Nice dinner

With two fingers up to AA Gill, I am going to write about a restaurant I went to last night. Dinner at Gordon Ramsey at Claridge’s hotel. Definitely among the swankiest restaurants I have ever been to. We had a six course tasting menu. I was impressed. The food was good and the service was spot on. My favourite course was probably the main: a meaty slab of halibut with an autumnal red wine sauce that tasted like it had been swiped from a venison recipe. The addition of bacon and mushrooms completed the hearty, keep–out–the–cold October flavour. The other half liked the scallop dish best; delicate and fresh, wrapped in pasta, with a foamy saucy and subtly spicy sauteed peppers. Good stuff. We asked the sommelier for a wine recommendation (first giving an indication of menu choices and price–bracket — the most expensive bottle on the list being ten Gs!) and he suggested that we try a 2005 Beaujolais (Jean Foillard Morgon ‘Cote du Puy’) because it would go well with the scallop and halibut dishes which comprised the two central courses. Tasty wine. Quite different from the Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz that we more usually drink (the grape apparently being Gamay; the wine produced using organic methods). A pleasant buzz, indeed. I wouldn’t mind buying a few bottles, in fact.

All in all, an extremely enjoyable evening. It’s nice when you go to an expensive place and are in no way disappointed.

Labels: diary, eating, london

FBI read .foXinternet?

According to this, the FBI has developed a Terrorbusters logo. Remember this?

Labels: war on terror

Running Shoes

As a result of having my gym bag nicked a couple of weeks ago, I had to invest in a new pair of running shoes. Because they didn’t have my usual Brooks Glycerin in my size at Runners’ Need, they put me up on the treadmill, assessed my gait (mild over–pronation) and sold me a pair of Saucony ProGrid Omni 6. They look quite nice and are superficially comfortable, but having put 50–odd miles on them now, I must say that I am not getting along with them at all. Every time I go out for a run I come back without skin on the soles of my feet. I had thought that it might be a wearing–in issue, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Never had this problem with the Brooks, either. I think that I might have to put the Sauconys down to experience and go looking for another pair of Glycerins.

Update 28/10/07: Just got back from doing 12 miles or so and am pleased to report that my feet are fine. These shoes obviously just take longer than most to wear in.

Labels: training

Stan Tracey

After watching the first half of the rugby last night, I took the difficult decision to go to a gig at the Pizza Express Jazz Club on Dean Street instead of watching the second half. It was the Stan Tracey Trio (ST + Andrew Cleyndert (bass) and Clark Tracey (drums)) with Benjamin Herman (alto sax) and Guy Barker (trumpet). It was extremely good and enjoyable and I think that in the end I made the right decision. Spoke to Clark Tracey afterwards and apparently they were recording for a CD that night, so I will be looking out for that in due course for my collection.

Labels: diary, london, music

Camden Council

I see that there is another article by David Williams in the Evening Standard about the Boswell Street camera over which I went to war with Camden Council. I too lodged an appeal. The Parking and Traffic Appeals Tribunal eventually ruled in my favour, but only on the grounds that Camden had “lost” the video evidence by the time that the hearing came around and that I had done enough in my submissions to convince the adjudicator that one photograph alone could not be sufficient evidence to substantiate a moving violation of this nature (in the adjudicator’s words, whether or not one has “turned left” is a “question of fact and degree”).

It is interesting that in the case described by latest article, the driver’s defence appears to have been based on producing evidence that lots of other people commit the same violation, so the signs must be unclear (i.e. a mitigating factor), rather than the defence that I attempted to run (i.e. that no violation had occured at all because the sign had been complied with). My (in retrospect probably over–ambitious) argument was:

1. in these circumstances, you HAVE turned left (the Penalty Charge Notice offence here is actually “failure to drive in the direction shown by a blue sign”) provided that you don’t turn right (the identical type of blue arrow sign on a mini–roundabout is a good analogy);
2. this argument is bolstered by the fact that in performing the allegedly infringing manoeuvre, you have not travelled the wrong way along ANY of the streets designated as one–way by the London Traffic (Prescribed Routes)(Holborn) Regulations 1963, which is the statutory instrument imposing the one–way system that the that the signs on Boswell Street are supposed to be implementing.

Although he found in my favour based upon lack of evidence, the above argument was rejected by the adjudicator (despite 45 minutes of attempting to convince him!) but principled reasons for the rejection were not articulated.

So where does this leave us? The latest article states that Camden has apparently lost 20 of these cases at appeal, but won 91. Because decisions of the PTAT do not set precedent, Camden will no doubt leave everything as it is, continue to send out hundreds of tickets, of which a small fraction will appeal, of which about fifth or so will win (good preparation and a coherent argument of whatever nature probably being the determining factor).

Therefore, this remains a fantastic gravy–train for Camden until someone takes it to the High Court, which does set precedent, and demonstrates that Camden is wrong — either on the basis that the existing signs are unclear and unfair, or (less likely) that there is no offence being committed here at all. If only 20% of appeals to the PTAT succeed at the moment, and hundreds of tickets are issued a month, I would be led cynically to suggest that Camden is likely to go out of its way to avoid a case on this camera ever getting that far…

Labels: driving, london

riding2work

This commuting through Central London by push bike lark is a challenge. Now I understand why the bike came with a free "Write Your Own Will" guide, which I thought had seemed odd in the shop.

Led Zep

Did anyone get tickets for the Led Zeppelin Ahmet Ertegun tribute gig on 26 November 2007? Tickets are £125 and were allocated via a ballot that was enormously over–subscribed. I applied but was unsuccessful. I saw that Harvey Goldsmith was on the TV having a big moan the other day about the secondary market that has developed on ebay (although I am not exactly clear what the principled basis for his complaint is — “real fans” are no more likely to win in the ballot than anyone else, or any less likely to have £1,000 to buy a ticket on ebay than anyone else).

Labels: music

Overrated

It said on the news this morning that “if you are standing out in the brisk north–westerly wind today, it will feel cool”. I must say that I tried it for ten minutes or so before work and, personally, I didn’t like it.

Postal Strikes

Every cloud has a silver lining, and all that: “This strike has thrown the direct–marketing industry into crisis” (Robert Keitch, a spokesman for the Direct Marketing Association).

Labels: news

rode2work

Rode to work this morning. Managed Central London rush hour chaos for the first time on a push bike with the greatest of ease, notwithstanding funny clip–in shoes that I must say had me slightly worried (I confess that I went out for a practice in getting in and out of the clips in lighter traffic last night, and that I did fall over embarassingly with both feet still in the pedals once, fortunately right at the very start while waiting for the underground garage doors to open).

On the downside, I got soaked by the rain, and the bike’s seat fell off. Now at my desk steaming gently in a wrinkly shirt. Presumably this is the future that Al Gore has in store for us all…

ride2work scheme

I just bought a bike under the ride2work scheme. This is a government sponsored initiative that allows you to buy a pedal cycle for the purposes of commuting to work free of VAT, paid for by monthly deductions over a one year period out of your pre–tax salary on an interest–free basis. If your salary extends into the higher rate tax bracket, this effectively means that you get the bike for more or less half price on one year’s interest–free credit (although technically the scheme is a kind of hire purchase agreement, under which your employer retains title to the bike during the one year period).

Stick to Hyde Park

I’ve been away on a work conference in Eastbourne for the last couple of days. The conference was fine, as these things go, but one evening after the sessions, I thought it would be a good idea to clear my head by taking a quick jog and visiting the famous Beachy Head. Big mistake. I got up as far as the famous suicide drop without incident, on a pleasantly warm Autumn evening. But then the sun went down like a brick in a swimming pool. Living in central London, I had forgotten that it actually gets dark at night in some places. Apparently, where this phenomenon occurs, the transition from light to dark happens quite quickly. Who knew!? How dangerous!

Anyway, this left me running backwards and forwards in the blackness trying to find the path back to Eastbourne without inadvertently plummeting off the edge of the cliff. It was getting quite scary. Also, the headline would have been bad: — “Conference so dire that delegate leaps from Beachy Head”. In the end, after running halfway back to Eastbourne along what I had thought was the path only for it to disappear into featureless scrub dropping off towards the sea, I decided that I’d had enough and struck out inland in the direction of a light, eventually happening upon a pub, from which I called for a taxi.

Labels: training

What exactly do we want the economy to be doing?

This article talks about how problematic it is that the housing market is weakening, consumer borrowing is falling, disposible incomes are falling, consumer spending is down. But aren’t each of those changes exactly what those seeking to manage the economy people were trying to make happen over the last year by repeatedly raising interest rates? Shouldn’t we be saying “whoopee!”?

Labels: economics

I put my bag down for a minute today in Evans Cycles, Waterloo while I turned around to look at some bikes, and some miserable scrote appears to have made off with it. There goes my phone, blackberry, running shoes, gym kit (unfortunately freshly washed rather than sweaty). My own silly fault for being careless, but it’s a bit of a shag having to keep a hand on your stuff 24/7 to avoid an opportunist having it away. Guess that’s life these days.

Labels: crime, london

I just walked past London mayoral candidate Boris Johnson, MP, stopped on his pushbike at the pedestrian crossing on Farringdon Road. I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “nice barnet” (which I didn’t say).

Labels: celebrity spots, london, UK politics