sainsburys

london 5pm 8.4C cloudy tuesday 2024

lts quite mild temperatures we are having now. ranging from 8C to 12C. and this is the depth of winter, it being january and you would expect it to be cold wouldn’t you?

i went to the sainsburys this morning and was surprised to see their thai rice being sold for $5.75 for 5kg… it was their nectar price, meaning you need to use your nectar members card. otherwise it cost £7. so i bought a pack, and came back again with a shopping wheeled cart to buy another 4more. they expire on 11.2025, so there is plenty of time to finish eating them before then. i guess it explains why they are reduced but as long as we can get it for lower price i dont mind if it is due to the expiring sell by date. so much the better haha.

what is interesting is that there is no advertisement about this price reduction and i would not have known of it except by accident, there was no price label on this display , and even though i know what the normal price was £7 i just decided to use my scan -and- go gun on it.  it is linked to my nectar card, so it tells me what the nectar price are. and  i am glad i did, because it flashed up £5.75. 

the gun is very good in another way too , because sometimes it shows a reduced price from the price that is on their label. presumably this happens when the staff could not keep up with the price reductions and change the price labels. when i was checking the prices, there were 3 chinese ladies and they were seeing what i was doing. i assumed they know about the price reduction if they got a nectar card,i hope so, otherwise they would lose out on this bargain price. 

 

grocery shopping in tesco

london 8pm 22C cloudy monday 2019

i have been to the tesco today to buy their chicken thighs, £1.66/kg, greens 54p for 500mg, and onions 1kg for 50p. they are very good value for money, which is why i am surprised when i read that tesco has increased their prices of 1000 items recently. and just now i read this article saying they are cutting costs by sacking staff from their metro stores. in fact, i have been avoiding going to tescos because of those articles about them increasing their prices. and today i went only because i saw in their website those good prices for the thighs. i got those thighs back to the flat and was cooking them today , and saw they dont include the bones from the backbone. asda sells these thighs for the same price but they include the bones from the backbone, which makes them more bony than tesco’s. so in terms of better value, the tesco ones are better. and no one else sells onions and greens so cheap. 

it is rather strange for the publicity to emphasise their increased prices but not their low prices… but i have often found this for myself … if u buy the branded stuff you will find their prices go up, but keep to the basic stuff and they tend to  remain the same prices or if they do go up, it is relatively small increase, or another supermarket own brand will keep the same low price.

instant coffee is a good eg of this. tesco, and sainsburys too, once doubled the price of their basic instant coffee, and so i switched to aldi, and lidl, and now i find tesco has reverted to the same price , showing that many have shifted like me. but the funny thing is , i am not tempted to go back to tesco. so that i hope it will teach them not to play around with the prices and try it on by raising the prices dramatically. they will lose my custom for good at least for that item. and i am hoping many of us do that. show them we are not going to foolishly and slavishly buy their stuff no matter how much they raise the prices.

i dont object to them raising the prices of their so called luxury items. haha. for eg, on the same shelves as the cheap thigh chickens at £1.66/kg, is their so called british chicken thighs, at £3/kg. they look exactly the same as far as i can see, just the name and packing looks more fancy… so i dont mind them doing this, if they can fool the foolish well go ahead, that should at least keep them in profit, because i dont want them to go bankrupt haha.

btw chicken thighs are really the best cuts. better than the whole chicken, or drumsticks or legs. because they got a lot of meat in them, with a thigh bone that is quite light, so weight for weight and ratio of meat to bones, they are really good value.  it goes without needing to say it, that the breasts are the most expensive cuts. and it has to be said that the whole chickens here in uk are the most big breasted , unlike everywhere else in the world that i can see, where the chickens are skinny. so if u like breasts, i think it better to buy the whole chicken, even though u are paying for all those backbones, and ribs. 

 

as forecast, the hot weather did not last, and it is dropped a lot today to highest 24C. it is quite strange for the hot weather to just come for one day, it makes me wonder what is causing it to do that.

london 8.09pm 23C sunny sunday 2019

quite a cloudy day today which partly explains why it is cooler.though now it has cleared up and is a cloudless blue sky. there are a few free fetes to go to today, but i decided to give them all a miss, and instead go to the paddington library as usual. haha. its a habit that i am so used to now. though i did digress from my usual route coming back, by continueing on the 36 bus to vauxhall, and happen to catch up with the 196 to the tesco in kennington.

that tesco store in kennington is closing today. i went about 1.30pm, but allready they were all sold out of the fresh meat, so they must have reduced the prices from this morning, so that only vegetables are left to reduce price… iceburg lettuce for 15p each.i got 3 of those, and pak choy 35p, chinese cabbage 31p. not a large haul, but it was exactly waht i was after; this hot weather is great for eating vegetables. 

the place looks like  it is being cleared up, with empty shelves, and even no shelves, they are allready dismantling it.

i googled it and read that they are putting a temporary structure in the carpark, using the fridges and shelves from the old store; and it will be smaller which they hope will be done in 3wks; not sure if it will be as well stocked as it wont be a superstore, but more like an express store. and be used for 30months while they intend to pull the present building  down and build a new development with a supermarket on the ground level and flats above it.   and two full grown trees in the road side will be chopped down. 

there are allready so many luxury flats being built just down the road ,around the us embassy, near the river.  they seem to think demand will continue, just who will be buying these flats i wonder?

when tesco bought the land, (dont know how long ago that was)it must be quite cheap, because it  is a lot of land they have bought, they got a huge carpark as well as this huge single storey store on it at present. 

supermarket shopping

london 9.01pm 8C dry night wednesday 2019

today is really very sunny and blue sky bright so unlike yesterday. looking back on the day, i realised it did not change my behaviour, i did not stop everything and go out and lie in the sun to take full advantage of the nice weather. its funny that, one would think i would take every chance i get to sit out in the sun when it is sunny, seeing that you cannot take for granted that it will be sunny tomorrow, and especially since i have experienced yesterday which was so rainy and overcast. instead of staying in the sun, i went to the library, borrowed a book of short stories, ‘the wandering earth’ by cixin liu.

and then i went to the sainsburys nearby. it was the last day i can get bonus points for the nectar card, that is why i went. to buy something … i got milkpowder, because i know i can always use it, and i bought some more bananas. i am eating a lot of them these days to keep myself regular.

and then, later in the evening, at about 7pm i went to the tesco to see if they have any food bargains. i bought some more stuff… about £2.50 worth, so even when i splash out, the bill remains small. so what did i actually buy?

beansprouts 50p normal price

reduced price lactose free yogurt arla (that is the brand name)500  400mg 38p. its quite nice, in fact i have finished it. dont understand that thing about lactose free. it is made of milk.added 11.4.19 thursday . i had been thinking about how quick i finished off this carton of yogurt, i thought it was 500mg, and i was thinking how come the 1kg yogurt i used to buy took me so long to finish… until i had another look at the carton, and realised it is only 400mg. they were originally selling it for £1.50, so it is expensive really, if u come to think of it. yet £1.50 is about the price level of yogurts in the supermarkets. and it is the amounts that varies and that fools you into buying.  you can get an inkling of how they are able to make so much profits and people buy it because they are all selling it at this level.

preserved meats reduced price 50p kabanos, some kind of polish sausages 200mg

bread baguette reduced price 21p

greens 54p normal price

2apple turnover reduced price 40p. they got cream in them. this one i got tempted. i ate one already, the other i shall have for breakfast tomorrow.

i had thought of making stir fried char kuey teoh with the bean sprouts but when i got back simon had come back and was going to cook steak and boiled potatoes and green beans, so i had that instead. 

and then on tv they have two programs about supermarkets. one called secrets of the supermarkets,(trying to find food trends in the pop up restaurants in the street food eating places and adapting them to sell in their supermarket)  and the other about tesco, a short history of how it started as a cheap -and -pile- it- high business, and then it decided to go upmarket to compete with sainsburys and succeeded when it overtook it to become no 1 in uk. then it took a profit tumble in the first decade of the new century, and is now trying to overcome the aldi and lidl factors, both brands relying on the cheap but not pile it high approach that is a variant of what tesco started with. 

i am very glad there is aldi and lidl, they started in germany, because the germans dont care about making shopping pleasant, but focus solely on price. and luckily these two companies decide to expand into uk and it took them a long time to succeed. but they kept on and now their time has come. we are now realising we just want things cheap, rather than stick to tesco or sainsburys where they fix the prices and dont ever reduce them much. now we have an alternative choice , we can shop at lidl or aldi. it reminds me of primark, and how it broke up the cartel of old department stores who can fix the prices for clothes and fashion. recently there was a lot of news of primark opening their largest store in birmingham. we hear so much of how internet shopping have killed the department stores, but primark have no online presence, so how come they are able to thrive hey? and still price their goods so low. 

hot february

london 9.43pm 10.3C (high of 20.8C) monday 2019

it seems today is the warmest february day ever in the history of uk, (since records began that is). but actually if u live through it, i can tell you it is not that hot, haha. and so it is easy to not notice it.

if the newspapers have not trumpetted it, i would not have known of it. i was asleep when the website says it hit 20C,(at about 4pm) and even then it was only a very brief hit, before the temp went down. 

20C is nothing really, in terms of hotness… tell me when it is 38C, haha. if it ever get to that kind of temperature in uk. it will be a rare day indeed and really would convince me of global warming if london gets 38C every summer . maybe one day in the long far future who knows, if what they say about warming is correct.

but what i find more noticeable about today is the brilliant clear cloudless blue sky … i get to feel happy always whenever i see it. i have come to realise that it is not everywhere in the world you can see blue sky. i know in malaysia it is really rare to see it, because if the sky is not hazy with the smog fires , it would be cloudy with monsoon rain clouds at other times. in london, it is quite often i see cloudless blue sky. and yet i read of people always saying how grey the skies are in london. not from my own experience living here for ever so long.

i like roast chicken, and usually i cook it myself. but recently, these few days, i have been finding tesco near me have reduced their cooked roast chicken from £6 to £1.50 (like it is today, and £1.80 a few days ago). it was so cheap , i bought it even though i had only recently finished the last one i bought when it was £1.80 reduced.

the convention here is that for final reductions, expect them to cut the price to a quarter. that is why i bought the raw chicken breasts, (another buy which was reduced in tonight’s tesco bargain reductions) reduced from £4 to £1 , even though at 450mg, it is still quite pricey. even at these reduced price it comes out to £2.22/kg. you can get a whole chicken for £2/kg.

and also at the tesco today i bought minced pork for £1.38. 500mg. it says the original price was £5.50 but i think that is a really inflated price. usually u can get such minced pork normally sold  for £4.£3 added. this is very interesting. the pack i bought is a woodside farms mince pork 12%fat, and in the tesco website it costs £1.99. yet in this pack i bought, it has a reduced label with the original price as £5.50, reduced £1.38… hmm, it looks like tesco is doing a cheating game… putting in stickers with a higher price on their products and then reducing it to a quarter…( actually, i noticed its sell by date is today 25.feb. i wonder if it is still inside its sell by date, and not due to be reduced. in which case it should be sold at its normal price of £1.99, but in this case it  has been reduced by 50p. i have noticed that tesco has not been putting price stickers on their pork products, they put a shelf price label on the shelf instead. quite a sneaky trick. this pack i bought had no price sticker on it, so that i cannot see the original price and got fooled . 

it is rare to find mince pork sold in supermarkets though. and to find any reduced in price is even less common.

unlike minced beef, the supermarkets dont sell a lot of mince pork …i think more minced beef are sold because i suspect any unsold beef gets minced , or cheaper cuts of beef are used and sold as minced beef, so it is a way of getting rid of excess beef that cannot be sold at the higher price.

but pork is allready quite cheap when u sell it as a roast, (£1.60/kg) and so not many left over to mince. and what with the extra cost from the labour to grind them up, adding to the cost it would be a loss if they sell it cheaper than the roast pork prices.  also there are very few recipes that uses minced pork. no pork burgers for eg. whereas there are lots of recipes for beef burgers. and so demand for minced pork is not high. at least that is my theory to explain why they dont sell more minced pork. 

 

chicken breasts are really very expensive, because here in uk, people like it because it got no bones. i find it great for stir fry and buy only if i get it reduced like this; otherwise i dont buy it  normally and i never buy it at its normal price.

in the past, we can get whole chicken reduced to £1. not any more now, those days may be gone. but when we get that price, we buy lots of the chicken, and that is when i cut them up, keeping the breasts, and freezing them for later. 

but what i mean to say is that it is really nice to be living in london and be able to get these unexpected food bargains in the supermarket. 

caeser salad

london 9.37pm 8C dry night friday 2019

i think its very mild for this time of year. it says 8C but it is a bit cold outside. you will need to dress up warm, with beanie , hoodie, gloves and scarf round the neck. its nice and warm when i went out like that. 

i read that europe is having snow storms and cold weather, but it seems to have bypassed the uk. i think the gulf stream is diverting it away.

i was walking past my downstairs neighbours door, and i noticed it was open and she was fiddling with it. i asked her what is up, and she said the door is being rattled everytime the outside door of the block is opened. she said it rattles so loudly that it wakes her up, and she is putting blue tac in the door jamb to mute it. i am surprised that the door rattles , because mine is very firmly against the door jamb. but maybe the suction that is created when the block door is opened is very strong and hers being on the ground floor and so near the main entrance door may feel the force much more than mine which is on the first floor.

i went to the tesco at about 7.30pm today to see if there are any bargains. and found prepared caeser salad, reduced from £1.85 to 19p. so i bought 2 packs. and it turned out to be quite nice really. lots of romaine lettuce  pieces, and separate plastic sachets of croutons, and parmiagiano cheese, and a large plastic bag of dressing. i ate one pack allready and really enjoyed it. the pack has been packed with some air in it, i think it might be nitrogen, to keep the leaves fresh. it certainly did the trick. and at 19p each, it costs much less than if i were to make it myself. fortunate that i bought another pack, so i can look forward to enjoying it again.

hmm, i can see why people buy these ready made packs even though if they buy it at normal prices it is expensive. it is just very convenient, isn’t it? its the first time i seen it being reduced this low, but i shall buy it again if i see it reduced like this next time. it all depands on pot luck really as to whether i shall find it reduced like this again. 

added 13.1.19 got a photo of it today.

 

tesco at the time they reduce prices

london 1.48pm 10.5C cloudy tuesday 2018

i had a glimpse at how tesco manage their reduced pricing of the sell by foods at the end of the day.

last night i was there when a worker began to reduce the prices. i noticed that the price he slaps on the chicken breasts were higher than the marked down price allready on it. so i pointed it out to him and said you are marking it higher than the price on the sticker. £1.85, when the marked down price allready on it is £1.75. (for two raw chicken breasts)and only then was he aware of it. it does not seem likely that a person can make that kind of mistake… but he seemed to have done. but tellingly, he did not correct it and slap another price marker on it to overlay the higher price.

i was waiting for him to slap a marked down price on the minced beef, and asked him why he had not done so. so he did  on one, but it was not much reduced… only to £1.40, when by rights if he had done a normal 1/4 reduction it would be about 80p. so i did not buy it. i have noticed they are very slow to slap a reduction on their raw meat . and even when they do they dont reduce it by much. a sign of the times i suppose when they are savvy to the behaviour of us bargain hunters. haha.

i remember on another day when i saw lotsof these minced beef on the reduced price shelf, and went there twice in the day, and they still did not reduce it to the final reduction. in the end, i left before 8pm before they did anything to it as i just was too bored with waiting for them to do it.  i went too early. that is why i resolved to go at about 7.30pm, when the final reduction should start at about 8pm. but i think they are doing the final reduction on the meat later and later. so i shall just try pot luck, and see what comes up. if i get it , good, if not nevermind. haha. 

he did reduce the processed foodstuff. i bought the chicken kiev , a pack of 2 raw chicken breasts 

for 40p, reduced from £2. that is more than a 1/4 reduction. and the turkey escalopes. they are quite nice at that price. later, simon told me they need cooking first. i thought they were allready cooked and that all i have to do is warm them up in the microwave. but the instructions specify not to be microwaved but put in the oven at 200C for 20mins. frankly i would not bother to buy at their normal price. £2 and then have to cook it too and having to use electricity for it. i think if i am going tobuy processed stuff, i expect it to be ready to eat with just a microwave warming up. (no idea why this part is so small font size . it wont get larger no matter what i do.)

so they need cooking. well they are being cooked now, all of them, so that we can save some electricity instead of cooklng them one by one. just as well i bought so many. but i must say, chicken kiev is quite nice to eat, with its melted cheese inside the breast. added. we ate them, but i myself was disappointed. i expected a lot more cheese to ooze out but these ones dont have any cheese at all in them. they have a bit of garlic paste. dont think i shall buy them again. even at 40p i dont think they are that worthwhile.

added. 4.24pm . i remembered something also at that night of the tesco reduction. i pointed to a minced beef pack and said why that has no price on it. he said it is not due its sell by date. so i said why is it on the reduced bargain shelf? he said some customer must have left it there. it made me wonder if that is what they do. put some there to make it look like there are mince beef for reduction. and either fool someone to take it without realising it is full price, or get others in the mood for reductions whilst waiting, and hope they will start buying the other foodstuff. it made me wonder if last time when i saw so many of mince beef packs that they might not be ready for their sell by date, but just put there to fool us. that is a new strategy. all in all, it does make me rather less willing to go specially to tesco for their reductions. if i am going to buy something there then i will go, otherwise i will give them a miss. 

added. hmm i wonder if this change of policy in the way they reduce the prices is a way to avoid the huge hen fight that can ensue when they do these reductions in the past. then, they just cut the prices to 20p, 10p, 50p, and that caused a huge scramble and mayhem set loose when everyone grab everything for dear life in an effort to grab these bargains. instead what i see is a person might grab a reduced price salad, and then i see him come back to return it saying he does not want it. 

this and that

london 6.21pm 24C sunny. wednesday 2018

i usually go early to the circuit training class so that i can go to the chelsea library near there. i see they have put out on display lots of travel guides to places all over the world. but i read in the papers today that the tour operators are reducing their prices because this good weather we are having is making people decide to stay in uk for their holidays. i read also that this friday is going to be a huge jam on the roads, the start of the school holidays it seems. it is their summer holiday and the kids will be about 6 or 7 weeks off school. such a long time to be away from school. its a tradition here. they have very long summer holidays.

i think it is a bygone influence by boarding schools, which close for the summer. personally i dont think it is a good thing. the kids would have forgotten a lot of stuff by the time they go back and the teacher will have to go through it again to remind them. i think it might explain why british kids lag behind kids from countries like singapore. but this year it seems there is no rush to holiday abroad, causing the tour companies to reduce their prices for last minute holidays.

i have just tasted the new instant coffee jar that i bought from tesco. it tastes funny, like it is burnt. normally i just drink it and think nothing of it, but this time the taste was so different even i noticed. i am tempted to bring it back and claim my money back and buy a asda coffee instead. it was that awful… i have lost the receipt too, so i wonder if they will let me return it and give me a refund.

added. 8.20pm . i took it back and said the coffee taste burnt, and i want to return it… she said she cannot give me cash back, but i can buy other things and she can deduct 79p from it, which is the price of the instant coffee. that is good, at first i thought she asked me to get a replacement bottle of instant coffee and i said i dont want that. i was thinking the whole batch might be bad.

earlier , because the refund desk was not manned, i had a look around, and i saw a reduced priced minced beef on the reduced section, reduced from £3.30 to 82p. final reduction is usually 4times, so this one is reduced to the maximum.  so i got it and gave it to her, and  paid the 3p difference. it is rather good of her to let me return the instant coffee without any questions asked, seeing i dont have the receipt. 

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

its only now when i got a good look at the pack that i noticed it expires tomorrow, 19july, so they dont need to reduce it to so much today…

and simon cooked this sausage and mash dinner when i got back from the tesco, and so i can have my dinner so quick. now i wont have any instant coffee to drink until i can go to the asda and buy their brand and hope it too is not burnt. i wonder if they will all have to change the formula of their cheap instant coffee own brand and use cheaper or fewer coffee beans or add other things to it. if all of them do it, i am afraid it means either i am forced to buy more expensive brands, or simply not drink any coffee… i am hoping asda, or morrisons keep their basic instant coffee the same as before. 

weather

london 11.51am sunny 13.4C tuesday 2017

really glorious morning , blue sky and sunny, and yet i just read in this article that there has been fog causing flights to be cancelled in heathrow. i live here and i dont see any fog. yet the news says there is. so who do u think to believe, my own eyes or what others say… now u can see why there are so much fake news about. we dont know what is fake news anymore… we cannot tell the difference. oh wait, maybe we are confusing predictions with fake news. forecasts are like predictions, and are a bit like predicting the outcome of brexit. nobody knows , that is the fact of the matter. we cannot predict the weather 7days ahead with any accuracy and that is true for a lot of things about human activities too. that is why nobody has ever predicted a stockmarket crash with any accuracy. they can warn us, but that is not much use really. stockmarket crashes seem to come in 10yr periods. so since the last one in 2008, we might expect one next year. 

with the weather it is not important, at least to us who are not involved with traffic. fog or not, our lives will be unaffected.

i woke up at about 6am this morning, but forgot to look out the window, haha. even if there is fog outside, i doubt i will notice even if i look out of the window. i am not going anywhere, so it does not matter to me if there is fog out there or not. then i went back to sleep and woke up now. and it is 12pm now. 

fog  is normal around this time. looking at the forecast, esp this website which is my favourite go- to website for predictions of the coming weather, i can see it will be mild over christmas. you can see a plume of warm air engulfing the united kingdom over this christmas period. 

added 4.37pm 8.9C dark now dry.

two supermarkets near me, in pimlico, have undergone drastic renovation. they have both closed the shop completely (losing all that business) to do the work and completely redesigned the premises.

one is sainsburys, a superstore, which have moved their what i call their ‘boots’ section (selling what boots the chemist would be selling) right to the front. they have moved the veg section to the front and enlarged it too. and moved the butchers to the back , got rid of the fishmongers, and added a sushi freshly prepared area, all pushed to the back. where the veg section used to be. they have moved the bakery section right to the back at the far end as far removed from the entrance as u can get. and they have enlarged the lunch time foods, which have been in the front, in a space right next to the entrance. the sandwiches shelf space is reduced,( interestingly they have completely removed their 3 items  -for -one- price lunch time sandwich -with -crisps -and a soft drink offers) but have enlarged the pizzas section with the oven, and even gave this section it’s own checkout tills, self service tills which only accept cards. they have removed the delicatessen area, and the hot food area, where they used to sell roast chicken, and hot curries with rice. 

they have completely removed the electrical goods, plates and pots and pans section. i guess because they have bought argos and it does those better.

also, they have got rid of their drinks section, the wine bottles etc… i would have thought that brings in big profits, so it is curious that they have removed it entirely. unless me not being a drinker, they have it still, but its possible i would not see it. even then, it is very unobtrusive, if i did not see it whilst wandering around the store.

 

the trend to increasing the fast food section is also apparent in the tesco  nearby. that was an express tesco, which used to sell veg, and basic goods, but now it has become smaller, almost half its original size, and sells almost only pre cooked foods. gone are the tesco basics, and the frozen section and the veg section. and their liquour section. it is a drastic change.

interesting if this is the future way they are heading. it looks like they are going to remove the basic range of goods from stock.

perhaps these central london stores are so expensive rent wise, that they want to maximise profits and so fill their shelves with high profit stuff. basic goods will by definition not yield such high profits. 

it will definitely affect the way i shop. for one thing, i wont be going to these stores. i shall go to the nine elms sainsburys and the kennington tesco. then again, i doubt i am their target customer haha. 

added . i just wrote all the above and then i saw in my email, sainsburys has sent me this

Things just got personal.

You’ve been handpicked for our SmartOffers app trial at your local Nine Elms Sainsbury’s.

SmartOffers gives you personalised and exclusive offers with bonus Nectar points* on your favourite products as you browse the aisles. In a nutshell, we are rewarding you for buying the things that you love. Sounds good, right? We think so too. Just follow the simple steps below and you can use SmartOffers in no time.

And, as we are always looking to improve our service, we’ll be asking for your feedback along the way so that we can make your experience second to none.

When you go to your Nine Elms store, turn on Bluetooth and open the app. We’ll send you personalised offers through the app that you can activate as you shop.

they have been always asking me to fill up a satisfaction survey regarding a branch of theirs near where i live; but i never do it, because i dont buy there, it is simon who does it using my nectar card.  now they are sending me this related to another branch, the nine elms one. even if i want to take up the offer i could not as i dont have a smartphone. 

food

london 6.33pm 6.1C wednesday 2017

such a mild day today. this is the lowest temperature today… can you believe it? we have hit a warm spell, due to a plume of warm air coming up from the south right over south england. scotland is still cold though. that is why u still read of snow and what not there. but it is mild down here. that is why so many travellers flying with BA in heathrow are a bit angry and puzzled why BA has cancelled so many flights. i think BA has been having the same problems as ryanair, where the pilots all take leave over this period to use up their holidays, and so there is a shortage of pilots. ryanair have to cancel flights, and that makes for very bad public relations. i think BA is using this excuse of snow to cancel flights that they would have to do due to pilot shortage, but under the pretense of this snowmagedon they can fob it off and let the weather take the blame. ha.

i got an email from tfl, the london transport people asking me for my views for the pedestrianisation of oxford st. and giving me the plans for how it will look like after they have done it. the buses will be diverted to the streets running north of oxford st, wigmore st.  it will be more inconvenient for us bus travellers, because where we can take one bus , like the 23 that takes me from the paddington library straight to the virgin lounge near soho; after they are done , i will have to change to another bus. so rather inconvenient and lengthen the journey times.

i think they must be thinking of the potential for a terrorist attack using a truck or car to mow down pedestrians along oxford st , and pedestrianising it will remove that danger. so i guess it will be best to close it to traffic. 

i have been to the circuit training, this afternoon, and find it is giving me a way to strengthen my muscles. recently there has been an article in the papers of a 80yr old celebrity saying she is addicted to pumping iron. she goes to the gym to lift weights, and saying everyone who is old should do it . i totally agree with her. without realising it, i find i could not do press ups as much as i used to do. i cannot do even 10 now. such a shock really to find out how weak i have become when i first did the circuit training. now i am gradually getting the upper arm strength back.

and just now an old friend of mine called to arrange to meet and he was talking about how he is worried all the time now. afraid to fall, he said. i told him of the old ladies and weights and urge him to take up some weight training, join a gym or even tai chi… he told me an old lady friend of his has joined a tai chi class. and i hope that might encourage him to join her. he says he worries a lot now , unlike when he was younger. all kinds of things make him worry. i know health deteriorating can make people worried. he is diabetic and cannot control his suger intake, nor change his lifestyle. so he knows he has to change, but cannot do it, and so another thing for him to worry about. rather sad really. i dont really know how to help him. 

oh, i got another freebie today. a free souvlaki, given by a new branch set up in victoria near the coach station by this restaurant chain called the athenian. it was very nice, the bread is very soft and like pitta bread, except softer , and folded in it is a stick of minced meat, (chicken, or pork, or lamb,beef,  and salad and folded up and wrapped so it is easy to eat. i forgot to see the menu and see how much they normally sell it for. about £5or£6 i should think, that is the normal price. you have to fill up a form in a tablet , giving them your email address, before u can get your free food. i got there after the circuit training about 5pm, when no one else was in the queue, and when i got my food, a long queue began to form. so i am glad i managed to avoid that. there are quite a lot of freebies giving out, there is another one tomorrow and the next day. and free doughnuts too at another place.

but even the supermarkets are selling cheap food. this morning i was on the bus going to asda to buy their beef, when i read in the metro newspaper on the bus , that tesco is selling beef joints for £5 /kg. same price as asda. and tesco is nearer to me too. so i got off the bus and took the connecting bus to the tesco and saw they were selling lots of veg, potatoes 2.5kg, carrots, parsnips, cauliflower for 29p each. they did not advertise that , i wonder why… it would certainly make me go to tesco even without the beef half price offer.  so here is where advertising has made me alter my plans and shop at tesco instead of at asda as i originally intended.

now i got the beef, 1.6kg, of it, simon suggested i roast half and do a curry on the other half. i had intended to do all of it in a curry… but the meat looks so good, all trussed up and ready to roast , that i was tempted to roast it instead. i am not sure about roasting beef…simon like it rare, i like it medium rare… so how to get that then…might have to take it out and cut out a portion and return the rest to cook somemore… quite a bother really. 

actually he is right now cooking something in the oven. using the veg i bought but instead of the beef, he is reheating 2 tins of steak and kidney pie. they are rather nice, but very salty. but convenient to cook, you just put them in the oven to warm up and that is it. and if u do it like he is doing now, roasting veg along with it, it makes for a nice roast dinner. if u think about it, if u have to make it yourself it would take a lot of time and effort. here it  really suits its name of convenience food.