The Time Bubble

The subject of today's blog entry, as the title suggests, is the humble potato. At first glance this might appear a somewhat mundane topic. What on earth can he say about potatoes to fill a few hundred words, I hear you ask? Well, quite a lot. believe me! As a member of the potato buying public, I have become increasingly frustrated of late by the ever declining size and quality of my potatoes. As an old-fashioned chap at heart, I like to keep a lot of the traditions I grew up with alive and one of those is cooking the great British Sunday roast. Sundays aren't what they were when I was a lad. Much of what made Sunday special has now gone. You can't even listen to the Top 40 any more - not that you would want to considering the crap that's in it these days. Radio One in their infinite wisdom have moved it to Fridays. Bit that's another story. But no-one can stop me making my Sunday roast. Except when we have it on Monday, which is quite often, because Claire o...

I think we must get better quality electricity up here on Kingsmere than we did at Chapel Street, as I have noticed something very unusual this year whilst heating up my mince pies. At the old house, in order to get my mince pies to the optimum temperature - nice and hot but not enough to burn my tongue, I used to have to do them for about 21 seconds in the microwave. Here, 15 seconds is more than enough to nuke them and I have burnt the aforementioned tongue on more than one occasion in recent weeks. Now on to the mince pies. As I believe I mentioned on Facebook, I have a free hand in this house to consume as many mince pies as I like. This is because none of the other gannets around here, who eat everything else in sight, like them. Therefore I have had free rein to sample a few different ones to see what's best this year. It's important to do this every year, as I reckon they change the recipes every year. It's a bit like drinking fine wines. The 2016 vintage may...

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 ...

During this whole self-publishing process I've done a lot of soul-searching about what is the best way to go. The traditional route, finding a publisher in the UK and getting things done locally. Or the global approach, via the giant of Amazon - which love them or hate them, are here to stay. I chose the second route. I would liked to have done a mix of the two, but it just didn't make sense for me. There are many reasons for this - but ultimately it came down to what was best for me as a writer and how I envisage the marketplace going in the future. Let's backtrack a little here and look at some other markets. I've talked many times on this blog about the relentless march of progress and how one must adapt or die. In a blog post I wrote back in September 2011 entitled  Weighty Matters  I picked out five retail chains I felt would find themselves in trouble over the next couple of years. Of those five, four have either bit the dust or have been, or are in receiver...

We all make bad decisions in life. Do things we later regret and then think "what the hell was I thinking?" Even I, from my lofty perch of 44 years life experience, am not immune. Why did I do it? I don't know. Perhaps it was some moment of madness. Perhaps it was down to some deep-rooted psychological problem where I feel the need to punish myself for past sins, like a gambler pouring all his rent money into the roulette machine in the bookies. Perhaps it was just because I fancied some cheese flavoured Ritz crackers and I know Sainsbury's don't sell them. Who knows? All I know is that for some reason, last Sunday morning as me and the boys were about to go into Sainsbury's to do our shopping I got some irrational urge to go into Tesco instead. Quite why I should want to do this, I don't know. After many bad experiences in the past with incorrect price labelling, rude staff and all the rest of it, you think I would have learned. Still, I thought, mayb...

They don't call me @AusterityDad on Twitter for nothing you know. Long term readers and book fans will be well aware of my many hours rummaging around in the supermarkets seeking out bargains and some times spotting mistakes on offers and taking advantage. These haven't always been successful. That row over the wrongly priced "Now 83" in Tesco still rankles with me but I'll let it go. I've always dreamed of finding the perfect offer and today it arrived! I went in to Sainsbury's, mooched on down to the deli counter to see if there were any good reductions but no joy. So I headed on round to the cooked meats aisle (my second favourite after the crisp aisle) to see what offers were available and my eyes were drawn to a shelf edge ticker that read "Buy 1 get 2 cheapest free" on some of Sainsbury's Taste The Difference packs of ham and pastrami. Now I don't normally buy these - because at £3 a go for a few flimsy slices they are very ov...

Well here we are on Christmas Day and I thought it would be a great idea to share my Christmas log with all of you... No...don't worry, it is not that kind of log, I could never bring myself to be so unoriginal as to utter that joke that has been done to death millions of time the world over ever since William Shatner first uttered the words "Captain's Log, Stardate xxxx.x" way back in 1966. Though a former work colleague of mine if he reads this (Hello Dave!) will chuckle, as the subject of me producing a Christmas log every year seemed to put him into hysterics. So Dave, I thought I would mention it just for you. Speaking of originality, this is the first time I have ever managed to squeeze out a log (sorry!) on Christmas Day before, and the last thing I want to do is bore you with a potted account of the day's proceedings as I am sure there will be nothing in there that you haven't done yourselves on countless past Yuletide occasions. Instead what I hav...

In an increasingly desperate attempt to come up with new material to write about, I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time, as I thought I would do a little bit about smells. I was on this occasion inspired by passing a dustbin lorry in town (or garbage truck if you are reading from across the water). I think I have a very distinctive sense of smell which is surprising really considering I seem to be blocked up with hayfever or various other problems most of the year round. I am sure my sense of smell was not always this pronounced. A pity, as I once had the opportunity for a dream job in the world of smells. No, it was not a tester for various aftershave's which would have left me "smelling like a tart's window box", an oft quoted phrase I heard frequently in my youth (but which you never hear any more). It was while I was working in the marketing department at Tesco Head Office during the mid 1990's. Part of my job involved liaising with the...

I think I might be losing it a bit (note - that is spelt "losing", not "loosing" by the way) because I seem to be making some rather strange mistakes that I would not normally make. For example when I put the shopping away today I put the baby wipes in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard. Hopefully I am not losing the plot, this time I shall put it down to being rushed, hot, bothered and the fact that I still had my sunglasses on which made navigating the kitchen slightly more challenging than usual. There are a zillion and one things to do around here. The washing has reached a new peak since the warm weather came - the children have developed many new and interesting ways to get mucky in the garden. I seem to be constantly running out of clothes. How is it that I do a wash load every day yet a boy owning 7 pairs of shorts can still run out? There's a load just finished sitting in the machine now waiting to be hung out, but it shall have to wait half an...

So, after a week long refurbishment, Tesco in the centre of Bicester has re-opened its doors, just ahead of the grand opening of Sainsbury on Wednesday. Welcome to Tesco Metro! So what is the new Tesco like? How has it changed? What's new? Bicester Blogger investigates. Now as you know if you are a regular reader, I have had my problems with this store in the past, however, I have decided to approach this review from a completely fresh perspective. So as far as I am concerned, they are starting with a clean slate. So what is noticeably different about the new store? Well - my first thoughts were that it has not changed as much as I thought it would have done. I was expecting a much changed offering, with far less groceries and much more fresh food. But I would say the basic offering of the store is still the same - you can still go there and buy your basic groceries as you could before. Here are the major changes I noticed whilst reviewing the store today. The over...

It's nearly here! Well it has taken a lot of time, a lot of planning, a lot of wondering whether it would ever even happen, but finally the new town centre and Sainsbury is on the verge of opening. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say this is the biggest thing to ever happen in this town. Well at least the biggest thing to happen in the 22 years I have lived here. Over that 22 years there have been changes. But it is also fair to say a lot of things should have, and could have changed sooner. But no matter about that now - it is finally here. How ludicrous is it that in a town this size there has been no cinema? In fact there did used to be one, down London Road but you would have to be pretty long in the tooth to remember it - it closed down decades ago. But it matters not that we have had to wait so long for one to come - the point is that it is now finally here. "Baaaa...do you think they'll be showing Silence Of The Lambs?" When I came ...

I have to say I was devastated to hear that Maba has closed down. The dream is over... Was so pleased when it opened - finally a proper Steakhouse in Bicester serving the kind of food I liked. Gorgeous steaks with chips, and all the rest of it. Absolute perfection for me and what I had been waiting years in Bicester for. To hear they have failed is heartbreaking, especially for the owners who put so much into it and their staff who did absolutely nothing wrong. It pains me to see that we can support about 7 Indian restaurants in this town but not one English one. And before anyone accuses me of being racist or saying that because I don't like Indian food, that is rubbish - fact is I like choice! Same argument I keep putting about supermarkets and all the rest of it. I'd rather see a good spread of restaurants of all types. That's diversity. If Maba can't succeed, then who can? Let's hope someone can come in and rescue the place and that all is not lost....