Waitrose: great food, filthy language

Checkout

Isn't it about time Sainsbury's introduced a check-out for the over 70s?  And whilst they're at it, one for men aged 16-30; another for mothers with children; divorced fathers; the terminally stupid.  The list is endless. In fact, I'm sure Sainsbury's could quite easily allocate all of its aisles to different demographics and then sub-divide these so that you might have "over-70s fast-track", "Polish immigrants15 items or less", "over-weight 40-somethings self-check out", "childless couples basket-only"...

I only raise this topic because yesterday, at one of the two staffed check-outs (out of about thirty or more) I happened to be queueing behind an 'older customer' who was well and truly taking her time with the whole check-out business. Nothing wrong with that; I'll be there soon enough myself.  But the girl on the till was talking to the woman in old lady idiom. "Not very nice out there today, is it?  Brrrrr, need to wrap up warm today.  You take care now."  I really wanted the old lady to turn around and say, "look, just because I'm getting on a bit, you don't have to address me as if I'm a f***ing vegetable."  But she didn't.  Instead she said, "No dear, it's not at all nice nice out there this morning." 

But it did get me thinking that maybe supermarkets could demarcate for age and demographic as well.  That would mean that all the young blokes buying beers, razors, packets of condoms and ready meals could whisk through the tills in a flash and be addressed by the check-out operator with an "Alright mate?" rather than "Hello, do you need any assistance with your packing?"  Similarly, mothers with children would be greeted with, "aaahh, isn't he/she beautiful?  How old is he/she?" whilst the terminally stupid would we encouraged to head for the checkout marked "Inane banter" and would be met with, "What did you think of Stacey on Big Brother last night?"  And whilst that might sound like exaggerated stereotyping on my part, it's certainly true that the checkout operator who served me yesterday didn't make any meteorological observations or suggest I put on an extra layer of clothing but just sped the items through to me.

Where have all the Dutchmen gone?

I assume my regular morning train begins its journey at Harwich. I can think of no other explanation for why there always seem to be – or seemed to be - so many Dutch people cluttering up the barriers at Liverpool Street Station.

When you commute, you soon get used to the daily mundane rituals: the same faces on the platform, the same excuses offered by the train driver for late arrival, the same gaggle of confused Dutch tourists…

The problem the Dutch always face is that their tickets don’t work on the automated barriers. And so you have these huge Dutch folk (average height, six feet, two) all pulling massive wheeled suitcases, all grouping together for safety and all back-tracking and tripping over each other at the ticket barriers. “It shays ‘sheek ashishtance’” I heard one Dutchman wailing to a railway official as he waved his scrap of ticket at the ticket barrier.

But this morning was a breeze. No delays at the barrier and no Dutch tourists to be seen. Either they’ve all decided to go to Eindhoven for their holidays or the travel agents in Holland have belatedly found a way of issuing tickets which are recognised by English ticket barriers.

Pret A Mingie

Has anybody noticed that the baguettes in a well-known national sandwich chain seem to have shrunk?  I used to be a regular Pret customer but I begrudge it when they increase their prices and reduce the size of their sandwiches. Shame, because the food is always good quality.

The Cenotaph, Whitehall

Amongst other things, I collect postcards of The Cenotaph.  I determined last year to thin out my military postcard collection, sold most of these on eBay for a huge profit and then, promptly started adding to my cenotaph collection.  You can see some of them - along with the disappearing pram - HERE.

I was in Westminster the other day and as the sun was out, thought I'd take a walk along Whitehall.  I thought that whilst I was there I'd see if I could pick up a modern postcard of the cenotaph.  Could I find one?  No I could not.  There were plenty of postcards of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Millenium Wheel, Horse Guards, but nothing at all featuring the cenotaph.

I've always sought in particular, early photos of the cenotaph; the first temporary model and then the version which stands there today.  However, it occurred to me, on my fruitless searches for a modern day cenotaph postcard, that it might not be a bad idea to try and find the most recent image on a published card.  In other words, try and ascertain when it was that the cenotaph stopped being regarded with significance.

When the first temporary cenotaph was erected it quickly became a symbol for national mourning.  It was unveiled in 1919 (see image above) and then later replaced by the cenotaph we see today, unveiled for a second time in November 1920. Just look at the banks of flowers around the cenotaph in the November 1920 image below.

Postcards of the cenotaph which appeared over the coming years were presumably saleable because for many people who had lost sons, fathers, brothers and husbands (not forgetting wives, sisters, mothers and daughters of course), the monument meant something. It was a focus for national mourning.

Today, sadly, the cenotaph is not saleable.  The First World War has all but passed beyond living memory and the youngest veterans of World War Two are now all in their eighties.  Tourists presumably aren't interested in an unsightly obelisk in the middle of the road and publishers of postcards apparently even less so.

Harry's bad day

Poor old Sir Harry Pearce KBE had a shocker of a day yesterday.  It started off with him being stuffed into the boot of a car, got momentarily brighter when he was sprung by members of his team, and then fell apart completely within the space of - if the TV show running time was anything to go by - about half an hour.

First of all, his unconvincing Russian-ex revealed that she had been playing him along for thirty years.  Then she told him that their son Sasha wasn't actually his son at all.  Personally, I'd have been quite relieved to hear this as he's seemed a nasty piece of work from the start.  Finally, as if those two bombshells weren't enough, his Spooks belle, Ruth, was stabbed in the lung with a piece of broken glass by nasty Sasha and died dreaming about a grotty house in Suffolk with peeling green paint on the front door.  I wasn't actually sure whether Harry's distress was caused by Ruth dying or by the stupidity of her buying a property that needed a lot of work doing on it. In any event, we did see him visit the property later, check the peeling paint, check the kitchen and then leave.  It was all rather strange.

Yes, last night was the very last (allegedly) episode of Spooks on BBC1 and it went out with the most convoluted of plots and improbable events.  On the basis of that performance, the team's retirement, let alone Sir Harry's, seemed well overdue.

A little corner of India

We went to a birthday party at the weekend; a party hosted by an Indian couple and patronised by Indian and Sri Lankan guests. In fact I was the only non-Asian there and for a minute, with the sun blazing outside, and familiar aromas coming from the kitchen, I could have been back in Bangalore again.

What I also noticed was the familiar turn of phrase; the little idioms which are commonplace in India but sound odd in conversation here. "I'm Anil Kumar" said one chap, introducing himself to me; a common enough form of introduction in India, but we'd rarely introduce ourselves in this country by giving first and last names. [Note, since advised by David, our convivial host, that these were in fact both first names].

And for some reason this reminded me of a misheard-name when I was talking to a chap called Eugene at my old company in India. I got to know Eugene very well and when I left India he gave me a very nice wooden backgammon set, a family heirloom which I still treasure. When I first met him he was explaining to me that he was a twin and that his brother also worked at the same company. "He's all over" he said to me.

Well I suppose he must be," I replied, "I expect he's busy like you and has to visit different departments."

"No" replied Eugene, "he's Ol-iver".

A holiday in Cornwall

My memories of childhood holidays in Cornwall are vague to say the least but I think we went there at least twice, and stayed on the same farm on both occasions. I'm sure we had a good time but my memory is shocking and doesn't improve with age. I do recall the burly - and somewhat grubby - farmer we stayed with and I remember him squashing a bluebottle on his net curtains. We all posed for a photo and my sister stood on the back of a rather large sow. I'm sure my parents still have that photo tucked away somewhere.

We played on the farm, chased chickens, and went out and about in Cornwall with my parents, though where we went to is now lost in the mists of my grey matter. I do remember looking for the giant's heart in the cobbles of St Michael's Mount and I remember too, the dead mouse under the table in the cafe we stopped off at on one of those cold and wet days which, often characterise holidays in England during the summer. Now, some decades since I was last in Cornwall, I have just returned from a week there and, before I forget where we went, am going to record the places we visited and what we did. At least this way, if my kids inherit my same shocking powers of recall, there will be something in black and white (not to mention the hundreds of photos that my wife clicked whilst we were there).


Day One - Saturday
Set off on what turned out to be an eight hour journey from Essex to St Clether near Launceston. It should have been a six hour journey but an accident on the M5 put paid to that. Found our holiday home tucked away on one of those typically remote lanes and settled ourselves in.

Day Two - Sunday
Drove to Bude, spent time on the beach, dipped our toes in the icy waters and then explored the town, picking up ice creams, local jam and a throw for our settee made in Kerala. India is never far away in our lives.


Later on, had a pleasant afternoon at Tintagel exploring the dramatic Arthurian castle there. We would have explored more, but parts of that castle involve walks down precipitous steps (see below) which, with three young children and a push chair, didn't seem to be a particularly wise undertaking.


Day Three - Monday
We walked up to the farmhouse where the children fed the goats, chickens, ducks and lambs and stroked various cats, three dogs and a horse.


I then drove as far west in Cornwall as it is possible to travel - to Land's End (below) and then later to St Ives where I was mugged by a seagull which deftly plucked my Cornish vanilla ice cream out of my hand whilst my back was turned.


Day Four - Tuesday
A two-hour tour around our farm which was probably a little longer than it could have been. We sat in a trailer pulled by a farm buggy and then bumped across seemingly all of the 300-odd acres owned by our hosts. They farm sheep and cows and the highlight for me was watching the sheepdog do his stuff. Drove over to Looe and watched people catching crabs. Took a glass-bottomed boat-ride out to Looe island and saw a couple of seals and plenty of seabirds. The rocking of the boat unsettled Shilpi but sent both the boys fast asleep.


Day Five - Wednesday
The Eden Project. What a fantastic day out, and we were there for around eight hours. We all sweated like pigs in the rainforest biome and had a great lunch in the bakery. You pick what you want from the generous self-service counters and then, when you've eaten your fill, go up to the pay station and tell them what you've had. It all works on trust and I presume that the system works. I think our meal for five came to about thirty pounds which wasn't at all bad.



Day Six - Thursday
Newquay and the beach. This was where my parents came on their honeymoon. We were rained off the beach after less than ten minutes and all dived into an aquarium where we changed from beachwear into our clothes. By the time we'd mastered that, the sun had come out and so we went back to the beach. Twenty minutes later, another shower saw us back in the aquarium and this time paid the entrance fee and walked around looking at the fish. Back to the beach in the afternoon where we stayed for a couple of hours, this time without rain breaks.


Left at around five and then stopped off at Paulo's Circus Americano on the way home. This was a family-run circus where there performers doubled up as vendors before and after the show. The girl on the tightrope served us hot-dogs and chips during the interval and her sister, in all probability, sold me three candy-flosses before the show and was later swung around by her neck in the second half. Good fun, and it's been years since I've been to a circus.

Day Seven - Friday
A soaking wet day with the rain coming down in stair-rods. Popped into Launceston which must be one of the few towns left with a wool shop on the High Street.



Launceston has a castle and arguably the highest concentration of hairdressers' salons of any town in England. We stayed long enough to realise that this probably wasn't the best place to visit and so turned around and drove down to a shipwreck and maritime musuem in Charlestown near St Austell. Charlestown would be a good place to live: small and picturesque but close enough to St Austell to pick up the essentials for 21st Century living.


Day Eight - Saturday
Back to Essex and a shorter seven hour journey with a couple of breaks for food and leg-stretching.

Moving on in England

We're moving house in a couple of weeks' time. I'm paying just over 400 quid to move the contents of one house less than 500 yards into the new house; and that' a rock-bottom rate. If I'd been so inclined, I could have paid closer to a thousand pounds.

My old friend and colleague Steve O'Donoghue reminded me yesterday that now would have been a good time to be able to call on 30 wiry Indian men and a battered old lorry. I still recall having a heavy fridge-freezer delivered to the first flat I rented in Bangalore. A little chap, probably not much over five feet tall, somehow managed to carry it on his back up four flights of stairs and still, incredibly, managed to slip off his shoes before entering the house. Delivery charges? About 100 rupees I think.

A taste of winter weather

We had snow last night; not a lot, but enough to send my wife into paroxysms of joy, and the children into various states of amused fascination. This photo was taken when I thought I'd be going into the office. However, I soon realised that the snow had also been enough to send the road and rail networks into chaos and so shortly after this photo opportunity, I abandoned the work idea and jumped into jeans and a jumper instead. Today has been spent watching snowflakes falling, and what a pleasant experience that is, after many years in the land of heat and dust. Mind you, we don't half miss the Indian temperatures.

eBay ain't a bad place to be

In the interests of even-handedness, and having written about people's wastefulness, I suppose I should also comment on certain buying habits.

Years ago, my brother and a friend and I took ourselves up to Hammersmith Odeon, bought tickets from a tout and then shook our heads to AC/DC and Def Leppard. I kept my ticket stub from that concert and thought I'd put it up for sale on eBay. It's of no interest to me now, and anyway, it's been in my parents' loft for the past thirty odd years. I see from the ticket that the face value was £3.75 which means that we probably paid a fiver for those tickets. If I remember rightly, I paid for my brother's ticket because it was his birthday the previous day.

That ticket stub has now reached the heady heights of a £10.50 offer on eBay with the number of people watching the item now well into double figures. Here, you can bid on it yourself if you'd like to: AC/DC Ticket.

Hallowhere?

I was well prepared for Halloween this year. Having been reminded that the US-imported nonsense of trick or treat is now an annual UK occurrence as well, I thought that well, if you can’t beat ‘em, at least be prepared to dish out sweets on your doorstep to the local horrors rather than have them throw eggs at your door, or uproot your plants. And so I bought a tub of sweets from the supermarket and left it ready by the front door. I also somehow found my hairy werewolf hands and witch mask which I’ve worn at Halloween parties in the past, and I determined that if anyone did knock on the door, that I’d turn the hallway lights out, put the hairy hands and mask on, and try and scare the living daylights out of whoever was waiting on the doorstep.

I waited and I waited.

Finally, at around eight-thirty I think, there was a ring on the doorbell, and I went into action: hands on, mask on, lights off, hairy hand creeping slowly round the door, followed by the warty old witch face… There was a little gasp, a faint “Oh!” and… it was the woman from over the road delivering the local church newsletter.

So I invited her in, she exorcised my demons and I gave her some sweets from the tub for her and her husband. And that was the only visitor we had that whole evening.
Halloween? Hallo-WTF.

A trip to the tip

With excess cardboard to dispose of after our goods from India had been unpacked, I took Shilpi and the children for an outing to our local dump. I'm good like that. We strapped the kids into the back of the car, filled the boot with flattened cardboard boxes, and then sped off to the municipal tip.

It was around 10am on a Sunday morning and there was already a queue. I supposes it gets worse later on when the car boot sales close and people come and get rid of their unwanted tat. In any event, we weren't there for very long, probably about five minutes, if that. But in the time it took us to unload the cardboard and dump it into the cardboard-only skip, we saw the following items being crushed:

1. A sofa
2. An armchair
3. Hi-Fi separates - amp, CD player, cassette deck
4. A coffee table
5. Cupboards
6. Carpets
7. A double mattress

In fact there was enough stuff trashed in that short time that we were there, to set up a new home. It actually made me slightly ashamed to be throwing away cardboard boxes. Seeing what everybody else was dumping I felt somewhat guilty that I wasn't throwing out a chaise-longue, or that old Chippendale chair that had been in the shed.

After our furniture arrived from India I donated the stand-in dining room suite that we'd been using, back to the second-hand charity shop that I'd bought it from for £40 eight weeks earlier. I also gave them a couple of items of Indian furniture, shipped five thousand miles and at some cost, and now on offer in an Essex junk shop. We did wonder why the people who were dumping their furniture hadn't given it to charity instead. Probably they couldn't be bothered or maybe, like me when I'd phoned our local hospice shop earlier, they'd been told , "sorry, but we're not taking mahogany."

It's all a far cry from India where everything has a re-sale value - even those things that you wouldn't normally think of re-selling. We had people almost killing each other for our seven year old mattress and here in Essex, better-looking bedding was just being chucked away. I'm sure that most self-respecting Indians, being the natural businessmen that they are, could have made good money out of that tip had they been given the chance to set up stall there. As it was, there was a lot of very good looking and serviceable product simply being ground to dust.

Daft

I watched one of those much beloved Police documentaries last night. They’re much beloved by the TV stations because they afford cheap entertainment, by the police because they get the chance to show how great they are, and by the viewers because we’re all spitting feathers at the arrogance of our boys in blue. The irony of it all is that the police really haven’t got the faintest idea that they are being smug. And so last night we saw two of England’s finest stopping a cyclist who had ridden through a red light in the small hours of the morning. They eventually got him for:

• Running a red light
• Riding without lights
• Riding on the pavement
• Obstructing the police

They also accused him of being drunk which may or may not have been the case. In any event, he was a good deal more erudite than the two policemen, especially when he asked them, incredulously, whether they didn’t have anything better to do at 1am on a Saturday morning, than arguing the toss with him about such a petty matter. It was all to no avail. The cyclist was subsequently fined a whopping great £700 with £200 costs. And didn’t that make the police feel smug.

It was daftness of a darker kind later on Channel 4 with a documentary about a US Army Company in Afghanistan. I only caught the tail end of it but I did manage to see the bit where a group of sheepish US marines, presented an Afghan man with $10,000 as compensation for the four family members they’d accidentally killed the previous day. It was surreal television, the soldiers sitting shamefaced before the stunned Afghan; a much older man sitting cross-legged next to him, silently weeping and wiping away the tears. The American soldiers didn’t want to be there and the Afghanistan people certainly didn’t want to be there. We were treated to US marines who were genuinely proud of a mosque they’d helped build, while the indigenous population smiled politely and then said to the cameras that they simply just wanted them to get the hell out.

Finally, tattoos. I’ve never felt the slightest inclination to have somebody stick needles into me and scar me for life and so I personally can’t understand why anybody would want to brand themselves, especially as so much of the branding is so unoriginal – cobwebs on the elbows, LOVE and HATE on the knuckles. I mean, if you have to write on your hands wouldn’t it be more useful, for instance, to tattoo 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 7 8 9 10 to save you the bother of counting on your fingers? Or perhaps, F*** and C***, so that you can wave the F*** hand in the air when you stub your toe, and the C*** hand when you’re waving to a policeman.

On my way into work this morning, a girl cycled past me who had half a dozen stars tattooed on her calf. I mean, what’s the point of that? And that’s the other thing about tattooed Brits, they love to show off their artwork. So it can be freezing cold, or pouring with rain, and yet somebody will still cycle past you in shorts because they want you to see their calf stars. Like I say, daft.

A start

My Blackberry alarm goes off at 6am but I’ve already been awake for some while. At various points in the night my two sons have found their way into our bedroom and the youngest one has been kicking me in the head for at least two hours. Despite the fact that my phone is downstairs, the alarm is still loud to wake the household and so I go down to switch it off. I determine, whilst I’m down there, to try and find the razors and shaving cream that I’d bought the other week. Last seen on one of the kitchen worktops when I unpacked the shopping bags, they have since disappeared. I check every cupboard, nook and cranny in the kitchen, my bedroom wardrobe, and the cupboards in the bathroom. Zilch. I suspect that my youngest son has somehow broken through the stairgate into the kitchen, found the razors and cream and posted them both into the dustbin. He’s making a habit of doing that. I saved two LEGO cars from the same bin the other day but I obviously wasn’t in time for the razors. Two packets of pegs have also mysteriously disappeared...

I shave my head and face with a blunt razor, miraculously retaining both ears.

Shower, dress, and fold clean clothes from the washing line. Place clothes in airing cupboard. Leaving them folded on shelves will mean that small hands will pull them off again just as quickly.

By now it’s seven o’clock and time to wake my daughter. She started school on Monday and she needs to be out of the house by 8.30. I rouse her, bathe her and dress her, getting told off as I do so for pulling her tights up too high and giving her “granddad trousers”.

We go downstairs together and I sort out some breakfast for her. While she’s eating I unpack the dishwasher and then stack a couple of dirty plates from the previous evening. I’ve also brought dirty clothes down for the washing machine but it’s full of clean clothes from yesterday and so I peg these out first and then set a new wash going. It goes straight to the spin cycle and I realise that my youngest son, not content with posting my shaving gear into the bin, must have also fiddled with the programme on the washing machine. I stop the machine, re-programme it and start again. By now, Niharika has finished her breakfast and so I sponge the last remnants off her skirt, wipe her mouth and she’s good to go. So too, am I. It’s just gone ten to eight and I have about seventeen minutes to get to the station in time for the 8.09 to Liverpool Street. I saddle up and set off. I’m there by three minutes past, lining the platform at the start of another day.

Wastage, and the great British eccentric

I was in our local Sainsbury's at 7am the other day. We needed milk and a loaf of bread, and although I could have probably picked up both at the local newsagent's, it was chucking it down outside and I needed a lightweight raincoat as well.

As I reached the bread counter, the staff were throwing away the loaves and rolls from the previous day: great big bags of them, dozens of loaves of bread baked a few hours earlier and now thrown into a bag marked "NOT FIT FOR SALE". I don't suppose those loaves were even donated to homeless people as there's probably an EEC rule which bans such benevolence just in case a vagrant happens to choke on a sunflower seed. It always made me smile in India when we'd go along to the laacaal shop to get bread and then ask if it was fresh.

"Aaah, aah, fresh saar, yes; fresh yesterday."

Which links, not at all well, to the great British eccentric. One of the joys of commuting is that you get to see all manner of nutcases, listen to all manner of banal and tedious conversations, and witness bizarre behaviour. Years ago, I used to carry a notebook with me and jot down these eccentricities, even trying to transcribe particularly dull conversations word for word. Once all my stuff arrives from India, I might dig out some of those old notebooks and post some of the conversations here. But anyway, back to the present.

Last week I sat next to a courting couple who obviously hadn't seen each other for three or four hours or more and were consequently overcome by the urge to eat each other's lips in between each sentence. After ten minutes of slurping, I gave up trying to read my book and shut my eyes. Yesterday evening, I sat next to a Chinaman who, five minutes into the journey, stuffed several pages of The Sun newspaper down the back of his shirt. Well actually, he stuffed the pages up the back of his shirt. I suppose it gave him more satisfaction than actually reading the thing.

Image from The Eccentric Club blog.

Use it again, Sam

I have to keep telling myself, "It's for the children." And I find myself repeating it more and more as a mantra these days, as I bang my head in the cubbyhole under the stairs, or knock my temples against the cupboard in the kitchen. "It's for the... ouch! Children."

I wouldn't mind if it were just paper, or just tins, or just bottles, but these days it seems, it's just about everything. Great Britain has gone recycling crazy and it's only going to get worse.

I was looking at our recycling leaflet this morning, trying to work out whether we should be putting out household refuse with paper, or cardboard, or charity appeals. Actually, I needn't have bothered because we missed the binmen altogether and therefore they'll have our marinated refuse to greet them next week. But I did see that the council was gleefully announcing a new "plastics collection" in the same way that GAP, for instance, would announce its new "Autumn Collection". So now, instead of chucking away your empty milk containers or your fast food packs, you can stick them in another bag and then try and find space in your house for the blasted thing until it's time for you to miss the refuse collection operatives on their weekly round.

At this point in time I have a cardboard collection in the living room. Outside the back door I have a box for tins and bottles. In the kitchen cupboard I have sacks for plastics and newspaper. Polythene and plastic bags go in a separate bag, so too would batteries, tin foil, engine oil and uranium (that goes into the lead-filled container under the stairs). Currently, polystyrene, bubble wrap and naval fluff are not recycled and may be thrown into a waste bin. The point is that we don't live in a mansion and I tell you, it's a nuisance trying to find space for all this blasted rubbish. I really do feel half inclined at times to dump it all into our brown (garden waste) bin and cover it over with six inches of grass cuttings and just hope that the bin men are looking the other way when it's tipped noisily into the dust cart.

I recall, a few years ago when I was clearing my house in England, that I took a load of stuff to the local tip and then had to fanny around in the rain putting this junk in one skip, and that junk in another one. Chastened, I returned home, booked a skip to turn up on my drive and then emptied absolutely everything into it: cardboard, paper, plastics, bottles, iron, an old sofa set... You name it, the skip ate it; and it was a curious quirk of fate that it was completely legal - if a little expensive - to do that.

And if you think I sound like an irresponsible old whinger, well just try unpacking a shirt and then disposing of anything that isn't a shirt. The plastic cover goes into the plastic bags' bag, whilst the plastic clips and that clear plastic bit under the collar go into the "new plastics' collection" bag. The cardboard backing goes into the cardboard collection box in my living room, and the tissue paper goes into the paper sack - by way of a bumped head - in the kitchen cupboard. As for the pins, I'm saving those to jab into the eyeballs of Chelmsford Borough Council's Recycling Manager when he calls round to complain about household refuse being dumped into his garden refuse bin.

"It's for the children...
Breathe...
It's for the children...
And, relax."

The years in between

At times I have to pinch myself to confirm that I am where I am. I last commuted to London in, I think, 1994. Then, the company I was with re-located to St Albans, and the following two companies I joined were both based in Essex. That takes us up to September 2003 and my decision to move to India. Fast forward seven years and I'm back in England and back on the train. I'm even commuting to and from the same stations. It's a bit like something from the X-Files; as if the Indian experience and my fundraising career never happened.

The trains are the same, the route is the same, but the people are more casual. In 1994 there was far more evidence of suits and ties. Now, every day seems to be a dress-down-Friday. I'm not so sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I had seven years of pretty much dressing down in India. My normal work dress was, for several years, jeans and a t-shirt. I upgraded slightly to jeans and a collared shirt when FLOvate became WNS and we traded our lovely spacious and secluded office for a few square yards in a call centre, but that was as far as it went. To be honest, I was looking forward to getting back into a suited routine in the City of London, but the company I'm now working with also has a relaxed and informal attitude to dress. Yesterday I arrived in a suit. Today I've dispensed with the tie; tomorrow it may be the jacket. I'll retain the trousers at least.

And, as with life in 1994 London, I'm eating sandwiches and rolls at my desk again. In due course too, a few weeks from now, I'll also be upending my keyboard and emptying old breadcrumbs over my desk.

Fun with flatpacks

I'd forgotten how much fun it was assembling flat-packed furniture. I'd ordered a cabin bed and wardrobe for Niharika and then spent the best part of Thursday, and a couple of hours yesterday, putting the things together. I roped in my dad for the last part of the cabin bed, and the two of us then pored over the wardrobe instructions, even then somehow contriving to get it wrong which necessitated taking bits of it apart again. The cabin bed instructions told me that it should have taken two hours to put together, but I'm pretty sure that they'd based that time on the world record set by Scandanavian craftsman Jorg Jorgen Jorgensen. In any event it took more like four or five hours.

"Don't tell Health and Safety about this" said one of the delivery men as he was lugging the thing upstairs, "we're not meant to do this." I suppose that was his way of saying, "that's got to be worth a few quid for taking the trouble" but as I only had a tenner on me at the time I replied, "it's OK, your secret's safe with me." In India I would have probably given a hundred or so rupees as a tip but in India they'd have put the thing together for me as well, not to mention torn the wallpaper, knocked off a wall tile and probably chipped a bed panel or two. The grubby fingerprints are always thrown in free.

But it's been a bit of a whirlwind two weeks for me. From arriving in the UK with nothing, I now have a family-sized car and a solid suburban house which is pretty much ready to go - or at least will be once I've assembled our new bed tomorrow. I have all the essentials: an iron, an ironing board, a microwave, a fridge, a washing machine and dishwasher and a 42" television to keep the kids amused. I have a DVD player, an old video recorder bought for twenty pounds, and a growing video library courtesy of a local charity shop (one pound each). I have warm clothes for myself and the children and I've even paid for my season ticket in preparation for re-joining the rat race on Monday.

Meanwhile, back in India, the packers have been in and all my books are in boxes. The fridge, the microwave, the washing machine, my desk, and various other bits and pieces have all been sold. The packing will complete tomorrow and then, all being well, a couple of months from now I'll be re-united with my chattels. India already seems another world away.

Trappings

For what seems like the umpteenth time, I'm setting up a new home. I took possession of house keys yesterday, and later today I'll be getting car keys. The last week has seen household trappings slowly coming together.

Most of our stuff is being shipped across from India but that's going to take six to eight weeks and there are some things that you just can't do without for that length of time. And so yesterday I was at an electrical showroom booking our TV and microwave, a vacuum cleaner and other bits and pieces.

My seven years in India has probably made me a better shopper, and a better bargainer. So far I've probably saved around a hundred and twenty pounds just by asking various salesman to do me a deal. I like to think my wife would be proud of me but I know that had she been sitting in my shoes she'd not only have secured significantly higher discounts, she'd also have persuaded the salesmen to donate one of their kidneys - and maybe a lung - to the local hospital.

But I do like this 'starting afresh' approach, and in the UK it's so much easier than in India. My tenancy agreement was executed without the need for stamp paper - an essential anachronism in India - a financial guarantor, or black-jacketed lawyers. Neither did I need to pay the exorbitant ten months' rental deposit that is demanded in Bangalore. An estate agent handled my particular transaction but I didn't have to pay him the equivalent of one month's deposit; just an admin fee. I took gas and electricity readings at the property and I also booked my Virgin broadband, landline and satellite TV connection via a call-centre in the Philippines. I set up a direct debit with the water authorities without the need of proof of address, photos, passport copies and goodness knows what else. No form that I have filled in so far has asked for my father's name, and on all occasions that I've booked appointments so far, both parties have been punctual; none of this, "sorry saar, traffic saar; fie minutes; gie me fie minutes."

So all in all, it's rather exciting and I reckon I'm on track to having a partially furnished house -or at least somewhere to sleep and something to sleep on - for when my wife and boys arrive in the country next week.