Good Service, bad service

Quite often Agent TP pops into our local Pret-a-Manger for a sandwich. It is always a delightful experience due to the friendly trio of Eastern European girls working their (T, V and D) who are always smiling and acting convincingly pleased to see you.

What a contrast with the gloomy staff of Foyles the bookshop, around the corner. At least now Foyles have dispensed with the Victorian sytem whereby you had to get a receipt in one place and pay at a little cash booth somewhere else. They could have spent more time training their staff who always look at you as if you have deliberately come in to spoil their shelf stacking. Look, we know that you have to stack shelves but shouldn't the queue of customers standing at the till recive some attention too? And when you do deign to wander over to the till you scowl your way through the whole transaction. The only exception we have found was the delightful young lady in the second hand section once.

Cheer up the lot of you!

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Left hand down a bit

Oh dear. The Queen Elizabeth 2 ran aground coming into Southhampton this morning before her final voyage to Dubai. We know there was a strong wind (force 7) this morning but even so. How many times has the ship come into Southampton? We used to see it at least 2 or 3 times during our summer holidays in Cowes so it must be quite a bit.

It is the end of an era as liners today are built for taking as many old Americans as possible on cruises not passage making across the Atlantic. The QE2 was the last liner running the transatlantic route; soldiering on alone for over thirty years after the Holland America Line and Norddeutscher Lloyd Line withdrew from transatlantic voyages in September 1971, Canadian Pacific Line in November 1971, French Line withdrew the France from service in 1974, Swedish America Line withdrew in December 1975 and Italia Line stopped in June 1976.


The SS France, later the SS Norway and finally the SS Blue Lady in India for scrapping last year

We are lucky to have seen some of the great liners of the past sailing: the France (sadly, scrapped in the last year), the United States, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth. We have even been on the QE2 as a boy.

So, unlike many, Agent Triple P is glad to see the Queen Elizabeth 2 sailing off to be docked as a floating hotel in Dubai rather than ending her days on an Indian scrapping beach. Frankly she was showing her age and could not have been renovated to modern standards easily. At least she will be preserved as a monument to a time before air travel conquered the globe. Only eighteen months ago we enjoyed lunch in the Winston Churchill restaurant on board the Queen Mary in Long Beach so must try and do the same on the QE2 next time we are in Dubai. Actually, we had the chance to go on board when she arrives in Dubai in a couple of weeks but have to go to California instead.

A final point. The Queen Elizabeth 2 is, of course not named after the Queen (if she had been she would be Queen Elizabeth II) but is just the second Cunard ship named Queen Elizabeth (hence the Arab numeral).

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Japanese Bikini Jeans

The Japanese have always had a talent for taking something invented by someone else and improving upon it.

Now, Agent Triple P much approved of the how low can you go fashion for women's trousers (even though many of them, sadly, should not have tried it).

Sandra Tanimura, a Japanese designer, said that many of their customers wanted their low rise trousers to get even lower without them falling down. So, with typical ingenuity, she came up with a system where the integral bikini strings keep them up. Give this woman an engineering award!

But please, only to be worn by the young and thin!

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US Election: Triple P's favourite

Goes like a bomb. And the bike.

So, its tonight. Frankly, even though Agent Triple P is interested in the result, as it effects his job, we are thoroughly sick to death of the amount of coverage in the UK Press. It is pathetic the way the UK media sends dozens, if not hundreds (we wonder how many the BBC have there?) of reporters to cover the elections of a foreign country.

Agent Triple P has nothing against Americans, we find them rather splendid people on the whole, and there are one or two we are very fond of indeed! However, we are sure they couldn't care less about our elections and we suspect many people in the UK couldn't care less about America's, but it is another example of the UK media (particularly the BBC) telling us what to think and what should be important to us just because they find it exciting (and it gives them the excuse for lots of trans-Atlantic trips). Frankly, there is far too much politics in the UK media as it is, as news editors seem to think that politics is synonymous with news, which it isn't. It's just much easier for journalists to keep track of a comparitively tiny world like politics than some of the bigger and more complex issues in the world.

The Governor of Alasksa demonstrates how to nicely fill a tee-shirt

Anyway, Agent Triple P's vote goes to Sarah Palin, not because we think she is a good politician but because we think she is very foxy. I don't know if it is the glasses (rumour has it that they aren't prescription lenses but are just there to make her look more intellectual) but she looks like she would go like a bomb.

Sarah with every American's favourite toy

We would very much like to give her a few Martinis on a bearskin rug and discuss the Alaskan crab fishing industry.

Watch out for an attack of the crabs!

She used to be a beauty queen. Still is!

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Don't bother woman!

Another post to annoy HMS who believes that I am a sexist, misogynist dinosaur whereas, in fact, only two of those are true.

We were on the Tube this morning and some woman was putting her makeup on from a huge case full of MAC cosmetics. She spent ages on her eyes then started on her face etc. The thing was her face was covered in nasty little warts. She was not bad looking but, really, what's the point? In fact it draws attention to them! It's like spray painting a rusty old Morris Marina. It's still a rusty old Morris Marina underneath and the paint doesn't cover the rusty holes anyway.

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Well Done Lewis!

Ha ha! That'll stop the Ferrari team in their tracks!

We are delighted that Lewis Hamilton won the Formula 1 World championships in Brazil yesterday although leaving it to the second to last corner was a slightly stressfull way to do it.

Hunt and his rather spiffy wife Suzi

Formula 1 rather runs in Agent Triple P's family but we admit that we have found it rather boring since, well, the days of James Hunt. We are rather surprised that no-one in the press has pointed out that Hunt won his championship in a similar way in 1976. He was also dogged by off the track decisons and penalties by officials during the season. Again, he won the championship in the last race when Lauda had to pull out allowing Hunt to scrape in and also take the championship by just one point (although Hunt wasn't leading the championship at the begionning of the race).

Some people have criticised Hamilton for not being that exciting a personality but most Formula 1 drivers seem cold, taciturn and rather introspective. We suspect emotion has no place in the cockpit of a Formula 1 car travelling at 200mph. Hunt had bucket loads of personality but was the exception rather than the rule.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like mine?

At least Hamilton has got himself an A-List, babe girlfriend with Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger. The rest of this rather dire "singing" group (Scherzinger seems to do all the vocals and the rest just writhe about) look like a bunch of ageing ratbags but we think Nicole is rather splendid (wearing a scarlet cocktail dress in the McLaren pits was a rather interesting wardrobe choice).

Nicole's idea of pole position is rather different from Lewis' we suspect

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