Tag Archives: car parking

Chips and Disappointment

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The chips were from last night. Number One Son and his partner were up in Nottingham and we went out for a meal in the evening. I had a rack of ribs and chips, plus corn on the cob, coleslaw and a visit to the salad bar. I like to think, particularly as I stuck to the small portion of chips, that it was a reasonably healthy meal.

It was the Harvester restaurant I have written about before, sometimes in complimentary fashion, sometimes less so. The food was good this time, the salad was fresh, appetising and even interesting, though the bread rolls weren’t particularly inspiring.

What I didn’t like on this visit was the notice from a parking company telling us that we had to key our car registration into the terminal in the restaurant or we would be fined £100. This sort of thing is becoming very common, as are tales of people being fined. It sets the whole evening off on a negative footing. We had something similar when we went to Tim Horton’s in Mansfield. After eating we found there was a barely visible notice in the car park telling us there was a time limit on parking. It  It was long enough and we hadn’t overstayed. On the other hand, if we had been wanting a relaxed and leisurely breakfast, the limit would have been enough to make it less relaxed.

Sticky Toffee Cake – Tagg Lane Dairy

We haven’t been back.

There are other eating places we can use that are of a similar quality and price to Harvester, and as a result of the car parking notice we will be more likely to use them in the future.

However, that wasn’t the disappointment. I thought of a book title while we were out at the garden centre today. It just came to me. Breakfast at Wetherspoons. For those of you overseas, it’s a national pub chain with a variable reputation, well known carpets and a place in British life. No, I’ve never been in one, but I thought it made a good title. Someone, disappointingly, has already used it.

Tch!

Toasted Teacakes

I thought I’d go for food as today’s photo theme.

Holiday Day 3 Part 2 Me v the NHS

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This is about day 3 but written on Day 4. Day 4 will follow later.

Yesterday I went for my Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) Screening. It’s a free NHS service available to men at the age of 65. It used to be 67 (which was when I first heard of it, when one of the shop customers warned me about it as one of the signs of ageing).

To have the procedure you first have to sit in a temporary waiting room with notices sellotaped to the wall. One of the notices details the terms and conditions of how they will treat your records and tells you that if you don’t agree to them you can’t have the screening and they will report this to your GP. This rather ominous start to the process would benefit from a redesign. I have found before that although they employ thousands of clerical staff in the NHS they don’t seem to have anyone capable of communicating in a cheery and welcoming manner.

After sitting around for a bit, comparing how old I looked compared to the others in the room, I came to the conclusion that I was looking about average for a 65-year-old and that none of them had facial hair. It’s something I have noticed before. I was unusual in my generation for having a beard, though in later generations it has become widespread. Just an observation . . .

 

None of them had tattoos either. That’s something else that we didn’t do, but the younger generation does.

And none of us was staring at the screen of a  mobile phone.

I’ll stop the list now.

I was then taken along to a room where I had to answer some undemanding questions (name, address, date of birth, ethnicity and whether I had read the leaflets they had sent me.) I failed the last one as I hadn’t, but I had looked at the pictures so I had the general idea.

Then I was made to lie down on a bed where my feet hung off the end whilst the lady spread me with gel and kept prodding me with the thing they use for scanning. I haven’t a clue what they would call it. Maybe a probe (though that sounds a bit intrusive) or a scanner (though that might be confused with  other sorts of scanning technology) r even a wand. It was a bit wand shaped. It appears that my aorta was not easy to find. It seemed to take a long time. However, she was persistent and tactful and never mentioned my girth.

There are four results. One is that you are fine with no abnormalities and can be signed off, never to be seen again. One is that you have signs causing concern. Aneurysms grow slowly so you get another scan in 12 months to check. If you have more signs causing concern they have you back every three months. The fourth is that you have cause for major concern, in which case they hand you over to the medical team who will, in the worst cases, operate.

I am in category one and have been signed off. It’s a good result. Three monthly checks would have been very annoying, probably more annoying than the operation. The visits would be made even worse by the chaotic nature of the parking and the unhelpful maps and (incorrect and contradictory) information on the website.

It rained as I left and, being in shirt sleeves, I got soaked in the 200 yards walking (slowly) to the car. I then had to find the exit, drive past it and do a three point turn to face the correct angle to get out. Still, it could have been worse. It’s always good to get away from hospital without having to take your trousers off.

Musings

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Interesting day in the shop. It started with me arriving early to find all the parking had gone, and as I parked to cause maximum possible inconvenience to the people using our spaces one left, which left me with a dilemma. Continue to cause maximum inconvenience, or grab the slot and secure a parking space for the day with no need to move or argue.

I decided to park in the newly available space. As it was, we had a customer later and he blocked the bad mannered parkers in, so the woman in the big black car was still put to some inconvenience when she wanted to move. This is good, as it may make her think twice about parking outside the shop again. However, I know it probably won’t, as most people who park in our spaces think they have some sort of right to do it. Like the one who told me “I pay my taxes . . .”

Until then I didn’t know you could pay a tax that allowed you to park where you want (I am, of course being sarcastic here, as we don’t).

Bamforth comic card

The photo has nothing to do with the subject of the blog but I saw it whilst searching and thought I’d put it in.

We had a couple of questions – one surprisingly clear and one, unsurprisingly, the ramblings of a man who appears to think e can fill in the gaps with our mind-reading skills. He wants to know if he can offer us £50 for a coin. Well, I can’t stop him. What he really means, in his woolly-headed way is is if we will accept £50 for a coin. Confused? Me too. Traditionally questions like this come with a little more information, like which coin. He has obviously got one in mind on a drop down menu. Coins on the menu start at £35. I would be happy to sell him a £35 coin for £50, but I don’t think that’s what he has in mind. Most of the coins on the menu are £85 to £100. I imagine that is what he is thinking of. If we were making so much money we could afford to offer that level of discount I’d have retired years ago.

Harlow Carr Gardens – this may be too ambitious as a retirement project, but you need to have ambition.

At this point my thoughts always turn to winning the lottery and installing bollards that go up and down so we could keep people out of our spaces. Of course, what I always miss in this scenario is that if  won enough money to even think about retractable bollards, parking at work would no longer be an issue. Actually, I just checked. You can buy a cheap bollard (retractable or folding) for as little a £60, though I wouldn’t really trust an eBay dealer with my security needs. Around £100 labour to fit, they say, but it’s probably more. It’s always more . . .

There are, of course, more expensive choices.

However, getting back to the main question – if I won a significant sum on the Lottery would I let it change my life. Yes, I certainly would. Now that I’m on the verge of retirement I am getting impatient. I’ve just been looking up garden sheds, greenhouses and raspberry canes. Once I get a flat and easy to maintain garden I am going to take more interest. There are too many steps and slopes in our current one.

It’s strange what a difference a few months makes. When I first realised it was looming I grew afraid of retirement. Now I can’t wait.

Fat Rascal at Harlow Carr. In retirement I am going to do more baking. I may even buy a mixer to do the difficult bits.

 

Blood Test Day

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I cut out the middle man this week and went straight to the Phlebotomy Department at City Hospital. They looked at my veins, stuck a needle in the more promising one, drew the blood and sent me away.

It only took nineteen minutes from entering the car park to leaving.

I know this because it says so on my car parking receipt. If I’d been there fifteen minutes the parking would have been free.Instead, I paid £2 to park for four minutes.

So, am I happy because they took the sample first time? Am I glad I was seen free of charge, quickly and efficiently?   Am I pleased that I was able to get the test done and still get to work on time?

Of course not. I’m complaining that it all took four minutes too long and cost me £2.

That’s life.

 

 

A Visit to Ely

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My first mistake on this trip was trusting the satnav. A year ago you wouldn’t have heard me say that, because I simply wouldn’t have used it. Since then I have gradually found myself starting to not only use it, but to trust it. This has proved to be a mistake as it has recently tried to take me up a couple of one-way streets, got me lost in Leeds twice and taken us on several strange routes, including a tour of B-road Lincolnshire.

On Friday it tried to take us to Ely by driving past and looping back,  so I switched off and asked Julia to do some map reading.

Married men reading this will probably be experiencing a chilly feeling of deja vu. In addition they will probably be watching, mesmerised, as I flirt with disaster. Fear not. I will admit that there was a touch of domestic discord surrounding navigation, but I am not stupid enough to discuss it in greater depth than that.

Anyway, I like mystery tours, and it gave us the chance to see Fen Drayton Lakes. I was hoping there would be a toilet there, and possibly a Kingfisher. Both hopes were doomed. There are feeders and viewpoints, and lots of water. Unfortunately there was too much for us to do it justice, even after I made a quick stop in a hedge to rectify the lack of toilets. Unfortunately I couldn’t rectify the lack of leaves on the hedge. Ah well…

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As we were driving along the roadway to the reserve we crossed the track of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. I’d never heard of it until I crossed it, despite it being the longest one in the world. In fact I’d never even heard of a guided busway. My sister, on the other hand, tells me not only has she heard of it, but has actually used it.

In Ely, we found a free car park with toilets. “Free” is a quality I admire in a car park, and “with toilets” is also an excellent quality. This is the Barton Road Car Park, which was in a reasonable walking distance of the Cathedral. There are others, which you can see here.

Russian Cannon
Cathedral from the Close
Trunnion of Russian Cannon

The Russian Cannon was captured in the Crimean War and presented by Queen Victoria in 1860 on the formation of the Ely Rifle Volunteers.

We decided, for various reasons (which included the price) just to  go to the Stained Glass Museum. We’ve been to the Cathedral in the past, but not to the Stained Glass Museum, and we’re on a budget. I’m thinking of posting something on this subject later. I will also post separately on the Stained Glass Museum, which was so good I want to go back to see it all again.

After the museum we wandered round town for a while, had coffee, checked out some charity shops, tried to buy some pork and took more photographs. Things weren’t great for photographs, as narrow streets and low sun cast many shadows.

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The butcher’s shop is Edis of Ely, a fine old-fashioned shop with a great range of products and two walls of award certificates. The two people in the shop were more concerned with talking to a regular customer, who was obviously more interesting than I was. After waiting patiently for some time I decide enough was enough and left, so I can’t tell you if everything was as good as it looked. As they didn’t seem to notice as I left, I can only assume I was either invisible or unwelcome.

As I’ve never been there before I can’t see why I should have been unwelcome so I can only assume my diet has been effective to the point of rendering me difficult to see.

However, one of the charity shops produced an unread copy of The Cat’s Pyjamas (The Penguin Book of Cliches)for £1.50, so I’m over the moon about that.

Oliver Cromwell’s House
Oliver Cromwell’s House

Oliver Cromwell and his family lived here from 1636-46, though I suspect he wasn’t home much from 1642 0nwards.  What with the size of the entrance fees to the Cathedral and the spirit of Cromwell I’m beginning to feel a bit iconoclastic…