BBB

Ten days or so ago to the Barrowboy and Banker, according to the blog the first visit since the end of June, which seems about right. Long enough ago that the place had time to close for three months for a refurbishment. Which seems a long time to take a City pub out of the line for what did not look like much more than reconfiguring the bar to make it a lot shorter, thus making more floor space. But the cause of the slow service was not the short bar, rather catching a young man on his first day, under supervision by a trainer. At least by my second visit to the bar he was allowed to handle money, which speeded things up slightly.

But to go back to the beginning, the trip started well with my finding a paying for newspaper - the Daily Mail - in a bin at Epsom Station. Only slightly damaged and the first such for many months. Not a very good paper though: lots of pages, but otherwise about on a par with the free Metro. The days when one could rely on litter bins for decent newspapers are long gone.

Pulled a Bullingdon off the ramp and off down Stamford Street where I found a small, black Mercedes saloon with registration 'IND 1', presumably for the Indian ambassador. But if it was, odd that he did not have a large Mercedes saloon.

Into my cheese shop at London Bridge where, unusually I fell for no less than three sorts of cheese, including one sheep. I learned that sheep yield about half the milk of cows, by live weight, which accounts for their cheese being about twice the price. I also fell for a sour dough baguette. Good of its kind, but chewy and not a patch on a proper baguette made with proper yeast. Can't understand this ongoing fad for sour dough bread. But I did, for the first time, get a large carrier bag, as well made as the small ones they usually give me.

In the BBB I learned about a product called Boardpad, which seems to be a specialised document manager for the use of the boards of public companies, promoted if not built by Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. People who look to be very hot on corporate governance - with the g-word having been held to be obsolete when Harold Wilson used it in the title of one of his books back in 1976, but all the thing now. However, I did not find reference 4 very informative; all gloss and no accessible technical summary, at least not that I could find.

I remember from my days at the Home Office that senior managers were up for buying a chunk of Oracle Financials, the idea of which was to plug them into the spend authorisation workflow loop, but that did not work at all. All that happened was that they took their decisions in the ordinary way and we then spoofed it up for them in Oracle. Not very satisfactory at all. So I wonder if the boards of public companies now do better? Do they actually hit some keys? Are they young enough to have learned to use a key pad on their telephones?

And given that the Treasury was fairly quick off the blocks (for a government department) in its use of a generalised document manager, getting on for twenty years ago now, I wonder if they have moved onto this sort of thing?

Too much stuff for my regular bag for the return leg on the Bullingdon, so I had to resort to tying the large carrier bag around my neck with a scarf which was a little short for the job. But I managed OK, and scored exactly the same time between Waterloo Station 3 and the Hop Exchange coming and going, that is to say 8 minutes and 44 seconds. Maybe a third the time of walking and probably less than the time it would take on the Jubilee Line, given the time lost between road and platform.

Unusually, on the train to Epsom there were two young men with what appeared to be a special needs young lady, possibly their sister on a day out. They all seemed to be managing very well. Good to see.

Then my taxi driver turned out to be very keen on cars. I made some casual remark about the car noticed at reference 3 to find myself engaged in a long conversation about all sorts of interesting cars. I'm afraid I had to spoof that a bit too.

PS: the snap above probably being my second lifetime selfie.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/barrowboy-banker.html.

Reference 2: http://www.barrowboy-and-banker.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/big-car.html.

Reference 4: http://www.boardpad.com.