The Anonymous Widower

Gluten Free in Greece

In some ways being gluten-free in Greece is easy.  On my recent trip, I found several restaurants that could do me an excellent gluten-free meal.

I had no trouble in Athens, Syros or Mykonos and Tinos for lunch, but it turned a bit dodgy on Sunday evening on the last island.

I think it was partly due to the early time in the season, but there wasn’t really any restaurants open on my last night in Greece.  As I was catching an early boat in the morning, back to Athens, I skipped supper.  It didn’t really matter, as I’d had a large moussaka, for lunch.  As I didn’t have any reaction to it,  I can assume it was safely gluten-free, as the owner had assured me. And as moussaka should be!

It was on the boat this morning that I was reduced to drinking coffee and eating jce cream again, as that was all that was safe. There was no fruit, but I did have two bananas with me, that were the only gluten-free snack in the supermarket at Tinos.

At Rafina I got a bus to the airport and bought a ticket to London on easyJet, as it was a quarter of the cost of a BA one. But there was nothing that wasn’t gluten-free at the airport.  Not even any chocolate or fruit.

Since I last few easyJet a few years ago, their menu has broadened, but not in the gluten-free area, although on some flights there are halal and kosher dishes.  I have a feeling one of the latter might be gluten-free, but it didn’t say so.

In the end it didn’t really matter, as I was home around six and had plenty of time to pop to Carluccio’s in Upper Street.

I think next time, I need some sun, I’ll go to Italy.

On previous trips, I’ve often bought sesame biscuits and I can buy them in my local deli.  But I didn’t see any anywhere! Why?

March 28, 2011 Posted by | Food, Transport/Travel | , , , | Leave a comment

Why Does Anybody Use Gatwick?

To get to Athens, I used the 9:00 easyJet flight out of Gatwick. It was a mistake in that to get this flight I needed to leave home about seven to get the train to the airport. For a similar flight to Heathrow or Stansted, it would have been a little bit later.

To make matters worse no-one seemed to be able to tell me what ticket I needed, as of course I can get to the Zone 6 Boundary on my Freedom Pass. As also finding the right platform at London Bridge or Victoria is a nightmare, I decided to take Thameslink from St. Pancras. In theory it should have worked well, but because of the miles you have to walk in the tunnels at King’s Cross, I missed one train and had to wait twenty minutes. I suspect the designer of the new King’s Cross was some sort of sadist, as although it may have more capacity, it defintely puts you off changing trains at the station. I had hoped to catch a 56 to City Thameslink from home, but they had gone missing.

And then of course the train was delayed coming into London Bridge, so I got to Gatwick a few minutes late.

I checked in reasonably quickly and security wasn’t too bad.  But if I’d had to take my shoes or belt off, I’d have thought seriously about abandoning flying again.  I was only carrying one back-pack and I wouldn’t with anything more.

I was fairly late for the gate and it was queues and no seating, when I got through the last check. 

But we did get away from Gatwick just a few minutes late.

Let’s face it, if I fly again, I’m not going out of Gatwick.

March 23, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | 6 Comments

Off to Athens

I’m just leaving for Athens for a few days.

We’ll see how it goes!

March 22, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel, World | , | 1 Comment

The Times Saturday Magazine.

I usually read this from cover-to-cover as I take the train to the football, like I did on last Saturday.

It had two particularly good articles, that I will highlight here.

Melanie Reid was on her usual top form and was particularly annoyed that her story had been hijacked by the Christian Right. I prefer to call them the Christian Wrong, as when it comes to moral philosophy, any that calls itself right, is probably not open to criticism from a scientific-correctness point-of-view.  If Jesus did exist, and in my view if he did, he was just one of a number of good moral philosophers that are always around, then he wouldn’t be on the right like Sarah Palin and the Mad Hatters.

Carol Midgley was ranting about airport duty-free shopping.  She was absolutely right and it should be banned. Many duty-free purchases are carried half-way round the world and how much carbon dioxide does this add to the atmosphere? You also have the madness that say Scotch Whisky is air-freighted to places like Hong Kong for sale in duty-free shops there and then bought by Scots and other UK residents for the flight back.

February 28, 2011 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , , , | 1 Comment

Hail the Hercules

The title of this post is pinched from The Meccano Magazine of the 1950s.  I used to get it every month and it was very much part of my education.  As an aside here, does anything similar still exist?  I doubt it and could this be why our engineering and scientific education perhaps isn’t what it should be.

One particular edition  described the then new Lockheed Hercules or C-130 to give it, its US military designation. This was probably in about 1954, as the Hercules made its first flight in that year.

Today it is reported that the UK government has some RAF Hercules in Malta to extricate British nationals from Libya. So yet again, a nation is turning to an ageing design for its emergency transport needs. The RAF used them in Dhaka to get British nationals out during the war that saw the birth of Bangladesh, get people and supplies to the Falklands and into Sarajevo and the Israelis famously used them at Entebbe.

There are some designs that are timeless and will probably always be with us.  The Hercules is definitely one.

February 24, 2011 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

The Jumbo Jet on Top Gear

I have been curious about the 747 Jumbo, that appears in the background of many of the scenes on Top Gear. I just wondered how it got there and I found the story of G-BDXJ on Wikipedia. It was originally called City of Birmingham.

Now, I had thought that a 747 of this name had been involved in the Jakarta Incident, where the aircraft lost all power because of volcanic dust from Mount Gulunggung.  But it was actually called City of Edinburgh and the story of the flight is one of my favourite books, called All Four Engines Have Failed by Betty Toothill, who had been a passenger on the flight. It is a marvellous study of adversity and how to come through it unscathed.

The captain of the aircraft, Eric Moody, will go down in history as giving the most understated  instructions as a disaster was unfolding.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.

We would all hope we could be so cool under pressure.

There is also a happy ending to the story, in that nobody was killed or even hurt. But also the author of the book, Betty Toothill got married to a fellow passenger.

This surely, is a story that deserves to be made into a film.

Sadly, I have lost my copy of the book.

February 13, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | | Leave a comment

Charges for Credit Cards

A super complaint is going to the Office of Fair Trading about excessive credit card charges by companies, such as budget airlines and on-line retailers.

The only time I’ve paid one lately was with theTrainLine. I don’t use them, as they overcharged me by £9.20 to get to York.

These charges should be banned, as if I use my card in Waitrose, Marks and Spencer, Carluccios or Pizza Express,  they don’t charge, so why should an airline or an on-line retailer?

February 11, 2011 Posted by | Business, Finance & Investment, Transport/Travel | , , | 2 Comments

What Is The Best Time To Buy Train Tickets?

On the 3rd of February, I’m going up to York to see my old boss.  The idea was to take the 10:00 from King’s Cross and then take the  19:35 back home after a meal and a chat.

So booking the ticket shouldn’t have been too difficult, especially as I tried to book the ticket on the 18th of January, sixteen days before travel.

I tried several times to book direct on the East Coast web site, but for some reason I couldn’t get an acceptable fare. The day before, I hadn’t had any problems and was rather surprised.

I should also say that I don’t like booking through agents and always prefer to deal with the company itself.  It all stems from an incident many years ago, when I was going round the United States and had booked on British Airways to fly to New York and then two days later on a direct flight in Continental from Boston to Houston.  The ticket agent at BA had told me that I would have to confirm the second flight in New York, as it was the only direct flight of the day and could be fully booked. As instructed I went into a travel agent in New York,  and was told that BA had made a mistake and booked me on a non-existent flight.  But no matter, he could book me by Atlanta on Delta.

But it didn’t just go by Atlanta, but virtually every other city in the eastern part of the United States.  I ended up in Houston, as a piece of chewed string at three in the morning.  But the travel agent had got his commission!

A few days later I flew Continental to Los Angeles.  I asked about the changed flight and the gate staff checked and found that the flight from Boston had run as normal and for my trouble they upgraded me to First.

So after the unsuccessful attempts to buy on East Coast, I looked at Grand Central, who also run trains on the route.  For the times, I wanted to travel, they were actually offering me tickets on East Coast.  So in the end I turned to the TrainLine and booked tickets at £24.10 up and £18.80 down, which was an acceptable price. I did pay a booking fee of £1.00 and a credit card fee of £3.50 on top, which I always find unacceptable.  I’m pretty certain, that East Coast don’t add miscellaneous charges. I also didn’t like the attitude of the TrainLine web site, which seemed to expect me to sign up to all sorts of dubious spam-producing loyalty offers.  In my view there is only one decent loyalty scheme on UK trains and that is Virgin’s, where if you enter your Virgin Flying Club number, you get a few extra points. Totally painless and they don’t spam.

Imagine my surprise though when on the next day, I tried out of curiosity to see what I would be charged on East Coast.  I could go up for £21.45 and down for £16.75 on the same trains, as I’d booked the previous day.

So if I’d waited 24 hours, I’d have saved £9.20.  Not a great deal of money, but I don’t like being ripped off by agents.

So why had I been unable to book direct on the 18th of January?

The obvious ones are.

  1. A fault on my computer.
  2. A bug on the East Coast web site. 
  3. Too many people trying to book overloading the web site.

I could also be paranoid and might suggest that the East Coast web site, was being deliberately overloaded by person or persons unknown.  I should say that a friend was also trying to book an Edinburgh London ticket at about the same time and she had similar problems to those I had of being unable to buy a ticket at a sensible price.

Since then, I’ve been looking at the East Coast web site and seeing what I would pay for the two tickets. Prices are as follows.

  • 20-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 21-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 22-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 23-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 24-January £25.85/£16.75
  • 25-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 26-January £39.15/£32.50
  • 27-January £28.35/£24.45
  • 28-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 29-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 30-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 31-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 1-February £25.85/£21.45
  • 2-February £25.85/£21.45
  • 3-February £57.80/£57.80

This simple example is showing that booking about two weeks before should give one of the best prices.  I shall continue to add more data to this table, to get a more definitive answer.

But whatever you do book direct! And judging by the last figure, when I attempted to book on the day of travel, the last minute option is not on, although I think that if I’d booked in the evening of the 2nd, I’d have got a better price!

Incidentally, when I went to Cambridge on Tuesday, I tried to book a ticket online at First Capital Connect.  They referred me to the TrainLine.  So I bought the ticket at the station.

January 27, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 2 Comments

Flying The Queensland Coast

When C and I flew around Australia, one of the highlights of the flying was to take the plane off the Barrier Reef from Dunk Island and fly down to Brisbane. 

It was a long flight of about eight hours and it was necessary to refuel the aircraft half-way.  There were two choices; Rockhampton and Mackay. Rockhampton, which features in the floods as I write and reminded me of this story, was a little early, so I decided to use Mackay.

The flying was wonderful, as we at about eight thousand feet following the coast at a speed of about `120 or so knots.  We were also one of the few planes in the air, as the Australian airline pilots  were on strike, so there were no airliners at all.

Mackay welcomed us with open arms and the two refuelling companies almost fought to give us the best service.  We even ordered snacks over the radio on final approach.

In the end, we were on the ground for perhaps fifteen minutes on the one and only time I set foot in that part of Queensland.

January 1, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

The Worst Beer I Ever Had

As a coeliac, I don’t drink beer, except for the occasional one from Green’s which is gluten free. 

However watching the cricket from Australia has reminded me how bad their beer is.  When I went to Australia with C, I hadn’t been diagnosed as a coeliac, but as a proper man from Suffolk, I only drunk real ale and of course in a country like Germany, their real lager.  So I think virtually before we got to Australia, I had decided that I’d stick to the excellent wines and totally ignore the Fosters and the other products of chemical works.

I was also piloting an aircraft around the country, so obviously safety was paramount and alcohol was low down on my priorities.

I was  tempted once to have a beer and that was in a five-star hotel in Alice Springs. It was in a can, which is not the right place for any alcoholic drink anyway and called a Red Centre.

It was so bad, I gave up after perhaps a third of a glass.  I remember C was very surprised, as she always felt I could drink anything.

Talking of beers in cans, my father used to drink something called Long Life, which was a beer in the 1960s, that they said was brewed specifically for the can.  I did have a few at the time and the taste was not unlike the Green’s gluten-free beer I drink now., but rather gassy, with a chalky aftertaste. A good way to lose money would be to start brewing Long Life again, but then never underestimate beer drinkers’ taste.  Just advertise it a lot.

Incidentally, I’ve never drunk, anything like Fosters or Carling.  Trying Watney’s Red Barrel in the 1960s put me off that sort of so-called beer for life. But then I always had Adnams, Greene King, Youngs or Fullers on hand in Suffolk or London.

December 26, 2010 Posted by | Food, Transport/Travel, World | , , , | 2 Comments

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