Carluccio’s Gluten-Free Pasta
Here it is in its packaging in Upper Street.
Carluccio's Gluten-Free Pasta
I don’t know whether this is the final packaging, but at least it stands out from the other pasta.
Guilty About An Act of Kindness
In Waitrose I was looking for some lemon juice, when something fell over (Not my fault at all! It was only a bag of seeds, that had a mind of my own!) So I apologised to a woman of about twenty-five or so standing next to me and said I was looking for the lemon juice and couldn’t see too well because I’d had a stroke. So if she saw it, would she tell me! The next thing I saw was that she’d asked a member of staff and then she had retrieved the lemon juice for me from another aisle.
I felt rather guilty about it all and did at least thank her. But probably not profusely enough, as I now feel even more guilty about not doing my own searching.
A Near Shopping Disaster
As I come home on the bus after shopping, I am very careful with certain items.
For example, I haven’t bought any gluten-free flour until now, as I’m frightened it might break in my bag. But I did today and it leaked. But luckily, I only had a few items in a Waitrose plastic bag and the flour stayed there.
W H Smug
This was Private Eye’s name for W H Smith and I’m not sure if the magazine still uses it.
I find them an irritating store, as they do lots of things that annoy me.
Take yesterday, I paid for my copy of The Times by putting my subscriber’s voucher in the quick pay pot, as one assistant had told me to do a couple of weeks ago. Then I saw that the March edition of Modern Railways had arrived, picked it up and then went to pay for it. But I was then told, I’d have to pay for both items in the same place. So in the end, I left the magazine on the counter and walked to St. Pancras and bought it there. It wasn’t actually an extra trip, as I wanted to visit Boots to see if they had an Eat Nakd bar. They didn’t! Boots please note!
Paying for the magazine was then the usual No-No-No conversation, as I declined evething on offer and gave all the bits of paper back to the assistant.
Next time I travel, I’ll make sure I get my travel supplies before I leave home.
Welcome to IKEA
I finally got the spice rack last night at IKEA in Croydon.
It’s quite an easy journey by public transport, as I just get the 21/141 bus to London Bridge, a train to East Croydon and then the Tramlink to Ampere Way.
In a strange way, the journey summed up one of the things I like about London; friendliness. I chatted about my troubles and travels to a pleasant guy called Duncan from the Bank of England and then as I waited for the tram, I talked to the tram driver, who was to take my tram to Wimbledon. Incidentally, Duncan doesn’t have a car, so like me he uses public transport everywhere. Perhaps, we’re ahead of our time and in a few years or so, non-driving will be the normal thing to do.
The only problem, I had on the journey down, was caused by a slight lack of signage at East Croydon, my uncertainty about how to use the tram and which one to get.
Duncan pointed me at this book; The Brain That Changes Itself. I shall check it out!
I was then presented to this at IKEA.
Welcome to IKEA
Just look at those concrete benches, that are ideally placed to bump the shins of people with limited vision. It wasn’t the easiest walk to and from the tram stop, with some roads controlled by pedestrian lights and others that worked on the cross-quickly-and-be-lucky principle.
Coming back was quite easy, in that I took the tram to West Croydon and then took the East London Line to Dalston Junction. But there is no signage at West Croydon to the Overground from the tram stop. Supposedly, plans are in place for a better connection. At Dalston, I was even lucky enough to avoid the five minute walk, by getting a convenient bus along the Balls Pond Road.
The spice rack is now on the wall.
Daura in the Angel, Islington Waitrose
The Estrella Damm Daura was there all the time, but rather hidden away at the bottom of the Free From section. The bottles and packaging are very red by the way.
I think shops need to think how they sell GF beer. Sainsbury’s put it with the special beers and Waitrose have done the opposite. Perhaps they need some clever stickers on the shelves to point people in the right direction.
The Angel Waitrose is very small, so they have a space problem. I’m sure there’s a labelling or web solution, which would help the stores and shoppers alike.
An IKEA Joke
Whilst I’m waiting for the spice rack, here’s a joke.
Answer: “Sorry, we ran out of light bulbs. We expect them to arrive early next month. We do have ladders though! You just go straight on, then left and then right. No, thanks, anytime.”
Ikea is Swedish for ” how the f_ck do i put this together”
But that’s not my problem. I just want the product.
The IKEA Nightmare Continues
I thought I’d cracked problems over the spice rack yesterday, when IKEA’s web site said that there were spice racks in the store at Edmonton. But the web site was leading me up the proverbial garden path again. In a way, it wasn’t so much of a disaster, as I had to go to Stoke Newington to the excellent A & B Framers to drop some work in. But it did add perhaps forty minutes to my trip.
So now I’ve resorted to e-mailing them.
I am trying to buy a Grundtal Spice Rack – 90022781. I would prefer to buy it on-line, as I have had a stroke and can’t drive. However getting to your Edmonton store is just one bus ride and as I need one or two other small things, it is not a difficult journey. I always check the web site to see if the product is in stock and three times now, it has shown availability, but when I get to the store about 30 minutes later, they say they have all been sold. I have better things to do than sit on a 341 bus.
At least get the web site right, so I don’t have any more wasted journeys. In desperation I tried Wembley, but despite showing 11 before I left, there were none available. I can’t even pre-order on the web, which for me would be the ideal solution.
Ill add their reply, if I get one!
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.
Seeing Before Buying
With most of my purchases, I always like to look at the product before I buy it. I know if I bought it on-line, I could often return it, but there is all that repacking hassle with a dodgy hand. I’d far rather get it right first time.
This explained my trip on a bus to IKEA this morning.
I should say that what I needed; a spice rack, was also available from a well-known celebrity chef. His product looked better than IKEA, but was of course more money, so in the end IKEA got the business because I could see and touch the product.
I could have used one of the said chef’s consultants, but who needs a consultant to buy a spice rack and anyway I always like dealing with the organ grinder, rather than the monkey.
The Anonymous Widower 