My Useless John Lewis Credit Card Statement
I recently bought a winter coat in Marks and Spencer. The zip has gone, so I want to find the store, where I bought it, as I use several of the large ones in London regularly. I probably bought it with my John Lewis credit card, so all I need to find is a transaction at over a £100 for Marks and Spencer to get a date and store.
But I can only get the last statement as a spreadsheet, which just gives dates, values and not the store. It’s not even formatted to the sort of level, that a child of six could program.
Quite frankly it’s utter crap!
Unlike with Amex, which gives you everything you need to trace purchases, in an easy-to-read clickable format.
Do John Lewis expect me to keep paper copies of all my purchases?
Paper is so Nineteenth Century!
Marks And Spencer’s Gluten Free Food In Stations
I regularly travel by train and visit stations, outside of my normal patch of London. Once away from the capital, often the only substantial food I can get as I pass through the station are Marks and Spencer’s gluten-free sandwiches, a drink and perhaps some fruit.
At some stations, you can rely on gluten-free sandwiches being available most of the time. In this group would be.
Birmingham New Street, Cambridge, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Oxford and Reading
Then there are important interchange stations, where possibly unless you’re there before nine, there’s never any gluten-free sandwiches.
Cardiff, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Newcastle
The worst major station for gluten-free food is Nottingham. The food shop is a Morrison’s, which I’ve never used. To get any gluten-free food you need to go to the city centre, which is a long walk or a return on the tram.
Other stations to avoid if you’re a coeliac like me, are Blackpool, Derby, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Ipswich, Norwich, Middlesbrough and Preston.
The last two are places where it is very difficult to buy any gluten-free food at all.
Where Are The Honeycomb Crispies?
I found a honeycomb crispy in M & S in Liverpool Lime |Street station on Saturday.
It was delicious, but I haven’t managed to find any since. The picture was taken at one of the St. Pancras outlets.
Where Are The Honeycomb Crispies?
I can only assume that M & S haven’t matched supply to the demand.
I can’t even find any on the company’s web site.
Meandering Around Lancashire
Yesterday, I went to Ipswich Town’s disastrous match at Blackburn.
I went via Liverpool, as I had at one point intended to get a flight from Liverpool Airport to Poland on the Sunday to start one of my Home Runs.
But circumstances intervened and so I was left with only the first leg of my trip – A First Class ticket to Liverpool.
These pictures tell the story of my journey.
Note :-
- Norton Bridge Junction is The Two Hundred Million Pound Railway Project Of Which You’ve Probably Not Heard.
- Where were all the Class 319 trains in Liverpool? Only Northern Powerhouse was sitting forlornly in Platform 1! Normally, there’s half a dozen!
- The New Platform 7 at Liverpool Lime Street has been planned for years. And still nothing is happening.
- Blackburn station had no information on buses.
I’d actually taken six trains during the day.
- A Virgin Pendelino from Euston to Liverpool
- A Northern Rail Class 156 train from Liverpool to Wigan North Western
- A Virgin Pendelino from Wigan North Western to Preston
- A Northern Rail Class 156 train from Preston to Blackburn
- A Northern Rail Class 142 train from Blackburn to Preston
- A Virgin Pendelino from Preston to Euston
The trip up was by a roundabout route, but in some ways it illustrates the problems of trains in the area.
- Liverpool to Preston is fully electrified, but the service is run by diesels, although from Monday, it will be run by Class 319 electric trains on a half-hourly basis.
- As Preston to Blackpool is not electrified, usually the onward journey is a tired diesel.
- Preston to Blackburn and Burnley is not electrified and is generally run by antique Pacers and a few Class 156 trains.
- At the moment due to the Farnworth Tunnel problems, Manchester to Preston is not a journey for the faint-hearted.
Hopefully, it’ll all get better, when the Manchester to Preston via Bolton electrification is complete, but that won’t do anything from Preston to Blackpool, Blackburn and Burnley.
Whoever wins the new Northern Rail franchise is going to be mandated to buy 120 new carriages.
Surely, these should be Aventra IPEMUs and they should be used on these lines from or through Preston.
- Blackpool North to Hazel Grove
- Blackpool South To Colne
- Preston to Barrow
- Preston to Blackpool North
- Preston to Leeds via Blackburn, Bolton, Halifax and Bradford
- Preston to Manchester Victoria via Blackburn, Burnley and the Todmorden Curve.
- Preston To Ormskirk
- Preston to Windermere
They would probably be used on other lines in the area.
- Liverpool to Manchester via Warrington Central
- Manchester to Southport
These services might only need some platform lengthening, adjustments to track and signalling and a small amount of extra electrification.
The longest section that is not electrified is that between Preston and Bradford, which is probably less than sixty miles. If necessary the gap could be shortened by electrifying between Preston and say Rose Hill, where the Colne branch divides.
What surprises me, is that Bombardier haven’t created another demonstrator to prove the concept, just as they did at Manningtree.
Serial Cooking – Roast Sausage And Lentils With Wild Rocket And Cherry Tomatoes
This recipe is another from Lindsey Bareham in The Times.
The main ingredients, are 24 M & S gluten-free cocktail sausages, a 250g sachet of cooked lentils, 125g of sliced chorizo and 400g of cherry tomatoes.
It is exceedingly simple and is shown in these pictures.
It may be quick, but it’s gorgeous.
My First Pork Pie In Almost Twenty Years
It is just a couple of years short of twenty years since I was diagnosed as a coeliac and I have been gluten-free ever since.
Yesterday, I found some mini gluten free pork pies in Marks and Spencer.
The two of the four I’ve eaten were small and perfectly formed. They didn’t taste half bad either.
Bluewater Shopping Centre By Train
Out of curiosity, and because I needed to go shopping, I went to Bluewater Shopping Centre by train.
It probably wasn’t the best day to go, as there had been a freight train derailment at Charlton and I did have a terrible journey home, with a dreadful change at Waterloo East. Without the train derailment, I would have gone using the DRL to Woolwich Arsenal and then getting a train direct to Greenhithe, but I had to go via the dreaded Charing Cross, which was built in the wrong place for East London. After London Bridge station is complete, that will also be another easy route. One thing that would make trips to Bluewater easier for me, is if it was Freedom Pass territory., which only extends to Dartford two stations away.
Greenhithe is a interesting station, in that it was built in 2008 using a modular system, that has been used elsewhere.
I have included a picture of the excellent bus terminal at Bluewater, which is by the enormous Marks and Spencer.
The shuttle bus is the usual rigmarole of a paper ticket, rather than a siple touch of my bus pass. When will those outside London realise that you do ticketing with a contactless card these days and not the same technology my great-great-grandparents would have recognised from the nineteenth century. The journey is only short as this Google Map shows.
Greenhithe Station And Bluewater
Note that Greenhithe is the more Easterly of the two stations at the top of the map, which are both on the North Kent Line.
I do think that in the future, Greenhithe Station to Bluewater could be one of those places, where a spectacular high-tech people mover could be an attraction in its own right. I estimate the as the crow flies distance at under fifteen hundred metres.
By comparison the Emirates Air Line cable car in London is a kilometre, so this would be a virtually off-the-shelf solution. This Google Map show there is plenty of space around the station.
Greenhithe Station
It probably won’t happen, but I wouldn’t bet against it, especially if Bluewater goes in for a large expansion.
Carlisle
When I got to Carlisle it was nearly four and too late to go the long way back to Preston via the Settle and Carlisle Line to Leeds and then the Calder Valley Line.
I think to be fair, if I’d planned the trip better, I could have relied on getting the 16:18 to Leeds and then the 20:05 back to Preston. But the Calder Valley Line is probably best done with the scenery illuminated!
So I decided to have a walk round Carlisle city centre and then get one of the numerous fast trains back to Preston.
The centre is compact with most places you’d want to visit within easy walking distance of the station.
What surprised me was the very big Marks and Spencer, which unlike Preston had plenty of gluten-free food, including sandwiches. The shop was several times better than Preston. I can now understand why Preston was found to be the most unhealthy High Street in the UK.
Am I The Supermarkets Worst Customer?
There has been a lot of reports lately about misleading special offers in supermarkets, like this one in the Independent.
As I’m a 67-year-old widower living alone, who because I don’t drive, has to carry everything home from the supermarket, I only rarely buy any bogofs, but then only with something that doesn’t have sell-by date like washing tablets, soap, tissues or bottles of cider or olive oil.
If I’m cooking a casserole that needs one onion, one carrot, a leek and say two hundred grams of mince then that is what I buy.
I also have given up on fresh herbs and use the dried ones in pots , as I don’t like throwing the unused ones away.
As I regularly complain about the bags in Waitrose at the Angel, they must consider me a bad customer, especially as I usually enter with a half-full bag of bread, biscuits and lemonade from the Marks and Spencer next door.
On Your Marks For A Gluten Free Christmas
In my bread bin, in addition to some gluten-free bread, there’s also the remains of a packet of ginger snaps and some mince pies. All are gluten-free from Marks and Spencer. Some of the breads are the sort that sell well in Islington, Sandbanks, Morningside and Alderley Edge.
Today, I went to their store in the back of St.Pancras station and saw this display.
On Your Marks For A Gluten Free Christmas
All of these packets of sausage and bacon based nibbles have the gluten-free sign.
The Anonymous Widower 