Breakfast / Lunch Menus

Works been pretty hectic recently so I’ve not had an on-line rant for a while. I probably should have a rant about work getting in the way of life but instead I’m going to choose menus. Not that I have anything against menus per se, let’s face it they’re very useful. It’s just the time-based variety of the “breakfast served until 11am” ilk. I don’t even have an issue with the principle of the things, it’s when some jobsworth enforces the timing to the minute.

This morning was a fine example: I was in a café that served the breakfast menu until noon. 11:50am - A French tourist tried to order a hot sandwich: “Sorry, we don’t serve those until midday, they’re only on the lunch menu. The breakfast menu is here….”. Please, it’s sodding 10 minutes away. So, the guy can get a bacon sandwich or sausage sandwich or egg sandwich but the cook can’t manage a toasted cheese sandwich? Well for 10 minutes anyway. What, will the staff get sacked for serving a “lunch” item 10 minutes early. Is the toast machine locked up until noon? For God’s sake, just serve the bloody sandwich!

And before you ask, I know he was a tourist as I’m on Skye and he had 5 tour guide books with him…. And yes, I know I wouldn’t normally sympathise with a Frenchman but this menu thing is actually more irritating than a nation that goes on strike and blockades ports if they don’t get 25% pay rises every year. Well perhaps not but that’s a different rant….

Hotels (part 2)

Why do most hotel chains insist on replacing the soap and shampoo during the middle of your stay? Who on earth complains that they’ve had to use a bar of soap for more than two days? Now obviously having your guests run out of toiletries mid-stay would be a bad thing, but why not just leave a spare set in the room? This would surely save the hotel a fortune in toiletries and be considerably less wasteful. Stop it!

Hotels (part 1) - Towels

I send a lot of time in hotels; in fact more time than I spend in my own home. One thing that I can never understand is why most of them insist in providing fresh towels every day. Even those who advise that they only change towels left in the bath often replace them anyway. Why? Who uses fresh towels everyday in their own home?

Not only is a a waste of energy, water and detergent, there's the transport to and from the hotel too; very environmentally unfriendly. This government loves to pass new laws and with the current environmental media frenzy you'd think that they would have legislated on this by now. How about making it illegal to replace towels more than once a week unless the guest specifically requests them? Might be the most useful new law to be passed all year...

Apologise for Slavery?

Apparently it's 200 years since slavery was abolished in Britain this Sunday and the PC crowd are calling on the country to apologise. To who exactly? To the slaves that were brought here or shipped off to the US? Er, aren't they all dead?

So should we apologise to their decendants? Why? Because they're 'suffering' the terrible fate of being a citizen in some of the world's richest nations. Because their life expectancy is probably double what it would be if they grew up in many parts of Africa?

It was 200 years ago and everyone who was involved is dead. Get over it and put your energy into something relevant to 2007 and beyond.

Traffic Lights

What is it with traffic lights these days? Back in the 70's and 80's lots of them were replaced by roundabouts because they improved traffic flow and were almost maintenance free. Enter the new century and suddenly new traffic lights are sprouting up all over the place, like the weeds in my lawn.

And why replace a roundabout with traffic lights when you can keep the roundabout and add four sets of lights to each one, thus ensuring that you can stop every vehicle at least once as they navigate the junction. This is completely senseless. And why is it that where they do have some purpose to aid traffic flow during peak times, the dammed things are left to run 24 hours a day?

Traffic lights use electricity, need maintaining and ensure that for most (if not all) of the time vehicles going through the junction are polluting the planet more than they would be if a roundabout was used instead. Perhaps with "climate change" all the rage now perhaps councils will have a change of heart and start ripping them out (again).

Of course this isn't going to happen any time soon: It simply wouldn't support the governments congestion charging roadmap....

Toilet Rolls

My first entry isn't really a rant, more of an introduction to the way my brain is wired. I wonder why I think so much about the details that most other people don't give a second thought? Take toilet rolls: To me there's clearly a right and wrong way to hang a toilet roll....

When I lived alone I thought loose sheet to the wall was the way to go. After all it is a little bit tidier that way. But after much pondering, and the experience of sharing the house with my wife, I realise that this is quite wrong: The only way to go for 'the thinker' is loose sheet out. It's only mildly less aesthetic but makes grasping the sheet so much easier, particularly if the wall is some distance away. Plus there's the benefit of protecting the wall from manicured nails and manicured nails from walls. (Before you ask I'm talking about the wife's, not mine. As 'a thinker' mine are obviously chewed all the way down....).

So, what about the vertical pole type holder? Easy, these are totally wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Considered more 'posh' by hotels and guest houses at least, these contraptions really are dumb: The roll doesn't spin properly and the loose sheet is invariably hanging down the side away from you. This simply can't happen with the trustly horizontal pole. This is so obvious....

So, there you have it; a good example of the totally pointless thinking that my brain occupies itself with on a daily basis....