For several months I’ve been quite literally lusting after a bag from Tusting. As someone who has a cupboard full of bags, suitcases and holdalls in various sizes and styles discovering their site was quite exciting and it’s only through sheer willpower and determination that I haven’t already ordered a bag from them. I put this down to being unable to decide between the Clipper or the Melchbourne. Of course there is also the £300+ price tag attached to each bag that makes me stop and think twice each time I reach for my wallet.

However I felt unable to resist this week when I noticed how to take advantage of a promotion with Boden. They stock the Tusting Clipper for £300, £30 less than Tusting themselves. However their current promotion is 15% off if you spend over £120 meaning you get the Clipper bag for only £255. Suddenly it was much easier to decide between the two bags; did I want to spend £325 or £255? Yes, you guessed it, the cut-price Clipper should arrive on Monday. I’m embarrassed to admit I’m looking forward to it.

What I’m not embarrassed to admit however is how much I like Fisherman’s Friends. You may recall a while ago I blogged having a general moan about spending one weekend feeling rather poorly and generally sorry for myself. If you missed it I wouldn’t say you missed much but feel free to have a read.

One person who did read it was Janita who dropped me an email and suggested a Fisherman’s Friend might be just the thing to ward off those commuter colds. When I saw the name, Fisherman’s Friend, it was like a deja-vu flashback.

Blogs are a bit like buses; there’s an indeterminate time between them so you’re left waiting an age for one to come along and then KAPOW! another follows right behind it. This is the one behind and as there’s no competition in this one it’s more KA than POW!

I hadn’t actually planned being home to blog tonight, for a week or so I’d been counting down to tonight as Peter Doggett was giving a talk at Foyles about his new book on David Bowie during the 70′s.

I guess because I was born in the 70′s the music of the time subliminally ingrained itself in me. It wasn’t too unpleasant a situation although it wasn’t until I was in my late teens before I could listen to certain Bob Dylan tracks as I’d grown up listening to a family member strangle each note to death when he was learning to play guitar.

However, I tip my hat to him because he persevered. Playing by ear he’d listen to each track he wanted to play and then repeat it over and over until he’d perfected it. I, as you can imagine, would have given up long before then, much like I do when I tell myself I’ll learn a language. Result? More teach yourself books than Waterstones and an ability to count to ten and perhaps say hello and goodbye in 6 or 7 languages.

I would say the same is true of the saxophone however that’s heavily influenced by the fact it’s a noisy fucker and as I can hear the people upstairs chop vegetables you can imagine what the sounds of someone crucifying Oh when the Saints go marching in sounds like. Yes, it’s true I did spend £240 importing a mute case from France but by the time I get home from work and eat I’ve no desire to spend 15 minutes just getting the thing ready. Anyway, I digress…

Many moons ago I worked for Royal Mail in one of their call centres, dealing with customer enquiries (read complaints). You would talk to some very strange people.I spoke with one guy who called to complain that Royal Mail was colluding with his ex-wife to run his business into the ground by not delivering his mail. He was a strange one tho not as strange as the caller who rang  one Friday night.

This caller had a very posh accent and was very worried as he had agreed to put his work’s post into a postbox outside the office. His question surprised me, “Can I post letters into any post box?” I was momentarily thrown but replied if it’s franked mail then it should go into a metered mail box but if it’s stamped then no, any post box will do. His response was more surprising, “Oh good because this one isn’t working” Not quite understanding I came out with the obvious, “What do you mean, it’s not working?”

“Well”, he said, “when I put the letters in they just come back out again!” I remember looking at the clock on the wall, it was around 6:15pm so I replied, “Is the box full? Can you see any mail inside it?” When he replied I could actually see him in my head. “I’m looking into the slot now and it’s full of letters, I think that’s why it’s not working” I couldn’t help chuckling to myself, it was probably more his accent and tone, he seemed genuinely surprised that you could post letters into any postbox and not the one closest to where you wrote it.

I read today that proposed changes to Royal Mail by Ofcom will result in a minimum 25% price hike in the cost of postage. What they propose is to abolish price controls on everything except 2nd class mail which would be set at somewhere between 45p and 55p, it’s currently 36p. I suppose a price rise is only to be expected really as Royal Mail made a loss of £120m last year on their letters business. Hopefully if they stop losing money they can improve the service. Don’t get me wrong, when it works, it works great and it does work by far the majority of the time. However, when it goes wrong…only Royal Mail could make it Kafkaesque!

Sometime last year, with all the chatter that followed the opening of Hawksmoor, I happened to note that one of the foodies I follow on Twitter mentioned that the steaks were sourced from The East London Steak Company, which is part owned by Richard Turner, the Hawksmoor’s executive chef. It would make sense really, make more money by selling yourself the stuff you cook and sell. My information however was wrong, the Hawksmoor source all their beef from The Gimger Pig who also sell pork and lamb.

The East London Steak Company, as the name suggests, sell steaks. They also sell other choice cuts of beef and some rather delicious burgers including a limited edition range but there’s one thing of which you can be certain (for the moment) The East London Steak Company sells beef and only beef! There’s no lamb, no pork, no chicken and no fish just damn good beef.

Being somewhat lazy I’ve never actually sought out a local butcher. I’m sure one exists but it would involve a weekend trip and weekends are when other people are out shopping and generally meandering around which makes it difficult to make a return trip from A to B quickly as you have to allow for the random acts of behaviour from fellow commuters.

So I started ordering steak from Ocado’s Service Counter. Somewhere in their Hatfield outpost lurks a butcher who reads your order from a screen and then sets to slicing up your choice of dead animal before packaging it up with a label with your name on it. Despite it being 21 day aged I have to say that the quality was, on occasion, quite poor. I alternated from the sirloin to the rib-eye and then, as I say, I saw the link to The East London Steak Company on Twitter…

I decided last year that I would wake up on my birthday in a hotel somewhere away from London. I originally planned San Francisco but in the end went off to the much closer Manchester where I had the good fortune to catch up with Fritz & Gillian on Saturday and Sunday.

On Sunday I had wandered into town to find a pub where I could watch Manchester United play Arsenal. I had predicted Arsenal would lose 3-2, oh if only the scoreline had been as kind; instead we had an 8-2 massacre. I did feel my wallet was somewhat massacred in Manchester by the very average food served up at Sam’s Chop House. On a previous visit I had gone to see the bronze statue of Lowry propping up the bar, at that time I noticed they seemed to do a roaring trade in customers dining so I decided to eat there.