July 17th - July 23rd 2006
Sunday Canary Wharf
Saturday Chatty at the checkout
Friday Barbican
Thursday Sired
Wednesday Canada Square
Tuesday Credit bloody Suisse
Monday Lambeth County Show
Sunday 23rd July
Canary Wharf, Summer 2006
Saturday 22nd July
After a hideous week at work, three days off in a row, trala.
So today I invested some me-time in a leisurely stroll to our local Waitrose, ostensibly for the ingredients for Rat Pie - a sort of hot ratatouille, with added salami.
(I know, I know, in this weather it should be salad - but I've learnt that, whilst I buy salad, and feel good for having done so, I rarely seem to get round to eating it, so it just sits smugly in the bottom of the fridge until it deliquesces.)
Courgettes, onions, red peppers, aubergine, passata, salami - and, oh what the hell, two alarmingly pricey pieces of freshly breaded cod (I don't quite understand my recent penchant for breaded fish - is it something to do with the feeling that if they bothered to cover it in breadcrumbs then it must be somehow... finished).
Ooh, prawns at reduced prices, so let's have a couple of avocados as well and... garlic mayonnaise or lemon mayonnaise? Oh, take both, you're worth it.
Bacon, reduced; pasta sauce, reduced; onion gravy, reduced; eggs, free-range Columbian Blacktail no less, reduced.
Aha! Bicks Corn Pickle - a condiment I love, and the existence of which some people at the office were recently heard to doubt. Given that I couldn't find it either the last time I went looking for it, and began to doubt my own sanity, best take advantage of the special offer on two jars, for mental hygiene.
Anything else? Some own-brand coffee beans to flesh out the Starbucks Verona I buy one a week. Tin of tuna, for the unlikely event that I do get round to that salad. Spring onions, ditto. Light bulbs, not ditto. Butter. Bread? Hmm, no - Momma don't pay full price for bread.
And head for the check-out, where I'm mildly surprised to find a white check-out girl, something of a rarity in these parts.
The woman in front of me, smallish with a pronounced limp, indulges Miss Checkout with some conversation about the lovely smell of the Scented Stocks she's having packing up for her; I'm more delighted by the shopping list that smallWoman has clipped to the back of her trolley: Vodka, flowers, salmon.. a woman after my own heart.
I joke about this with Miss Checkout when my time comes, and graciously accede to her suggestion that she should put the spring onions in a plastic bag all of their own, a manoeuvre the purpose of which entirely escapes me. My, we are getting on well.
When I catch her preparing to separately bag the red peppers, I intervene with a muttered cry of "Save the planet!", and rapidly shovel the peppers, onions, aubergine and courgettes all in together.
"I like to give them a chance to get to know each other beforehand," I hear myself say.
And the rest of the transaction proceeds in silence.
Friday 21st July
Barbican, Summer 2006
Thursday 20th July
Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry is pregnant by her reality show rival Syed Ahmed...
Wednesday 19th July
Canada Square, Summer 2006
Tuesday 18th July
Much annoyance at work this week, exacerbated by trying to concentrate on a complicated workload through the cheesey guitar chords of the Canary Wharf Summer Galas - and Acoustic Magic Band Night in particular.
"Names that are destined to become household names" the website calls it; crap bands that no-one's ever heard of is nearer the mark, compensating for their lack of talent by turning up the volume.
You'd think that a state-of-the-art office block like 1 Canada Square would be well-insulated acoustically, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If you were hearing this level of noise from your upstairs neighbours, you'd have taken a broom handle to the celing long since.
Tonight seems particularly loud, and a wander round Canada Square reveals that the entire area is 'Closed for a Private Party'. Lots of sleek blokes in white shirts, lots of skinny blondes in frocks - I strongly suspect this private party is the price Credit Suisse demanded for sponsoring the galas in the first place.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Credit Suissse.
Bah.
Monday 17th July
Lambeth County Show, Summer 2006
......previous week
