The Time Bubble

A new larger Tesco has just opened in Bicester so I thought I would go and have a look. It's the first time I have set foot in a Tesco for some time, so disgruntled have I become by their modus operandi, I need not go into detail - it has been heavily documented in my past scribblings. Maybe they've changed I thought, so I went to have a look round and see what the new store was like. Sadly, I was not impressed. I thought perhaps after their £6.4bn loss last year, they might have learned some lessons (i.e. don't treat your shoppers like mugs), but sadly it's still the same old Tesco. Yes, it's bigger, and yes it's clean and modern but it's still overpriced and full of "special" offers that are not special at all - e.g. Tuc Biscuits - was £1.29 now only £1. SAVE 29p! Yeah, great, but Poundland sell them at two packs for a quid. So your "special" offer is actually double their price. I'm sure plenty of less savvy shoppers will ...

Friends and family were last night rallying around a distressed Londoner whose dream day out to an upmarket shopping village turned into a nightmare. Hilary Cholmondley-Smythe, 33, an investment banker from Kensington, West London, explained how a mix up over parking led to the horror of finding herself not in the swanky designer outlet, but instead in the centre of the adjoining town. "I had a few grand left over from my quarterly bonus so I decided to treat myself to a trip to Bicester Village. I wanted to see if I could pick myself up a nice dress for a dinner party some friends of mine are throwing in Belgravia next weekend. So I drove up the M40 in my Mercedes-AMG to see what I could find. Everything was fine until I got off the M40, then I started seeing signs saying the car parks were full and directing me to a park-and-ride system. Obviously, a person of my social class could not possibly be seen dead on a bus, so I ignored those and carried on driving. The traffic w...

The end is nigh(?) I've just got back from another fun packed day out with the kids - Zoomania, Morrisons and McDonalds. For once, they really behaved and played well, and absolutely loved going on all the frames and down the big slide at Zoomania, with no whingeing at all. And they didn't even complain when I said it was time to go. Perhaps finally we are getting somewhere, or maybe we just got lucky this time. It has to be said that McDonalds in Aylesbury has the worst designed car park I have ever encountered. Absolutely ludicrous and I am amazed there are not major road rage incidents there on a a regular basis. Who knows, maybe there are. And on the subject of roads, why are we spending billions on this HS2 nonsense, when major roads such as the A41 are in the terrible state they are. This road is literally crumbling, it is littered with potholes all the way back to Bicester. I am sure that the roads were not in this state back in the hey day of my career, when I ...