The Red Cow in Sandwich, Kent: a review

May 27, 2008 By 1 Comment

I should have been suspicious when we tried to book a table for lunch and had to try several times to get through and avoid the answerphone.

I have eaten at the “Red Cow” in Sandwich on a number of occasions previously and was always very happy with my meal, in particular the “Hunter’s Chicken”.

So I got a shock to find out last week that things had changed – in my opinion for the worse.

There was no menu outside in the usual display to read. I thought this was because the outside was being repainted, but once inside the restaurant part there were no menus either. The reason was quite simple: there are no menus that can be distributed to the guests – the waitress arrived with two blackboards and stood them up on chairs at the corner of the table for us to look at!

No Hunter’s Chicken for me this time – the menu had been severely reduced to a number of basic items. There was a choice of baked potatoes, salads, steaks and other “meat & veg” dishes. And they all fitted on those two blackboards.

We asked if they had a child’s menu for our 5-year old daughter. After all, the sign on the door had said “children are welcome”. They did not, however, possess such a thing and offered her chicken nuggets with chips. As an alternative she could have a 1/2 portion of most items on the menu.

There were also “chicken strips” on the menu, served with salad and a chilli dip. We asked if that was with chips or any other form of potato – no, that was extra. Oh, and the strips were in beer batter, but the menu didn’t mention that.

The Red Cow in Sandwich
The Red Cow in Sandwich
(photographed in 2007)

I decided to play it safe and ordered a baked potato with beans and salad for just over 5GBP. I got just that! A baked potato (which I suspect had been cooked in a microwave oven) in a dish with some baked beans on it. The salad consisted of two lettuce leaves, a few strips of red and green peppers and some slices of a spring onion. It was more of a garnish than a salad! And it didn’t taste fresh either!

As the other meals arrived, those that had ordered steak were given sharp knives. Now, I learnt very early on in life not to point knives at people. Unfortunately the staff had not learnt this lesson yet, as they put at least one of the knives on the table with the sharp-end pointing towards the person sitting in front of it.

The “chips” turned out to be what I would call “wedges”, the “chicken strips” were, in my opinion, borderline as although they were cooked sufficiently to be white inside, they were still very moist. Generally I found the portions to be small considering the price of the food.

I was wondering what to say when the waitress came to ask if everything was OK. But she never asked…

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Food and Drink Tagged With: , , , ,

See-saw energy

May 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Here’s a novel idea: creating electricity using a children’s see-saw!
Doesn’t the idea sound so simple, and yet effective.  Especially the idea that other playground equipment could be used to create electricity as well.  How about a roundabout with a built-in dynamo?
Well anyway, having read that article it set me thinking.  Why does the project just have to be for Africa?  Why can we not develop and use this novel idea for European playgrounds as well?
After all, we talk so much these days about carbon-emissions and finding a cleaner and more environmentally-friendly way of generating electricity.  Here’s an idea that could really work!
I could just imagine the local playgrounds here generating and storing electricity during the daytime, in order to use it for the street lighting at night.
I think that inventor deserves a lot more funding and hope that one day his idea becomes a reality – all over the world!

Filed Under: Africa, Cymeradwyo Tagged With: , ,

30 years of Spam

May 3, 2008 By 1 Comment

Earlier this week we celebrated 15 years of the world-wide-web, today is apparently the 30th anniversary of the first spam mail, even though the name was only coined 15 years ago.

I can’t say exactly when I received my first spam mail, it was possibly at university at around the time the name was first used. But at the time it wasn’t so much of a nuisance as I didn’t receive that much e-mail.

Even when I started work in Germany, I don’t remember there being that much spam mail around, which was probably a good thing as the internet lines were still very much modem- or ISDN-based. On the other hand, perhaps that was why there was not such much of it around?

But I do remember that suddenly around the year 2000 there was a sudden influx of it – and it was a real pain at the time. With spam filters still in their infancy, it was a case of using every trick possible to block the mails from reaching the mail server. Most web-based freemail providers did not have spam filters, and as someone who picked up their mail on the move the slow GSM access combined with the number of spam mails made it a chore to download headers and then remove the spam before downloading the e-mails that I wanted.

After that both the mail programs and the providers woke up and started working on their filters. These days, seven years later, and I use a combination of provider- and program-based filters, as well as my own hand-written ones. As a result I receive very little of it, and the ones that I do receive do not make it to my mobile devices. I even advise other people on how to avoid it for a living!

In fact, I probably have more problems with unwanted telephone calls than with spam mails. And should anything get through after all, then I can always blog about it…

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Internet Tagged With:

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