A Saturday Morning Routine
There are two radio programmes, I like to listen to on Saturday morning; Danny Baker and the unsporting quiz, Fighting Talk, as they appeal to my unusual sense of humour.
The trouble is that if I’m going to football, as I am today, it doesn’t really leave much time for me to get to the shops, as I have to leave by about midday to get the train.
So this morning, I got to the Angel, by bus at just after 8:30. I actually took a seventy-free, as if you sit at the back and get out of the rearmost door, it’s much easier to walk to the four shops, Carluccio’s and the physio, that I visit at the Angel.
Today, it was just Boots for some rat poison, Marks and Spencer for some gluten-free sarnies for the train and a beef Stroganoff for tonight and Waitrose for two large carriers of heavy stuff like alcohol and Coke. I went to Waitrose first and found that if I shopped immediately, could get it delivered before the start of Fighting Talk at 11:00. I think I rather caught them on the hop, but hopefully it’ll come on time. But I do have two hours of total float in my critical path, so if they come by one I’m OK.
The only problem, was that Marks didn’t have the gluten-free sandwiches, but then I’ll pass three of their shops that stock them on the way to Liverpool Street. If they don’t have any, then I shall complain. If there aren’t any, it’s probably because they are too good and all those food fadists on a gluten-free kick have snaffled them!
I was back home listening to Danny Baker by ten o’clock.
It sounds like I’ll be repeating this on Saturdays in the future.
The routine could be even better, if Carluccio’s opened at 8:00 for breakfast on Saturday, as they do in the week.
Update at 11:20 – Waitrose have just delivered, so I have plenty of time to catch the train to Ipswich, after scouring Marks for some gluten-free sandwiches.
Thinking about this post. When C and I lived near Newmarket we would go shopping early, often visit one of our horses in traing and then we’d generally be back home around eleven.
I suppose, I’m only repeating what we did together by myself. In some ways, it was easier in Suffolk, as Waitrose opened earlier. But then I had to carry the shopping from the car to the hall. Here, that is all done by the van driver from Waitrose.
Who said manners and service are dead.
Shoe Sizes
The very pregnant news mother, Kate Silverton, on BBC Breakfast, was complaining about getting stylish shoes for her size 9 feet.
As a man with size 6 feet, I have the same problem, but I’ve always found it possible to buy them in Newmarket. And they’re British made too!
A Too Good Delivery System Causes Problems
This may seem a rather cntroversial title for a post, as most would envisage, that any delivery from a mail order site can’t be too good.
On Thursday, I ordered a new television from John Lewis. Incidentally, I had wanted to order it a few weeks ago, but they didn’t have the model I wanted in stock, so I asked them to e-mail me when it arrived in stock. That e-mail arrived on the Thursday and I ordered it there and then.
In the ordering process, I could have got it delivered on a specific day or morning for a charge, but let’s face it as I’d waited a few weeks, I thought that to wait for the normal five days wiouldn’t be a problem.
I then got an e-mail on the Saturday saying that John Lewis had dispatched it and giving me a link to the delivery company. On checking with them, I found it was going to be delivered on the Saturday. So as I reasoned that van drivers stop work at midday on Saturday (Don’t they?), I decided to stay in and wait. Even though the web ste clearly stated that if I wasn’t in, I could arrange a redelivery on line.
I almost gave up, as I wanted to get my paper and some shopping. But the parcel turned up just before one!
In other words they got the parcel on the day they said they would, but I wouldn’t have minded waiting a few days. But then when did you get a five day delivery in forty-eight hours?
Actually, we might be back to the ASAP scheduling problem, I highlighted in the post on NHS waiting times. Take say the problem of ordering goods, just before you go away for a holiday. You might like to delay them until after you return. With John Lewis you can specify a delivery date, but perhaps you might like to specify a not before date, or say a day of the week.
I think we’ll see increasingly sophisticated on-line delivery systems and that will be better for the consumer and more efficient. and hence more profitable, for the shops and the delivery companies.
Olympic Tat
I want to get some Olympic towels for my guests. Especially, as some have a rather cynical view of the Games.
As I was going to john Lewis, I had a look in their official Olympic Shop. The towels were twice the price of the ones I use from John Lewis and not at all good.
But then very little of what was on offer seemed to be worth buying.
Will Electric Cars Ever Hack It?
I'[ve always had my doubts about electric cars and on BBC Breakfast, Rory Cellan-Jones was showing a new charging system, to help you do long journeys in an electric car.
As someone, who used to enjoy driving but doesn’t now, I’m rapidly coming to the point, where I think in the next few years many people will come to my decision and almost abandon cars completely.
Electric cars will not be the solution, unless they dsolve the range and cost problems, so they will only be for those who just can’t break their habit of driving everywhere. They will also probably only work if they are small and I doubt we’ll ever see an electric Range Rover.
On the other hand, where electric power and more efficient hybrid power will work is in larger vehicles, like buses and delivery trucks. Where I live some of the buses are hybrid and people like them because they are smoother and quieter than normally powered buses.
But we will change our lifestyles much more than you think.
As an example, these are things I do to avoid driving.
- I get my big grocery shopping done at Waitrose in Upper Street in the normal way and then they just bring it round an hour or so later. Even if I had a car, it would be less efficient and I’d to drive several miles to find a supermarket with a car park.
- I walk to the end of my road to the Overground and can get a train or tube to virtually anywhere in London, quicker than I could drive.
- For local trips, there are several efficient bus routes.
- Larger deliveries are easy, as delivery vehicles can park outside to unload.
So whether electric cars do hack it, I suspect that there are so many ideas to avoid driving, that they won’t be needed.
The Beach at The Angel, Islington
I have taken a few pictures at the beach in the N1 Shopping Centre at The Angel.
Note that the eco-friendly deck chairs came made from sustainable timber.
It was certainly busy yesterday in the sun, after a rather wet start.
Lakeside On The Slide
The leader of Thurrock Council has said that the development of Eastfield on the Olympic Park will harm the Lakeside Shopping Centre at Thurrock.
Let’s face it, Lakeside is a tired dump and impossible to get to be public transport, so it has no appeal for me. But then when Bluewater opened C and I always crossed the bridge to a much better place. As a coeliac too, where’s the gluten free food at Lakeside?
The IKEA Obstacle Race
I need some stuff from IKEA and want it to be delivered, as that way I don’t have to carry it all the way on a bus. The total was of around £300 and was a total of 10 pieces.
The order went through efficiently from the web site and they said delivery would be around the 16th of July. I do take IKEA a bit sceptically about delivery dates, as some of the items I have ordered in the past, have arrived a few days after the originally quoted delivery date. But as someone who understands scheduling very well, I know that you can’t meet all the quoted dates, but I would have been quite happy to wait a few more days.
However, yesterday they phoned me and the courier firm said that the earliest they could do deliveries would be the 4th of August, which is quite a way into the future and four weeks later than I was originally quoted.
So this morning, I cacelled the order. I still want the goods, but they are just a bit much to bring home on the bus. And one of the pieces wouldn’t fit in my son’s old Mini.
Why is it that other companies like John Lewis, Dixons and Marks and Spencer, seem to get the last delivery right, but others, like IKEA just cause more and more hassle?
Incidentally, in this case, I would have paid a few extra pounds to get the item delivered on a day convenient to myself.
Getting The Interface Between Real and Internet Shopping Right!
I recently bought some towels from John Lewis, as most of mine are rather tatty and frayed. I also wanted all of them to be the same dark blue colour. C had bought numerous ones over the years and we had purples, reds, green and yellows to name but four colours.
I needed to buy some more to match my new ones, but they don’t have any serial number on the tag, so that I can order the right ones. The only way to do it, is to keep the packaging or take the towel back to the store. I can’t even login to my John Lewis account and get the details that way.
In this instance it isn’t that serious, but it does mean I’ll have to take one of my towels back, so that I can get the same colour. If it was properly tagged with a stock number or this was available on-line from my account, it would mean that all I would need to do is repeat the order on-line.
Other shops like IKEA and I think a few others have a consistent internet and real shopping numbering system that works. Surely getting it right would mean they got more repeat sales. I know ranges change, but I suspect that a lot of the stuff stocked in John Lewis hasn’t changed at all in years.
Chaos In Oxford Street
I needed to get some towels and a couple of lamps from John Lewis yesterday evening, so I took my usual route of Overground to Highbury and Islington station and then the Victoria line to Oxford Circus.
For some years now, getting out of Oxford Circus station has been a nightmare, so much so that I used to get there by taking a Central line train to Bond Street instead and then walking backwards.
That is not really an option now, as they are rebuilding Bond Street station and the narrow pavements cluttered by smokers outside the stores are not an easy route.
So it was a walk up the stairs to Argyll Street and then across the centre of Oxford Circus. At least that crossing works well, but then the north side of Oxford Street was cluttered with smokers and locked up stalls, that sell junk.
It is not good and it never has been in my memory.
Some years ago, I proposed an alternative which was published as a long letter in the Evening Standard.
I read with interest an article in the Evening Standard yesterday and feel I should comment about a proposed monorail for Oxford Street.
I should explain that I am an engineer with a lot of experience of transport projects around the world, mainly because the software I wrote, Artemis, was used to plan them.
I am also an inveterate traveller and have experience of a very large number of cities around the world. That experience is usually as a tourist and includes the Sydney monorail, the escalators of Hong Kong and the underground walkways of Perugia. I should also say that I visit the Oxford Street area at least once a month for shopping, eating or business.
I will agree with the plan, where the monorail gives the whole street a connection and a focus, but I believe that a moving walkway suspended over the street below would be much more flexible and inherently better.
1. It could be built in stages, with perhaps a spectacular star over Oxford Circus as a first phase to move people from say Regent Street North to Oxford Street East and West without getting involved in the fearsome crowds at road level.
2. Walkways are basically hop-on and hop-off. So if you see a shop or something else that interests you, then all you do is wait to the next hop-off point and exit.
3. As the walkway progressed down Oxford Street, it could rise and fall so that it was level with the floors of the major stores. How much would John Lewis pay for an entrance at first floor level?
4. Stops would be much more frequent than a monorail.
5. Walkways are a fail-safe system in that when the motor breaks, the system is still walkable. What happens when a monorail breaks down as the Sydney system did when I rode it?
6. Walkways can add spurs as required to Conference Centres, attractions and also to move people well away from Oxford Street.
7. As they would run effectively from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch, they would take the pressure off the Central Line.
8. Just as in Hong Kong it would be covered in a clear plastic roof. Video screens could be included under the roof to sell advertising.
9. Security is important and I’m sure the Police would like a high-level walkway from which to view the crowds below.
10. Bulges and platforms could be attached to the walkway, so that cafes and other attractions could be setup. If access is provided to stores on route, there would be no problems as to servicing these cafes.
11. The whole system has to be commercial. Imagine a platform just by Selfridges which sells the Wallace Collection, with a down escalator pointing that way.
Admittedly, it was published partly as part of their campaign against the then mayor, but I believe the idea of an overhead moving walkway would improve the movement of pedestrians around the area.
Thinking about it six years after the original letter was published, there are other factors that now apply.
- Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street are to become major stations on Crossrail and they will probably discharge more people into the area making it worse. Especially, as many will be long-distance travellers trailing mobile obstacles behind them. The pavements are just not big enough.
- The Eastern end of Oxford Street is scruffier now and who would want to shop there, when there are shopping centres at Westfield and the soon to open, Eastfield, just a few stops away on the Central line.
Certainly, I can’t wait for Eastfield to open, as then I’ll be closer to a John Lewis.
You will see I call the new shopping centre at Stratford, Eastfield. It’s what many of the locals do, despite the fact that it’s promoted as Westfield Stratford City.
But then East is east and West is west and ne’er the twain shall meet.
The Anonymous Widower 