Folding Stools at the British Museum
I saw these clever folding stools in the British Museum yesterday.
Folding Stools at the British Museum
I like these, as they are a simple design, that does what is needed without fuss. I didn’t use one, as I’m not that decrepit yet!
We need good design and the jobs it creates to get us out of the hole, that the clueless wunch of bankers dug for us.
Customer Service – IKEA Style
I like their products but their customer service has an eccentric style all of its own. In my view, it’s crap. Or to be honest, very crap!
I had identified that to solve some of the problems in the kitchen, I needed a nice wall-mounted spice rack. After briefly flirting with the idea of using a design promoted by a well-known celebrity chef, I decided that the IKEA on in their Grundtal range was ideal. The way it was mounted on a rail, also meant that if I found a better solution, the rail could be used to hold something else.
I started out late morning by going to IKEA at Edmonton. It is a surprisingly easy journey from where I live, as a 341 bus from a stop about a hundred metres away drops me outside the door of their store. I found the spice rack on the wall and confirmed it was what I wanted.
But it was out of stock!
So I bought a few pieces and came home.
I should say that I tried to order the spice rack from their website, but it is for buying in-store only. And the only store I could find it locally, was the one at the home of the infamous, Sid and Doris Bonkers; Neasden. IKEA call it Wembley to be a bit up-market, but that area has always been Neasden for me.
At least the web site was showing that eleven or so were in stock, so I took a chance and went, using the 38 bus to get to Green Park and then a Jubilee Line train to the dreaded Neasden. A badly misspelled sign at the station, directed me to walk to IKEA down the side of the railway, alongside the North Circular Road and then over a high footbridge. Light-controlled crossings were non-existent and in at least two places crossing of minor roads was dangerous to say the least.
Welcome to IKEA.
Well not quite yet, as you had to find the entrance and that was very much hidden behind the car park. Alright if you can drive, but then I can’t.
It took me only a couple of minutes to find out that there are lies, damned lies and statistics on IKEA’s website.
So I’d wasted three hours on a wild spice rack chase.
And then of course, IKEA has no quick exit, so they delayed me even longer.
After perhaps twenty minutes wait, at a bus-stop with no information, I got a bus to Harlesden and a train home on the North London Line.
I did find the bin I wanted for my kitchen, or at least the base of it. But it was one of the shop bins and they were not for sale.
This surely is the worst customer service experience I have had in my life.
I still want that spice rack, so if anybody finds one or wants to sell me their’s I’m on!
To add insult to injury, it is now shown as being available at Edmonton.
More Bad Design
I paid a lot of money for my Simple Human bin and although it ticks a few boxes, it doesn’t tick the one for good design.
A Bad Design of Bin
The biggest problem is that it doesn’t fit the standard size of bag you get from any British shop in a roll. You can buy special ones, but then that is a waste of money and I can’t buy them locally. So if you’re designing something to be sold in the UK, then design it for the British market. My previous kitchen was so much better, with a hole in the chopping board.
Perhaps a better design, would be to have a strong cylindrical metal bin, which was designed to take the standard UK swing bin liner. It would have a wooden top, with a stopper in the middle, so that the tea-bag juggle was easy. The top wouldn’t be a heavy chopping board, but it could be used for a certain amount of light work, when say you were cutting vegetables or peeling onions. You then lift the stopper and puh the rubbish through. The top would be small enough to be able to be properly washed in the sink.
I actually have a prototype in the house in that my linen basket is almost this design, with a metal cylinder and a wooden top.
A Miller of Sweden Linen Basket
But of course it doesn’t have a stopper, but the basic design is there. I even use the hole to put my underwear and socks into the basket.
You could even make it a double decker bin, with an unlined bottom bin for dry recyclables like paper and beer bottles. This would also get the chopping board top up to worktop height.
I want one! And I want it now! If I don’t get one, I’ll have a fit!
Cash Point Machines
I do have a couple of issues with cash point machines, in that Some touch screens are a bit difficult to see and operate for me and I don’t like new £20 notes, as in one incident I gave someone forty by mistake and got the change for twenty.
on a rainy daya couple of weeks ago, I was passing Nationwide at the Angel and needed some money, so I went inside. They had installed a new machine inside and I found it a lot easier to use. It was also placed by a row of seats, so I could sit down, whilst I separated the £20 notes and buried them in the depths of my backpack.
So now, if I’m in that area, I’ll always go to that branch of my bank, Nationwide, if I need some cash. It may not be in their interest, as now I’ll get twenty or thirty out several times a week, instead of perhaps one lot of two hundred. But I do know, that I can do everything safely in the branch and don’t misplace my card, which I sometimes am wont to do.
As a comparison, I went into a friend’s bank with her and it wasn’t relaxed at all and there was nowhere to sit.
I had thought, that it was just this Nationwide branch at the Angel, that was deliberately spacious. However, I’ve since used Moorgate and High Holborn and found similar, although not identical designs. In fact in High Holborn yesterday, with the rain being biblical outside, one of the staff was virtually offering the branch to anybody who came in, as a haven of rest.
So are we seeing a change in banks attitudes, where customers are higher up the priority list? Some banking adverts say so, but are they just words and not deeds?
The Bus Powered by a 2-Litre Diesel Engine
The 141 bus passes the end of my road, on its way to Wood Green, where my father’s print works used to be.
A 141 Bus to Wood Green
The route is partly operated by hybrid buses, some of which are Wright Gemini 2 HEVs, which are powered by the 2-litre diesel engine from a Ford Puma.
I’ve always been a bit suspicious of hybrid cars, but surely this bus must be more fuel-efficient, than a similar-sized traditional bus.
An interesting aside here is that the bus is also built without a chassis, partly to save weight and the company that builds these buses, the Wright Group, is family-owned in Northern Ireland.
So does innovation and good design flourish in companies which benefit from not being under the control of unimaginative shareholders and wunches of bankers?
Made 1960, Still Going Strong
My everyday cutlery is Sheba by Butler of Sheffield. It was time for a changeround of the pieces, so I took the chance of photographing most of it.
My Sheba Cutlery
There are a dozen or so other pieces, but they were in the dishwasher. For probably the several hundredth time for some of the knives.
This cutlery is really a good example of what design can do for something quite humble, like cutlery. This cutlery wasn’t designed to be thrown away, but to last a lifetime or perhaps as in my case outlast a marriage.
Missing the Hole in my Chopping Board
In my previous kitchen, I had chopping board with a hole in it fixed to the work surface. The hole had a turned stopper and underneath was the rubbish bin for food waste and things like tea bags. Now I have to have two separate bins for recycling or not and they take up much needed floor space. I also drip tea all over the floor, when I remove the tea bag.
I’ve never seen another kitchen with a chopping board with a hole in it. Every home should have one!
Cooking is Easy
I finally cooked something properly last night. It was one of my version of a Jamie Oliver fish pie.
It was actually easier than in my previous house, but mainly because the work surfaces were laid out better with respect to the sink and the cooker.
The only problem I had was getting the oven to work, as I have no instruction manual and I couldn’t find the type of Baumatic cooker, I have on their web site. There is no indication on the front of the cooker what model it is either. Incidentally, I have the same problem with an old television. It should be law that the model number is easily found and that manuals are on the Internet. It perhaps in one thing with a television, but cookers can be dangerous things, so perhaps they are a totally different matter.
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Little Things that Annoy Us All
I don’t exactly have a phobia about coat hangers, but all mine are the same simple wooden design, that holds shirts, suits and trousers without difficulty.
C used to take all her clothes on holiday still on their hangers and got annoyed if they had those clip in hangers that you couldn’t steal in hotels. They seem to be dying out in hotels, as possibly other customers feel like C did.
So it was with despair that I found that the wardrobes in this house have those awful abominations.
Those Abominable Hangers
So there was nothing left for it, but to take the rail down and reinstall it as a simple one. The hangers will go to a charity shop.
The Tale of Boughton’s Nail
In the late 1950s or early 1960s my father embarked on a major reconstruction of his printing works in Station Road, Wood Green. We ripped out large quantities of rubbish and covered the walls in corrugated asbestos sheets to hide the damp. It worked very well, but what would modern Health and Safety have said. At one point in our destruction we came across a cm. thick plank of wood, which someone had attempted to fix to a six by four beam with a six inch nail. As he didn’t have the strength to drive the nail home, this bodger had attempted to bend it flat. He’d failed. It was and probably still is, the worst bit of carpentry I’ve ever seen. I can remember that my fsther said it was probably done by a man called Boughton, who.d worked for the family firm some years previously. So to me whenever I see some really awful handiwork, I think of the unfortunate Boughton. Incidentally, I’ve never met anyone with that surname and I don’t know how I’ll react.
But perhaps one of his descendants did this?
A Very Bad Door Stop
The doorstop is too small and whoever put it in cracked the tiles and did a lot of damage. It’s even more stupid as just round the corner in the Balls Pond Road is one of the best shops for door furniture in London.
I do have a thing about door stops, as I was mugged by one in Belarus.
I shall be visiting the hardware store!
The Anonymous Widower 