Supper size me...?

It is always a pleasure hearing the latest exploits of Suzi, the Office Bombshell^TM.

Last night it appears, she and a couple of friends ventured out to an eaterie in Notting Hill called The Eclipse. In and of itself an unremarkable event except that Suzi is a teetotal vegetarian, so hearing how the other half lives is always a treat for me.

Pride of place on the menu was what Suzi describes only as 'froth.' They were served with bowls of what was apparently the scum you get on top of carrots or potatoes when you are boiling them, and which most people rinse off. Not so in the world of Notting Hill where this delicacy is collected and served with a bread roll. Suzi notes that this takes a very long time to prepare, and I suppose it would. It takes time to render down three portions of vegetables into primeval slime. I know I've done it (more attentive readers will recall my long-abandoned experiments with veggie soup about 18 months ago).

This feast for famine victims was accompanied by a couple of mini tarts, one mushroom, one not, each about the size of a 50p piece (or a US quarter if I remember coin sizes correctly). Whether this was a case of two mini tarts each, or three people hunkered around two tartlets, is not clear. To finish they were served a roasted red pepper wrapped around something.

The overall assessment of this feast? "The pepper was nice."

I find myself wondering whether this story indicates the rebirth of nouvelle cuisine, that farcical fad of the 1980s which became a race to create the most expensive, and decorously dirty plates possible and pretend they were servings of high class food. Even if it is not the rebirth of a fad, there is clearly still a market for this sort of thing (God help us), and probably a gap since Cranks went mainstream and the Hari Krisna brigade stopped hanging out there.

Supper size me...?

It is always a pleasure hearing the latest exploits of Suzi, the Office Bombshell^TM.

Last night it appears, she and a couple of friends ventured out to an eaterie in Notting Hill called The Eclipse. In and of itself an unremarkable event except that Suzi is a teetotal vegetarian, so hearing how the other half lives is always a treat for me.

Pride of place on the menu was what Suzi describes only as 'froth.' They were served with bowls of what was apparently the scum you get on top of carrots or potatoes when you are boiling them, and which most people rinse off. Not so in the world of Notting Hill where this delicacy is collected and served with a bread roll. Suzi notes that this takes a very long time to prepare, and I suppose it would. It takes time to render down three portions of vegetables into primeval slime. I know I've done it (more attentive readers will recall my long-abandoned experiments with veggie soup about 18 months ago).

This feast for famine victims was accompanied by a couple of mini tarts, one mushroom, one not, each about the size of a 50p piece (or a US quarter if I remember coin sizes correctly). Whether this was a case of two mini tarts each, or three people hunkered around two tartlets, is not clear. To finish they were served a roasted red pepper wrapped around something.

The overall assessment of this feast? "The pepper was nice."

I find myself wondering whether this story indicates the rebirth of nouvelle cuisine, that farcical fad of the 1980s which became a race to create the most expensive, and decorously dirty plates possible and pretend they were servings of high class food. Even if it is not the rebirth of a fad, there is clearly still a market for this sort of thing (God help us), and probably a gap since Cranks went mainstream and the Hari Krisna brigade stopped hanging out there.

Trains and Planes and Automobiles

I have in front of me an A5 sized tome containing 87 pages of timetables and a couple of pages of maps and advice, entitled West Coast Route Modernisation - August Bank Holiday Engineering Work 2004. It is published by Virgin Trains and is available free from their kiosk at Euston Station.

The whole is well-presented and contains a great deal of information, but the only really useful bit is page 4. The rest of the document is rendered pointless by this.

Effectively, for the period Saturday 28 August (tomorrow by crackey) to Sunday 5 September there are no trains into or from London Euston, and virtually none in the West Midlands area, particularly south of Birmingham.

The most useful paragraph in the book is this:

If you are travelling from the West Midlands to London (and by extension in the reverse direction) we recommend that you use Chiltern Railways services from Birmingham Snow Hill or Moor Street to London Marylebone.

There are similar paragraphs covering journeys from Scotland and the North West. Essentially Virgin Rail is saying 'don't use us, use our competitors.'

Good to know.

Next weekend is NWO. If you're in the South East and not using a car, take the Chiltern line and change at Brum. It will save your nerves a great deal of wear.

Trains and Planes and Automobiles

I have in front of me an A5 sized tome containing 87 pages of timetables and a couple of pages of maps and advice, entitled West Coast Route Modernisation - August Bank Holiday Engineering Work 2004. It is published by Virgin Trains and is available free from their kiosk at Euston Station.

The whole is well-presented and contains a great deal of information, but the only really useful bit is page 4. The rest of the document is rendered pointless by this.

Effectively, for the period Saturday 28 August (tomorrow by crackey) to Sunday 5 September there are no trains into or from London Euston, and virtually none in the West Midlands area, particularly south of Birmingham.

The most useful paragraph in the book is this:

If you are travelling from the West Midlands to London (and by extension in the reverse direction) we recommend that you use Chiltern Railways services from Birmingham Snow Hill or Moor Street to London Marylebone.

There are similar paragraphs covering journeys from Scotland and the North West. Essentially Virgin Rail is saying 'don't use us, use our competitors.'

Good to know.

Next weekend is NWO. If you're in the South East and not using a car, take the Chiltern line and change at Brum. It will save your nerves a great deal of wear.

Third post already

I find myself in the distressing position of wanting to leave the office, but knowing that it's pointless since I have arranged to meet the quiz team for a training session down at the Royal Oak. This won't kick off for another couple of hours and it makes no sense to go home and then come back up into (nearly) the centre again.

So I have to fill a couple of hours and I suspect that the best place to do so is here, in the office. In about half an hour the office population will start thinning out a bit, so the computer games become a feasible time passer. Nonetheless….

I am borrowing a digital camera to take to NWO next weekend; I have to decide whether or not to take the laptop too, so that I can download pictures onto it, thus increasing the number I can safely take at a reasonable level of clarity. The outcome of that little experiment will help me decide whether or not I should buy my own digital camera. Common sense tells me that I really don't have a great deal of use for one, but like so many other people, I rarely let common sense stand in my way. Nonetheless, financial imperatives and a rare moment of decision combine to reinforce the common sense view that I can wait a while longer if not resist permanently.

I have marked out the long weekend for some shopping (including a trip to the local sorting office to pick up a package - I did not hear the doorbell at all this morning…) for new trousers, some tidying up and a bit of painting. The weather is now cool enough to allow me to break out the enamels and mix them without them congealing and setting before I am ready. In fact that has been true for sometime, now, but I refuse to paint this model under lamplight - well, the flesh tones anyway, since what looks good under a bulb does not do so in natural light. Happily the situation is not true the other way round. Evenings now get too dark too early, and this is the first available weekend for some time. In fact it's the only available weekend for sometime - next week as I have already said above and elsewhere is NWO, so no painting then either.

I am trying to decide whether amongst all the refereeing, I shall have any time spare for drawing, and consequently whether it is worth packing the pad and pencils…

Third post already

I find myself in the distressing position of wanting to leave the office, but knowing that it's pointless since I have arranged to meet the quiz team for a training session down at the Royal Oak. This won't kick off for another couple of hours and it makes no sense to go home and then come back up into (nearly) the centre again.

So I have to fill a couple of hours and I suspect that the best place to do so is here, in the office. In about half an hour the office population will start thinning out a bit, so the computer games become a feasible time passer. Nonetheless….

I am borrowing a digital camera to take to NWO next weekend; I have to decide whether or not to take the laptop too, so that I can download pictures onto it, thus increasing the number I can safely take at a reasonable level of clarity. The outcome of that little experiment will help me decide whether or not I should buy my own digital camera. Common sense tells me that I really don't have a great deal of use for one, but like so many other people, I rarely let common sense stand in my way. Nonetheless, financial imperatives and a rare moment of decision combine to reinforce the common sense view that I can wait a while longer if not resist permanently.

I have marked out the long weekend for some shopping (including a trip to the local sorting office to pick up a package - I did not hear the doorbell at all this morning…) for new trousers, some tidying up and a bit of painting. The weather is now cool enough to allow me to break out the enamels and mix them without them congealing and setting before I am ready. In fact that has been true for sometime, now, but I refuse to paint this model under lamplight - well, the flesh tones anyway, since what looks good under a bulb does not do so in natural light. Happily the situation is not true the other way round. Evenings now get too dark too early, and this is the first available weekend for some time. In fact it's the only available weekend for sometime - next week as I have already said above and elsewhere is NWO, so no painting then either.

I am trying to decide whether amongst all the refereeing, I shall have any time spare for drawing, and consequently whether it is worth packing the pad and pencils…