Collect Your Shopping At A Tube Station
This story in the Standard describes how London Underground stations will be used as pick-up points for shopping. Here’s the first two paragraphs.
Tube chiefs signed up some of the high street’s biggest names today to start a retail revolution on the Underground.
From next month, Tesco and Waitrose will offer a “click-and-collect” service that will enable passengers to pick up groceries from lockers or vans at a dozen outlying stations.
After the story about Doddle parcel points in rail stations, there would appear to be a delivery revolution starting out there.
And about time too!
Today, I’ll have to stay in as I am awaiting a valuable package from a courier. As they usually come here about 16:00, that will mean a long wait.
My most common package is clothes from M & S, but these days, I Click and Collect, at the store at The Angel and just pick them up when I get the e-mail. As I pass the store, virtually every day on a bus, it is so convenient.
When I get a local parcel delivery point, it will be so good.
Londoners Are Wimps About Shopping!
This morning I needed a few things at Waitrose, so I did what C and I used to do in Suffolk. I went to the store at the Angel early about an hour after it opened. It was very uncrowded. In Suffolk, half the population would have been there, as they all generally getup early.
But obviously they don’t in London. Coming back, the bus had about five passengers.
A Hassle And Courier-Free On-Line Purchase
I’ve had various issues with couriers in the past, like this episode.
So on Saturday night, when at 23:00 or so, I decided I needed some new trousers, I ordered them on line from Marks and Spencer and said that I’d like to pick them up sometime today, in their shop at the Angel. I chose the Angel store, as usually I pass through the area, at least once a day, often when I go to the Waitrose a few doors away or Chapel Market.
The original e-mail from Marks, said that the trousers would be in store after midday, but this morning I got an e-mail saying that they had been delivered to the store at 09:30.
I picked them up just after lunch.
Forty years ago, this small store, had been our local Marks and Spencer when we lived in the Barbican and most Saturdays we’d push the children up the hill to the Angel to do our weekend shopping.
Times have certainly changed. Picking those trousers up from Marks and Spencer was certainly less handle and there was nothing couriers could do to to throw spanners in the works.
Searching For A Genius Loaf
I generally have a soft brown, Genius loaf in the bread bin and today, I threw the remains of the last one out, as all I had left was the wrapping and two rather battered crusts.
So as I wanted to get a paper, I thought I’d get a new one at the littleWaitrose at Highbury Corner. But they only had the soft white bread, which would not be my first choice.
I know I can usually get the desired bread at Sainsburys at the Angel, but that would have meant coming back from there in the scrum of the rush hour. so I took the Overground to Dalston Junction, to try to buy the bread at the Co-Operative store at the station.
They did have a loaf, but the sell-by date was not very far away and the loaf felt, as though it was not that fresh.
So I took the bus home.
It’ll teach me not to do all my shopping at a bigger Waitrose like Canary Wharf or Bloomsbury. I don’t think I’ll bother with buying food at that Co-operative again.
A Wet Night In Islington
I needed supper last night and although I had food in the fridge, I went to Pizza Express at the Angel.
The great advantage is that the bus stop is right outside the restaurant.
So although, the rain was amazing, I didn’t get too wet.
The gluten-free pizza was good too!
Boots Marches Into Fast Food
Boots at the Angel have taken over the Burger King next door.
Boots Marches Into Fast Food
Now there’s a way to promote health!
You Don’t Get Behaviour Like This On The Dalston Omnibus!
This tragic tale from Biggleswade, shows what you get when you mix two men of my age, shopping and an argument over parking.
You certainly don’t get any behaviour like this on the Dalston omnibus to or from Waitrose at the Angel. The most outrageous behaviour I saw, was a guy laughing at two ladies sitting beside each other who were probably about fifty years old; one black and one white, who’d both hurt a leg and their hospitals had furnished them each with one crutch. Everybody saw the funny side! Especially the ladies!
I do wonder sometimes, why people bother with driving. I miss it like a hole in the head!
I’ve actually never been to Asda and if you get killed in their car parks, I doubt I will now!
Lost In Kings Cross Station
The new Kings Cross station may look very good, but the Underground station seems to have been designed as an incomprehensible labyrinth.
Tonight, I got on a Victoria line train at Oxford Circus and needed to change to the Northern line at Kings cross for the Angel. Unfortunately, I tiook the wrong exit from the platform and ended up walking a lot longer than I should down pedestrian tunnels and up and down stairs.
But I eventually made it and got a 38 bus at the Angel to bring me home.
I’ll be glad, when Crossrail is finished, so that I can get home a lot easier.
A Bug In The Software
I took this picture on the Southbound platform, at The Angel, this morning.
A Bug In The Software
How could the second train arrive before the first? Do they have an overtaking line to the north of the station?
In the end, it arrived in under three minutes.
Gluten-Free Pizza At Pizza Express
For many years, Sunday afternoons and evenings for C and myself had a rhymn. We would go to the cinema at either the Cambridge Picturehouse or the Cineworld and then we’d go for a pizza in Pizza Express, often at the Pitt Club, where I always had a Capricciosa. This pattern stopped in the early 2000s, when I was diagnosed as a coeliac, so sometimes I would have a salad Niçoise, or more likely we’d go to an Indian restaurant.
But all that has now changed, in that Pizza Express have produced a new very coeliac-friendly menu. This is the gluten-free page.
Last night, I went with two friends to the newly-refurbished Pizza Express at The Angel in Islington. We sat upstairs and for an avid street watcher like myself, it is a great place to sit.
I started with a bottle of my favourite long drink; Aspall Cyder.
Aspall Cyder At Pizza Express
They also have Green’s gluten-free beer, but I do prefer my Celia, when it comes to beer. The cyder is better than both with pizza.
I also had a Capricciosa, for the first time in perhaps ten years.
Gluten-Free Pizza At Pizza Express
It tasted just like it did all of those years ago.
I think a personal tradition of a film followed by pizza is going to be revived. all I need now is an attractive lady with whom to enjoy the experience.
I think too, you can’t accuse Pizza Express of being backward about going forward.
Advertising In Stereo
These two signs were outside.
My only problem, is that near me, there isn’t a Pizza Express with the quality of building of the Pitt Club in Cambridge.
I have a feeling that in a few years time, this will rate as one of the most significant events in dining out for coeliacs in the UK.
I wasn’t diagnosed as a child, but it must be very difficult, for both a coeliac child and their parents, when say at a birthday party, they get invited to a family restaurant. Now they can at least eat pizza.
I think it is going to start a ripple in the various chains of restaurants, as they’ll have to follow suit. After all, Carluccio’s and Jamie’s Italian, already operate a sensible policy on gluten-free food, and I suspect others do.
It’ll certainly make things much easier for me on my travels. It’s already happened in Ipswich, in that the town has two Pizza Express restaurants. It’s just a pity, neither is close to Portman Road.
This will probably mean that the UK, will become one of the most coeliac-friendly countries for coeliacs to visit.
The Anonymous Widower 