Fish Central – very nice local fish restaurant on the southern edge of Islington

Just went out to this place in the St Luke’s (part of very-South-Islington) area for a colleague’s farewell lunch. Very nice indeed – great food and cheerful service. Strongly recommended.

I had:

• Whitebait
• Haddock and chips

OK, I know it’s pedestrian of me but, dammit, I like fish and chips and I am weird about “proper” fish dishes … and this was just delicious.

There’s a proper posh menu but most of us had the express lunch deal, which is a choice from three starters and three mains for seven quid or something. Thus struck me as good value and it was a filling and delicious plateful-and-a-half. I would definitely go there again.

Mrs von Neustadt would like it too, I have no doubt. On the other hand, whilst one of the tiny von Neustadt Family Singers would like it, one would run (sic) away screaming and one wouldn’t be too keen but might tolerate it. So not really a family-outing-arama for us.

Remind me to ramble on about its area sometime. It’s interesting.

The Cosmic Bank of Goodwill

My Theory (which is mine) of the Cosmic Bank of Goodwill. (ahem)

Motto:

You make withdrawals; you make deposits.

Any questions? No. Good. Carry on."

ISM here all week ladies and gentlemen

From an Incorporated Society of Musicians online petition about instruments on planes:

Have you had any difficulties when travelling with a musical instrument? If you have, please tell us about your case.

Boom boom!

Egg security - also available in English

This is from Egg's home page for Payment Verification. I don't think I can give you a direct link as they use session-aware URLs. Anyway, the page begins:

Like many other banks, payment verification is an extra security measure we're introducing to help prevent unauthorised transactions on your account.

I always think it's a good idea to proofread these things, or, even better, ask someone else to do so. Your mileage may vary, though. 

Oopsie-Beebs-a-blog™ – no teeth or claws?

This may just be something odd about my always-tenuous grasp of language, so if you are not interested or amused please do move along swiftly and leave me giggling alone here. I'll be fine, really.

I very much like this current BBC News headline:

• Montana woman fights bear with courgette

This alone has pretty much made my day. I sit here, I read it, then I read it again, and again, and it just kind of effortlessly flips back and forth between the two meanings like one of those trick postcards, or a Magic Eye picture or something. And, I must be truthful, I cannot see how it is easily fixed in a short headline, or perhaps at all, so I am (typically) laughing but not helping. Tsk.

The thing, however, which has propelled me right out over the edge and is currently giving me mild breathing difficulties is the line that they've used to link to that story from the News front page:

• Woman repels bear armed only with a courgette

For some reason - and I could not, for a large sum of money or even for some nice yoghurt, tell you why - this removes, for me anyway, all ambiguity and makes it absolutely clear that it is the bear, not the woman, who had the courgette. I can only guess that it was worded carefully to have the opposite effect, but it has triggered something in my tiny, weary brain and it's almost making me cry, and I need to go and have a nice cup of tea and a lie down. Marvellous marvellous stuff.

Google calendar editing - GCalToolkit - de-headache your calendar duplicates!

This is another of those little utilities that:

• Costs a few quid/euros/bucks/whatever;
• Contains functionality that really should have been written in by the developers of the main software (and perhaps will be one day); but for now
• Is worth its weight in gold for the time and pain it saves you. 

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you GCalToolkit by Neil Gerstenberg. Basically it does stuff that I wish Google Calendar did, like giving you a useful editable list from a flexible search. If like me you messed up importing your repeating events from a previous calendar, and now (aaaaargh!) you can't sort them out because due to cosmic waves and evil undertows in the universal flux™ they became (doh!!) a load of separate, unlinked events in your Google calendar, this is the magic wand that sorts it all out. US$25 - a real bargain for the awful editing hassle you can avoid by using it.

Yes Tamsin, usual disclaimers apply, and yes Colin anyone who uses a utility like this without first backing their calendar up does probably deserve all the bad things that could happen to them (but please do not make that silly noise while I am speaking, thank you). Caveat emptor and all that. But I do back my calendar up before editing it, so ner - and this is a great utility!

Sunny

It's 1st September today, and though it's not warm it is lovely and sunny. Woohoo! I rode a Borisbike for the very last bit of my commute this morning and it was simply delightful on a day like this. (Come November, I may be less gung-ho about the whole cycling thing ...)