Cheap Coffee

It’s my first day on site working on an automated weighbridge at a recycling plant in Islington where they were supposed to have got all the equipment installed and working by this morning but they haven’t. So rather than installing my software, I spend my day helping out with that equipment and everyone is very quickly sick of me borrowing their phones.

It's sort of reassuring to know that it’s not the same at home without me. L says its lonely in the bedroom but it may be less due to my absence than to the fact that both the dogs opted to sleep downstairs last night. Although MD did give up on me eventually and joined L upstairs.

I had hoped to be down here just for one day but that clearly isn’t going to happen so on leaving site at the end of the day, I look for another hotel. I dip into an Italian restaurant and ask if I can grab a coffee and use their wifi. They agree, bring me a coffee and their access codes then charge me only £1.50 and this is in London! I consider stopping for a meal there but by now I’ve booked into the cheaper Holiday Inn at Swiss Cottage, so I head off there.

After eating in the hotel, I head out into the big city for a wander and a pint (a pale one obviously) at the North Star on Finchley Road. An odd pub that look recently renovated but still retain untastefully ripped furniture.

(Wednesday 7^th June)

The Butcher Of Midland Road

On the bus today because I’m out in Derby tonight. It’s a belated leaving meal for someone who left our company just before Christmas after being at our place since she was sixteen, thirty-three years ago. Tonight it’s just a select few of us who have known her for the majority of that time, I qualify despite a mere 20 years’ service. The meal is at the Bella Mora Italian Restaurant on London Road but doesn’t start until 7:30 so I chance for a gym session first, as you do.

The evening is excellent in an Italian Restaurant that, to it’s credit, doesn’t serve pizza and has very little pasta. The evening is only spoilt by going in the Mansion bar on Midland Road afterwards courtesy of its dreadful pub singer, who looked way older than me, murdering 80’s classics. He was butchering ‘Enola Gay’ when we arrived but thankfully by the time he got around to assaulting ‘Just Can't Get Enough’ we’d had enough as it was bus time.

(Friday 10^th March)