Category: Misc

The Trocadero must, incredibly, lose more money than anything else in the capital. Let’s see what it has going for it. 1) It’s just off Picadilley Circus and is close to Leicester Square in the heart of London’s West End. 2) It has loads of space within it. 3) It can be adapted to either…

Picture yourself. You’re two thirds of the way through a journey in deepest, darkest north Norfolk. You’re tired. The train leaving London was packed solid due to the fact that it’s the first train out of London that allows Saver tickets. So when you arrive at Norwich station and see a chip vending machine, you…

Back in 1979, we went on a family holiday to the little Suffolk village of Walberswick. This was only our second holiday away. Until then we’d only visited our grandparents in Sheringham on the North Norfolk coast. Since Walberswick was only a little further down the coast from our usual summer haunt it should have…

One of my biggest bugbears is the poor quality of supermarket bananas, and how the inferior “dollar” bananas we do get are doing no end of harm to people who farm small-holdings in the Caribbean. This long piece from Observer Food Monthly goes through the whole thing in detail and is well worth a read.…

Idea a Day is a website that you subscribe to which sends you a daily brilliant idea submitted by one of it’s readers. OK – so some of the ideas aren’t all that brilliant. Here’s one I submitted today: Start an explosives company specialising in timebombs. The USP would be that they would have neither…

My flat basically doesn’t have central heating. But it’s OK! It tends to be quite warm all year around anyway. But when it does get cold I turn on the big storage heater in the living warm, but there is one small side effect – the warmth tends to send me off to sleep. I…

For the last year or more, there have been major refurbishments taking place at Kings Cross (and more particularly, at St Pancras where the Eurostar will terminate when the highspeed link is complete). The underground station has been, and still is, going through major renovations, and this week has seen the introduction of new ticket…

An article on Mediaguardian (free registration reqd.) talks about Bill Gates’ ownership of Corbis, the world’s second largest picture library. But what’s incredible is the bit about the Eiffel Tower. Depending on the time of day you take a picture: by day it’s public domain, but at night you have to pay the person who…

I was just about to pen an amusing piece about how the whole world (well Western world anyway) has gone plastic/rubber bracelet mad. I was going to point out that since Lance Armstrong launched the Livestrong bracelet last year, we’ve seen a massive explosion in bracelets including a blue bullying one, a white Make Poverty…

The other week in a moment of reckless abandon at the football I ordered a drink of Bovril for the first time in about 20 years – seriously! The last time I remember drinking it I was at Enfield FC. I should first of explain that my local Co-op has been accurately described as being…

There’s lots of complete nonsense being spouted about a survey supposedly listing the world’s top brands. Supposedly Apple is the brand with “the most global impact” in 2004. Complete nonsense. This is followed by Google, then Ikea, Starbucks and Al Jazeera. These brands are patently the ones that affect a certain type of monied middle-class…

Over the years, on more than one occassion, I’ve bought one of those plug-in air fresheners. The only thing is that it forms such an unimportant purchase that when I next visit the supermarket and decide it’d be a good idea to buy a refill, I can’t remember the brand I bought before, and so…