Carliuccio’s Gluten-Free Offering Gets Wider
I had to go to Addenbrooke’s today and as no-one could bring me home as it was a late appointment, I decided to go to Carluccio’s in Cambridge before and have a decent lunch.
They have added some good soups to the menu, by making the standard ones gluten-free and deleting the bread. In other words they hit both markets. I followed it with veal with a caper and tuna mayonnaise. It wasn’t on the gluten-free menu but it was on the specials and gluten-free. Veal may not be to everyone’s taste, but it was very good.
So they seem to be making a statement about how to serve coeliacs.
Troubles on the Newmarket Cambridge Line
Although the day ended well with a good meal at Lorenzo, Friday started badly as I tried to get into Cambridge from Dullingham. I had intended to catch the 11:20, but when I got to the station, the signalman said that the train wasn’t coming as someone had been hit by a train. So I got my carer to drive me back home, where I did some productive work.
I was also watching the trains on the Internet, but it wasn’t until 15:20, that I was able to get the train into Cambridge, before changing for London. This meant that I had to fight my way across London in the rush hour to get to Anerley, near to where my friends live.
I thought it would be better coming back tonight, but the train was fifteen minutes late out of Cambridge. This time it was due to signalling problems. At least I had a friendly taxi-driver from Crystal Cars to take me home.
The taxi driver told me that the accident on Friday had been the suicide of the mother of someone who had been hit by a train at the same point a few weeks ago.
So very sad!
The Elephant Man
This fascinating tale about the war in Burma has just been saved for posterity. It is now safe in the hands of Cambridge University.
They had the widow of one of the men he saved on the television last night, who filled in a few more details.
I can see a film being made of this tale. It’s the lure of the elephants! After all isn’t the most loved film made by Michael Winner, Hannibal Brooks?
And after all we haven’t had a film starring elephants for many years!
Stagecoach’s View on the Cambridge Busway
I took this picture yesterday.
Will I be on the busway soon?
A Slow Bus from Cambridge to Ipswich
After the film, I did a bit of window shopping in Cambridge and then had lunch in Carluccio’s before catching the four o’clock bus to Haverhill, where I was going to get the coach at six o’clock to Ipswich for the football.
The weather was atrocious and it was almost pleasant to be at the front on the top of a warm 13 bus, as it meandered its way through the villages to Haverhill. At least, I had a little shelf in front of me, which allowed me to do the Sudoku.
Haverhill though is not the place to spend an hour at five ‘oclock on a very wet Tuesday afternoon. There was no cafe open and the one or two pubs that were looked very much like the places I would only visit in direst need. The rain looked friendlier! I walked up to Tesco’s as I needed a banana and a juice with which to take my Warfarin. They did have single bananas, but I couldn’t find any small drinks of juice or smoothies. As everything was in litre bottles or larger, I decided that it would be better to try elsewhere. I got what I wanted in the Co-op. But they didn’t have a gluten-free section, so my thought of buying a packet of suitable biscuits went out the window. Tesco’s did have a gluten-free section, but it was rather poor, with no nice biscuits. I did ask in the Co-op about gluten-free and they said it had been successful, so they stopped it.
So supper consisted of some sandwiches, I’d made before I left, some chocolate, a smoothie, a banana and a 5mg. Warfarin tablet.
The coach from Haverhill to Ipswich was probably the fastest part of the journey as the weather seemed to have kept the crowd very much below what I would have expected.
Made In Dagenham
I’ve not been to the cinema alone much, but as I had a day to fill, I went to see Made in Dagenham at the 11:30 showing in the Arts Picture House in Cambridge. I thought that it would be rather empty, but there were a total of sixteen in one of the smaller screens. I think the last time, I was in front of that screen, was when I saw the films of Mitchell and Kenyon with C, about six years ago.
It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. I remember the strike in 1968, that the film is all about and they catch the period well. Miranda Richardson gets Barbara Castle well and in some ways steals a lot of the film.
If you’ve seen the poster for the film, you’ll see Sally Hawkins in an iconic red Biba dress. C had one like that but her’s was shorter and came from Through the Looking Glass in Mount Pleasant in Liverpool. This was a boutique that had been started by a member of the Scaffold. I can’t find any references to the boutique on the Internet.
The Corner House, Newmarket Road, Cambridge
After the CT Scan, I was dropped at the Park and Ride in Cambridge and took the bus into the city centre. I had the intention of seeing the film, Made in Dagenham before going to see Ipswich play Northampton in the evening.
This pub caught my eye from the bus and you can see why in the picture.
The Corner House Pub, Cambridge
You probably can’t see it in this small photo, but under the “Home Cooked Food” banner, it also says “Including Gluten Free”.
Now I’ve never seen any establishment, broadcast that fact in so large letters. Certainly, if you were looking for a gluten-free meal and you were driving past, you’d take notice and might try it. They do have a web site.
Perhaps, the message is getting through.
Nottingham to Newmarket
This is one of those journeys that works, but because od the limited services in East Anglia, it takes a lot longer than it should. I got a direct train to Ely, but then it was another train to Cambridge and then another to Newmarket. But everything was on time and I met the booked taxi, which got me home about four hours after I left Nottingham.
At least though the train wasn’t very crowded after Grantham and I just sat there reading.
I did have to wait for perhaps twenty minutes at Ely and forty at Cambridge but it wasn’t cold and I had an excellent cappuccino from AMT at Cambridge.
So how could this jouney have been better?
East Anglia to the Midlands and the North needs more and bigger trains. At present we have Stansted/Cambridge-Birmingham (hourly) and Liverpool/Manchester-Norwich (3-hourly) , all of which pass through Ely and Peterborough. In addition, there is an hourly service from Ipswich to Peterborough. But even so, it is just not enough!
The trains that connect to these long distance services are not big enough either. At least today, I got a two-coach, Class 156, to and from Cambridge, but sometimes it is just a decrepit single coach, Class 153.
I ope this all gets sorted out in the next few years. But whatever happens, we need some bigger and better trains. But then as long as I can remember, East Anglia has always had evrybody else’s hand-me-downs.
Dullingham to Nottingham
I actually left fromy my local station at Dullingham, rather than my return destination of Newmarket as it was easier to get to at 9:15 in the morning. The cost of the return ticket is the same at £27.65 from both stations, so ticketing was not a problem.
To get to Nottingham was a double change at both Cambridge and Leicester. This is one of the problems about getting trains from East Anglia to the rest of the country. Nothing is ever straightforward unless you drive to either Ely or Peterborough first and I can’t drive at present.
The second problem is that the East Anglia to Midlands and North trains are just too small. The train was very crowded all the way to Leicester from Cambridge, but luckily I had a seat by the window. After Leicester I was in one of the larger Meridean expresses to Nottingham.
Everything otherwise was fine and I arrived in Nottingham just a few minutes over three hours after I’d started my journey, which was as should have been expected.
The only problem I had, was that the station information at Leicester wasn’t up to the standard I usually find and I could have missed my connection, if I hadn’t guessed right. It probably wouldn’t have been serious, as there are quite a few trains between Leicester and Nottingham. But what if I’d been going the other way, where missing the connection would mean a sizeable wait.
I’d never been to Leicester on a train before today, which is surprising, as in the past I’ve used trains to quite a few cities in the Midlands. I sometimes wonder if I’ve got a thing about the city, as it was one of the last trips C did by train for her business. She had just finished the radiotherapy for her breast cancer and had gone there by train and she then took a train to London to see a friend sworn in as a judge. Except for the odd trip to London, I don’t think she ever went on a train again. I also remember that I’d been to see Ipswich lose at Leicester. the day before she told me, that she had breast cancer. So perhaps it is a town for me to avoid! Although they do have a Carluccio’s there now, so at least the food will be good.
The Cambridge Busway Approaches the Station
As I retirned to the station on the top deck of the bus, I was able to get a good view of the busway as it approached the station from the south, alongside the railway lines to London.
Cambridge Busway to the South of the Station
If it ever gets finished it will make getting to Addenbrooke’s from the station a lot easier.
But then they have to finish the bridge, which should have been completed months ago.
More Delays for the Busway
The sign says that there will be delays until well into the New Year!
It’s not just the quality of the planning on this important project that worries me, it’s the attention to detail in the design and the defects that seem to keep arising. As I said before this project was designed for the lawyers.
The Anonymous Widower 