Hackney and the London charge has actually fallen by -1.3%, which means my total bill comes down by 0.3%.
Not much, but all contributions are respected.
The Anonymous Widower 