The Definitive View From The New Bus For London
I travelled up to the Angel this morning on a New Bus for London. I sat at the back downstairs looking behind, as depending on what bus fell in behind, I might have made a change.
In the end I had a quick chat with the driver/conductor and he described an incident that could have been serious, due to the ill-thought-out behaviour of a group of pedestrians.
It strikes me that as these buses get more numerous, they might actually improve the safety of pedestrians, if feedback from these all-seeing driver/conductors was fed into the system and this led to better pavements and crossing points in the places, where near misses have been observed.
Job Scam – Hyde Park Hotel Revisited
In February 2010, I put up a post called Job Scam – Hyde Park Hotel. I’ve checked the hotel on Trip Advisor and there entry is here. it looks very little different to many hotels of this type in london.
My original post has since had a life of its own, if you look at the over a hundred comments on the site. And it is still regularly visited with page counts of
2010 – 1032
2011 – 541
2012 – 275
in the last three years.
It looks like the e-mails are starting to find mugs again, as I’ve had a couple of extra comments on the original post in the last couple of days.
This time though a figure of £210 is mentioned. So it’s obviously a worthwhile scam for those perpetrating it.
Testing My Own INR
I’ve now been testing my own INR for a couple of weeks now.
Except for my problems with the manual, my biggest problem has been pricking my finger with the Softclix device, to get a drop of blood to put on the machine.
In the end today, I resorted to taking the top off the device and just stabbing the tip of my finger with the lancet. I got a perfect drop of blood, which gave me a good reading with no errors.
I told Roche and they’re sending a new Softclix device.
On the other hand, I’ve had no problems with the Coaguchek device itself.
Where Are All The Women In The FTSE 100?
The Standard asked this question last night in an article. All of the usual reasons are given and never being at boardroom level in a large company, I wouldn’t know why there are so few.
i do remember though at a dinner of the Ipswich law Society many years ago, the Education Officer or something like that of the Law Society getting up and saying that looking at the statistics of legal education, that by the turn of the millennium, there wouldn’t be any good male lawyers coming through.
i don’t have the statistics, but I know quite a few exceptional female lawyers who could have done well in business. so why do exceptional women choose certain professions like law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, but shun others like business and engineering?
Everybody has the right to a good career and exceptional people will succeed, wherever they go. So perhaps the problem is not the selection process, but the reasons why the various groups choose their particular career path.
I was interested to see that one of the women featured is Alison Cooper, the head of Imperial Tobacco. It’s not a job I would do on ethical grounds and I’m rather surprised that a woman has decided to do it. But she does like an odd cigar. As she has two daughters, I bet she gets a bit of stick about it.
History Repeats Itself
One of the classic tales about Ted Kid Lewis, is that late one night, he was walking home through the East End, after a function and he was set upon by four thugs. As he despatched the last into the gutter, he produced his visiting card and dropped it on the attacker.
And now a group of thugs have tried to nick Amir Khan‘s Range Rover in Birmingham! It’s reported here in the Telegraph.
In this attack, the report says that there were about six thugs, but then Amir had his brother, Haroon, who is another boxer with him.
Apparently, the thugs didn’t make a complaint to the Police.
What’s Happened To Me?
This is not a bad post, but I’ve changed over the last few weeks.
I think it is actually that I have got much more confident. Why I don’t know, but my confidence seemed to improve greatly, when I changed my doctor. Perhaps, it was the decisive act of changing or it could be that the new doctor has actually fixed a couple of my problems. I don’t know and I don’t care why!
But take today! I went for a lunchtime drink with my financial advisor and normally, I just have a drink and go. But today for some reason, I made the decision to stay behind and have the kedgeree. It was almost, as if I’ve got some sort of fear of the unknown and generally only eat in the same places.
Before and after lunch, I also found it easy to post to my blog and I wrote several complicated e-mails to people. It was almost as though something had unlocked in my brain. Strangely, this has happened before and also it happened before I had any stroke. I remember coming home after a glorious holiday in Malaysia and virtually vegetating for several months.
And then this afternoon, I felt I ought to see a show of some sort this evening. So I went up to the Angel to get a paper and checked what was on at the cinemas there. I noticed that Untouchable was on at 20:10 at the Vue. I didn’t expect I would go, so I bought myself a supper in Waitrose.
But I did go in the end and bought a Senior ticket for £7.10. It was in a new screen and a lot better than last time, I went to that cinema.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Coming out I also solved my friend’s dress problem. Or at least in my mind, I got a plan of action! She will hate my solution, but it has to be tried.
In some ways this extreme decisiveness started on Saturday, when my son told me to go down to John Lewis and check out carpets. But I’d already gone to Primrose Hill to sort out bathroom suites, as requested by my builder.
I might have a theory that works.
I think by nature I’m a man who likes to be ordered around and people have always used that to get the best of my brain. There’s nothing more I like, than to be presented with a problem and told to go and solve it. Living alone, I don’t get that stimulus!
C didn’t take advantage of me, but would get into a flap all the time, knowing that I’d rescue her from her predicament, often with an unusual solution. I remember one day, she was in a very sour mood, as she was doing a very difficult and disturbing case for the local County Council, where the other side was represented by a QC. What made her angry as well, was that she had the difficult side and the QC was getting three or four times she was. So I asked, what would happen if they got a QC on their side? She said that the Council wouldn’t pay. I said why not and all her barrister’s insecurities kicked in and she said they were mean and wouldn’t. But I said you had a good argument as the other side had a big gun and surely fairness should prevail, so I told her to ask. The Council capitulated and she was led by a real gentleman of a QC, who used all the work she had done and eventually won the case. Her clerk put in for the largest fee she ever earned and we had two weeks holiday on the result.
My problem now, if I have one, is to sustain this mood, which is not unlike the one I had that night in the Star at Lidgate, as we trawled through her problem.
It’s now just after midnight and I’m not tired. I’ve also only had one drink of half of cider all day, other than tea, coffee, milk and orange juice.
So it’s not the alcohol talking, as that’s long gone from my system.
Allergies
This chicken Provençal from Waitrose was rather nice.
Waitrose Chicken Provencal
But why can’t we have the allergy information on the front? That way, I wouldn’t need to pick up the package and turn it over.
Incidentally, this dish has fish in it. That surprised me, but it was defined as anchovy on the packet.
On the subject of allergies, Waitrose has brought out a range of chilled foods by Heston Blumenthal. All seemed to have added gluten. A pity really, as I recently heard of a sensitive coeliac, who went to his restaurant and had no problems.
Who Ate All The Kedgeree?
This board in the Fox pub on Paul Street by Old Street Tube station tells a tale.
Who Ate All The Kedgeree?
But who ate all the very nice kedgeree?
I did. And very nice it was too!
A Big Hole
This isn’t typical, but I did find this hole in a slice of Genius gluten-free bread.
A Big Hole
It was nice bread though.
An Incident On A Bus
I was on a bus this morning, when a couple tried to get on without paying. They seemed to produce an old ticket claiming it had been issued earlier. But obviously, this didn’t fool the driver and he said no.
After a minute or so everyone on the bus started to get a bit impatient ringing the bell and rumbling about moving on. But the couple stood their ground.
it was then that the two biggest passengers on the bus moved forward to try to support the driver and sort the impasse. One was a stockily-built, fifty year old or so, white man in a suit and the other was a much younger, tall black man in jeans and a cotton jacket.
Faced with this irresistible force, the couple got off and possibly waited for another bus.
I was sitting next to a rather slight young lady and remarked that luckily you don’t see that too often. She agreed and we both wished each other well, as we got off a couple of stops later.
Perhaps we should have all cheered, but I think we thought that discretion was the better part of valour.
So, in the end, no-one or nothing was hurt, except perhaps the couple’s pride.
The Anonymous Widower 