This week in London

Well, it's raining. Drizzle and wind and grey skies. It brings out the worst in the variegated road users and brings a whole new breed of suicidally inclined drivers onto the roads who are only there to avoid the rain.

Behaviour on our great, largely unpoliced highways and byways through London continues to worsen. "The rules don't apply to me I'm a cyclist" infection has spread to scooter riders, motor cyclists and battery car drivers. The rules are of course the Highway Code and the Road Traffic Acts. A modest confection of homilies and laws.

What does the "Look at me I'm a cyclist" infection do to its victims? |Well, they think that they are immortal and unchallengeable by anyone. A red light is an invitation not to slow down, let alone stop. A one-way street is an invitation to ride up the middle the wrong way, a roundabout where one should go round to the left is an invitation to go round to the right. Pavements are convenient shortcuts. Pedestrians need to get out of the way as they are impeding the brave cyclists at work. Do not venture onto a pedestrian crossing if you are nervous - near misses by cyclists abound. Hooting at a cyclist even if he or she is about to become a whole lot thinner involuntarily and messily, inevitably leads to a tirade of abuse, violent gesticulations, various obscene gestures and, increasingly, hammering of fists on the car's bonnet.

What is this all about? I have to confess I am not entirely sure. I know cyclists are vulnerable but they do seem more and more to go out of their way to get themselves seriously injured or killed and I don't really think you can blame the poor motorist for that kind of behaviour.

Even more worryingly, why should one section of society be above the law? That's maybe why so many more road users are trying to find the limits. With the police obsessed with the so-called fight against terrorism, an activity which results in most of them being missing from our roads most of the time, I come back to where I began. No-one polices the highway any longer. Observing the law is optional. It just goes to show that without effective policing, things do deteriorate towards a lowest common denominator.

Back from Turkey

It's not all that easy coming back from three weeks on a boat. I am shocked by how unstable London has become, seemingly waving around in all directions and bouncing up and down. Dealing with traffic after three weeks where everything happens in relative slow motion has been unpleasant. Dealing with the surly attitude of everyone I don't know brings home how friendly, gentle and helpful the Southern Turks really are.

Laundry left at a Marina laundry service by accident (we sailed off without collecting it) was recovered for us by the wife of one of the little restauranters whose place we like to eat at without fuss and accompanied by a refusal to accept any form of payment except reimbursement of the costs of the laundry service. The charterers engineer drove 4 hours each way to where the boat was to sort an oil leak without complaint and without fuss about half an hour after we called to say there was a problem. Beat that in the UK. I don't think so really.....

And the food, oh, the food. That's for another post.

Next stop Cowes IOW

No more planes this week. From the sublime (Istanbul, Port Camargue, Estoi in Portugal) to the maybe slightly less so, firmly set in the 1950s and clinging resolutely onto those halcyon years of architecture, design and cuisine. The architecture is unremittingly Bungalow and buildings that exhibit an unfulfilled yearning to be Nissan huts but somehow sadly lost out when the planning genes were randomly distributed.

We are off to Cowes for Cowes week. Being based in East Cowes, you soon learn the vagaries of the timings of the chain ferry from East to West Cowes, of the effect of the tides and whether you may just as well give in and drive all the way round via Newport. Yup, no tunnel, no bridge. One ferry, very old, inclined to get cranky.

Fish and chips is haute cuisine here. You see lots of holiday makers in great locations like Ryde beach eating chips for lunch with eggs and sausages and chips for their evening meal with fish and mushy peas and the odd saveloy.

Ah yes, the saveloy: "A saveloy is a type of highly seasoned pork sausage, usually bright red in colour, which is served in English fish and chip shops,"^[1] sometimes fried in batter. The word comes from the French cervelas, a pork sausage, at one time sometimes made from pigs' brains" (Wikipedia).

By contrast, in West Cowes in the early morning the twenty somethings who are crew on the bigger racing boats all fall into the high street sandwich shops to buy expresso and hot bacon baguettes and nurofen for the hangover they worked on for most of the evening and night in the beer tent. Then in their colour-coordinated and logo bearing outfits they fall into the hot showers and onto the boat to head out to the Black group start, praying there is enough wind - no, not for the racing but to blow the cobwebs of the hangover away and get them thirsty again.

More California

It's been a while since I last posted. Too taken up with the joy of finding some fresh air (almost anywhere in the UK, after LA) and the delightful schadenfreude of the MPs' expenses saga. To say nothing of cheese free food.

I'm off again on Sunday. Better prepared for the psychological onslaught. Better equipped with local knowledge, who does cheese, where you can avoid it. Familiar if complex freeway routes (pronounced routs as in row and rowt not root), knowledge that LAX is still a building site.

Wondering if any of the State's recently issued IOU's will be floating around, thrown away in despair by those who would prefer hard cash from the world's 5th largest economy (that's California btw).

Happy days are here again...

California(1)

Well, I'm here. LAX is a building site. It seems to have been that for the last 15 years. One day it may be finished. Maybe. 15 minutes in a bus going round all the terminals (7+the Tom Bradley International building site) before taking me to the car hire place.  Then to the airport exit and the journey to Long Beach.

Most signs on the freeways are neatly located just after the relevant junctions. The GPS ("Neverlost" ho ho) issues such convoluted instructions that you have passed the junction by the time it is finished, unless they designed it so that the end of the instruction co-incides with the road-signs.

I make it in the end. Round and round and round the I-405N and the I-710 S and The One (the 1 or the Pacific Coast Highway) until I finally get to the right on ramp leading directly to another off-ramp. It's easy once you realise that your freeway journey is less than 200 yards on the main carriageway. The problem is that the onramp leads into the right hand or outside lane and the off ramp is from the inside lane where the carpool ends. It's amazing how many lorries,sorry, trucks, thunder past trying to stop you changing lanes.

California, Long Beach. Home of the Ahi Poke stack. (Tuna, raw, piled on top of raw carrot and beansprouts liberally soaked in soy sauce and wasabi). Home of the California roll. Now with added jack cheese.  Home of the salmon sushi with added creme fraiche. Yes, really, truly, cheese is now king. In one restaurant this week there was NO dish on the menu that did not have cheese. Parmesan croutons. Parmesan breadcrumb coated fish. Melted Jack cheese. Mixed cheeses. White wine garlic cheese sauce. Provlone with everything. Tomato and mozzarella salad. Cheeseburger without the option. Turkey sandwich with melted cheese. Cheesy fries.....I could rant on for hours reciting the menu. I left and went to the Chinese. MSG, sugar,salt, deep fried sweet and sour pork in batter, food colouring, real food at last. 

What with that and the grey cool cloudy weather I could learn to loath this place quite quickly. I do hope I'm wrong.

 

South to France by EasyJet

Yup, it's becoming a bit of a hobby horse. I am beginning to wonder if large swathes of the airline industry actualy have the term "customer" let alone "customer service" in their vocabularies. Today at Gatwicj "Speedy Boarding Plus" for two people  both ways representing an additional cost of almost 30% of the original ticket price got us access to a slightly shorter queue than the one for the mere mortals. About an hour shorter admittedly but "Speedy"? no, not at all. First they split the queue and let the people well behind us into a new shorter queue and then the people four ahead of us were trying to check in 10 minutes before their flight opened. So, I hear you ask, what?? Well, the Easy jet staff waited for the checkin time without asking the people to move aside. So we all waited. Poetically the people in the new short queue didn't move either as there was a cretin with most of his passport missing trying to persuade the checkin staff that what was left was enough to allow him to take himself and his multiple piercings and tattoos to the beach somewhere. Four staff stood there looking at this sorry document before concluding that none of them had the authority to accept it. So they sent a fifth person to find the manager from upstairs. All four of them and the cretin stood there trying to look as if he wasn't causing a huge queue. 

Throughout this whole joyous farrago there was a man walking up and down with a clipboard periodically shouting "Anyone for Barcelona?" I don't know why. No-one answered.

So, why couldn't they have moved the cretin or the queue jumpers to one side and checked a few others in? Good question. No answer from them. 

Through security, to the lounge.No gate for the flight. Hang around waiting. Gate announced, miles and miles away. Go to gate. By the time I was moving to the gate, boarding was announced. There was never going to be time to get to the gate from the publishing of the gate number before boarding started. It's bloody miles away down endless conveyor free corridors.

What use speedy boarding plus to avoid the thundering herd? Well, not only not much as you have to get to the gate before anyone else so that when they give you 45 seconds headstart on the herd you can take advantage of it. Well, today it didn't matter. The gate staff couldn't be bothered to allow the SB people in first. NO 45 seconds head start. No quick check in. What a waste of £32.

The industry uses the term "SLF" for passengers. Self loading freight. That describes the attitude of EasyJet staff to a T today. I wonder if anyone there cares? On the recent evidence the only thing they want you to do is pay money for useless extras and vile food.

Spain by EasyJet (a paen to tapas, really)

I am on holiday in Southern Spain. Near Torremolinos, would you believe? There a fair number of English "pubs" along both sides of the A7 en route to Estepona and endless golf courses. My hotel is in a turn off from the eastbound A7. It is, it has to be said, a very nice, 5 star type of place. But I got here by EasyJet, never a favourite way of transportation. 

Speedy Boarding Plus. It's extra when you buy your cheap ticket but it promises you a special check-in and priority onto the plane to avoid the mad scramble for seats. I think I shall have to add this term to the list. it's anything but speedy or plus. Slow crawl minus maybe. The dedicated check in queue was no shorter or more efficient than any other. Gate 17 at Luton is at the bottom of a narrow set of stairs at the end of a 100 mile corridor, so if you get there later than the first mad rush you queue just the same as if you hadn't bothered with the SBP add-on. 

You rush through the SBP channel at the foot of the stairs to the plane, 20 seconds ahead of the thundering herd. If you are quick you might get decent seats. I wasn't and in  consequence, didn't. Two small kids behind me, two bored small kids and indifferent father ahead of me. Small kids with nothing to do but jump up and down or slam window blinds shut until my patience snapped. At this point moron father comes to life and says I mustn't speak to his children as they can do what they like, they're only children. Wisely, surprisingly, I accept restraint from those who are more sensible and subside, my point actually having been made, I think, as I soon after heard the father telling them to stop jumping up and down the whole time.

That's EasyJet, plus chicken wrap (if you want it, I didn't) and lukewarm overpriced minibar size cans of pop.

There have been lots of saving graces to make up for EasyJet and the unreliable weather. Bar Juanito in Jerez de la Frontera, recommended by Baedeker is one.  In the end, I have to say, as it was found only by using google maps and the gps on the iphone to locate it. Well worth the trek and stress.

Wonderful hand carved iberico ham. Little whole hake crisply fried. Veal parcels like deep fried spring rolls with deep deep redwine reduction decorating them and their plate. Chickpeas cooked in olive oil with cabbage, paprika, pork with real pork fat and the most lovely home made morcilla. Meatballs in an unctuous tomato sauce. Chilled beer as it's late lunch. What more could a soul ask for I wonder? Fewer lorries on the mountain road home? No rain? Maybe....

Back from Houston (2)

Yet again I am back in the UK following a visit to the great State of Texas. Despite Jacqui Smith's expenses claims, along with those of many other MPs, it's a nicer place than Texas. 

The journey each way does not improve though. BA meals are beginning to bug me more and more as they are always the same on the way out and the way back. On the way back, at 01.30 in the morning UK time you get duck salad followed by braised texas short rib. Or something creamy in the pasta line or, worse, mahi mahi in creamy sauce. Or chicken and duck galantine with salad. I had that last time. And it's weird having duck salad after a duck salad starter. It gets weirder when you realise that those strange thin green slices on the salad are in fact raw marinaded potatoes. Why would anyone who claims to know about menus do that?

Of the last 4 flights, three have been on a 747 with a failed auxiliary power unit. No air-conditioning on stand, endless marching of engineers in and out of the flight deck followed by various explanations from gate staff and the Captain. On the way back this time, the excuse was "last minute security checks" from the gate staff and "a minor technical glitch meaning we have to start an engine on stand before we can turn on the air-conditioning" according to the senior first officer. Senior? There's only one of them in the cabin, I can see that as the door is still open to allow for the parade of engineering types. So why call yourself "senior" on the tannoy? By the way, only one of those engineers sports a stetson. He didn't fix anything either, by the way. 

It also takes a very long time to start the engine.  I still am not sure why. 

so, back to the food. I was left wondering for the fourth time in 6 weeks, why would you want duck then beef? I know, I know, inherently there's nothing wrong with that, it's just that late at night it's way over the top. And quite indigestible just before trying to sleep.....

Back from Houston

A small selection of sides. That's what the man said. Hash brown - a small field of potatoes shredded, pressed into a dinner plate size cake 6 inches thick and fried. Mashed potatoes - two large serving dishes with mash, with cheese and butter and cream and chopped cilantro (coriander to much of the rest of the world). Asparagus with bearnaise. Brussels sprout salad. Shredded sprouts, warm red wine vinaigrette and bacon bits. Green beans, times two. Lobster risotto. Fries times two on huge platters, dusted in salt and parmijan (parmesan to you and me). Warm cheese bread and butter. Spinach. 

That apparently is a small selection in Houston. Well, you say. If  you are feeding 40 maybe that's ok. NO, we were 9 in total. We all had entrees of monster proportions, we had all had starters again of gargantuan proportions. The beans and the fries would have been fine. As it was it took a lot of effort to send most of it back. It took a lot of persuasion of the servers that we didn't want it all put into nice neat doggy bags.

So, back to the land of the normal portion size and, maybe, just maybe, the cheese free meal.

No zoning laws

More foreign language. Houston has no zoning laws. Try driving down the I610 South towards Galveston. I did today. It's a big, wide road.  Along each side of it there is a random mixture of oil refineries, churches, houses, "gentlemens' clubs", video shops, Taco takeaways, "Chicken and biscuit parlors, schools, hotels, hospitals, scrubland, railway marshalling yards and more. Randomly dropped all over the place with no logic or order. None, I promise you. Like some child's toy box upturned and shaken over the floor to see what is there.

No zoning means no planning controls. You can put what you like where you like apparently. And people do, clearly. NASA Johnson Space Centre is opposite a block or two of new condominiums "now renting" on the seafront.  To an English ear "now renting" sounds like the condo has found itself somewhere to live but I suspect means that there are apartments available to rent.

Oh, answer this one- why is Mission Control for the shuttle in Houston, Texas, when it launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida?

Because that's where President Johnson wanted it to be, in Texas, his home state (he was a senator at the time, not president).  So there.

Houston, Texas

It's a very large place. 40km from the airport to my hotel. Downtown Houston can be seen from my office window when it's not too hazy, in the middle distance. 

The food is also large. Very large. Covered in cheese.

The restaurant I ate in last night has, as its smallest steak, a 12oz fillet. Sorry, fill-ay meegnon. It's coming momentarily with a special red wine Au Jus sauce. Funny, I thought the noun was Jus not Au Jus.  Oh Jzhooo, of course, is the correct pronunciation. If you were vaguely hungry you could have a 72oz t-bone, all to yourself. If you were seriously hungry you could have surf and turf. 48oz sirloin and 32oz freshwater lobster tail. With fries and slaw.

So, the waiter kept trying to persuade me to order the house special, fill-ay meegnon redwine Oh Jzhooo sauce, side of arugula and eggplant  with a chipotle wine vinegar dressing covered in melted swiss. Well I didn't, despite his best attempts to persuade me how good it was.  I can't eat dairy produce and swiss is cheese, an archetypal dairy product. No, feeling decisive, I ordered a plain fillet, blue, with fried onions and plain spinach, no cheese, so I thought. Vegetable chosen from the traditional vegetable section of the menu.  Traditional and simple food apparently, from the old world. I turned down the cheese bread and creamed butter. I turned down the olives stuffed with tuna and mozzarella. I smugly sat and waited for my delicious USDA aged plain fillet shown to a searingly hot grill, meltingly bloody inside accompanied by my plain traditional vegetables.

Some hope. Boy did they get me. 

Blue=bleu=cheese(blue cheese), melted all over the fill-ay; onions were a field of large onions, chopped into 2" high rings and deep fried in a delicious parmigan (pronounced "parmij-jan") batter and the plain spinach was sauteed in butter with a couple of pounds of delicious crumbly feta (cows milk not goats milk or sheeps milk) mixed in for effect.

I got the Oh Jzhooo sauce in a jug. I didn't order it but they thought I might want it anyway. I stopped a veritable procession of waiters from pouring it on my steak for me. I had managed to scrape off  nearly all the cheese and didn't want to cover the only edible part of the meal with boiled redwine and cream thickened with butter. Until I took my eye off the table for a microsecond to talk to someone on my left and the head waiter pounced from the right to pour my sauce for me........

Misnomers (3)

The congestion charge. Well, actually this is the first misnomer that arguably is correctly if literally named. The congestion charge is now a charge to allow you to drive from congested roads choked with traffic trying to avoid the charge to roads choked with the traffic that has either paid, is exempt or gets a special low rate. What it is not, of course, is a charge designed to discourage you from driving into London

In driving in town of course you now have to brave bendy buses, the odd cyclist who confuses you by actually stopping at a red traffic light and idiot pedestrians walking in the road or crossing in front of you, their noses in a magazine, ipod headphones in their ears oblivious to all and sundry. More than occasionally now, motor cyclists and motor scooter riders join in with the blithe law-breaking watched by our wonderful force of community support officers (police look-alikes with little training and few powers).

Road traffic law is rapidly and irredeemably falling into disrepute as people ignore it. Cyclists are jumping red lights, riding the wrong way up one way streets or the wrong way round roundabouts, ignoring cycle lanes and riding in the middle of the road, riding on the pavement, having no lights or high visibility clothing not even arm-bands at night. No care at all. Why have laws if the only people they are enforced against are the owners of cars because they are an easy target of cameras? 

Road rage nowadays is all too often some righteously angry cyclist banging his fist on your car without warning complaining about some trivial slight often imagined or the increasing number of people who assume they have the right to hoot and then scream abuse at you to stop you doing things they don't like, like reversing into a parking place when they want to drive past, like not letting them turn right in front of you rather than pass safely behind. I could go on and on but will finish here.

All of this is bound to lead to an increasingly angry, frustrated environment and I think it is only a matter of time before some uber-gridlock finally causes a car drivers' riot....

Gatwick North Terminal

Misnomers (2). Gatwick North Terminal. It's not one terminal at all. It's two.

Why do I say that? Well, going to the new gates, numbers 101 et seq in the North Terminal is not a light hearted last minute undertaking. It gets in the way of using all of BAA's lovingly fitted shops and restaurants. If you have lots of stuff to carry and arthritis of the knee, forget it. It's 10 minutes walk. 

So often, transport utilities define a 10 minute walk as one which would take an arthritic tortoise 10 minutes provided it didn't get lost en route.  This walk however is a real 10 minutes up hill and down dale. It's a bridge between terminals, the old North and the new North. You have to walk as the travelators don't always seem to be willing to travelate (if that is the correct new verb) and the man driving the battery powered cart won't give you a lift even though he has 6 seats spare as "you didn't book and you're not disabled".  Interesting judgement, the latter. To be disabled you clearly need outward signs of disablement, stick, dark glasses, hearing aid or similar. I don't consider myself disabled but I do have a bad knee and find it hard to walk far. Don't think that does it though for cart drivers.

So, the new gates are miles away in a new building. Its not the North terminal except for one thing. It's only got loos and gates. 

No shops. 

The fast bag drop

I am starting a new theme. misnomers of major proportions. The fast bag drop, a term unique to BA, I think, is number one. 

The miracle that is the internet allows you to check in on-line, print off your boarding pass and go to the airport to drop your bag off at the fast bag drop. It sounds wonderful. No queueing, no hassle while the people in front try to blag an upgrade only to discover their ticket is for yesterday or they've left their (expired) passports at home or their bag weighs 100 kilos and the don't want to pay the excess. 

No sirree, the system seductively offers you the chance to drop your bag off quickly and go painlessly through security to swoon in delight at all the wonderful shops BAA have provided to part you from your money.

Well, it's not true. The check in queue is now the fast bag drop queue. Check in staff are (largely) no more. Fewer people man fast bag drops (they are fast after all) and so the queues are longer. Cheaper for the airline in labour costs, but longer. Add to that the length of the security queues and the inevitable person in front who thinks the tiny bottles in one plastic bag rule only applies to others and its easier than ever to miss out on all that lovely shopping. Or the coffee in the lounge to prove you have a gold card or the flight.........