Coventry's new Lidl opened last week but we were away at the Leeds Festival. We poppped round tonight to check out the store. They must have had a busy opening weekend because quite a few of the shelves were empty or only half-stocked.
Back in 2004 when I lived in Aberystwyth, I used to regularly shop at Lidl. The food is really cheap and it's possible to spend around £10 on a balanced weekly shop and have so much food it was a struggle to carry it home.
This morning's commute was a bit like something out of the film Duel. When I joined the ring road, a lorry flashed its headlights to let me on. We both left at the same junction and drove 3 miles down the same road, turning right at the crossroads.
I pulled into the car park to let Emma out, then turned around and drove back to the main road. The lorry had also pulled into the car park and turned around, and followed me back to the road.
At the next crossroads I turned left, with the lorry following me. I took the next turning left, but by now I had managed to get a bit ahead. I think the lorry also took the same turning but it was too far behind me so I can't be certain.
I'm sure this is just coincidence, and nothing sinister at all. There are roadworks in the area and some roads are closed. Otherwise the lorry wouldn't have had to turn around where it did. I think the driver might have found himself at the wrong end of the roadworks and the route to the other side happened to be the same route I was taking.
This morning we were joining the ring road when we saw a car parked on the side of road (where Gosford Street turns into Far Gosford Street) with a strange camera-like attachment on the roof. I wondered whether it was one of the Google cars - this was confirmed by the small 'Google' logo on the door.
A few years ago we went to an event organised by Lidl to drum up support for a store in Binley. The planning application failed but they recently bought the old Somerfield site on the Binley Road in Stoke.
The last time we drove past, a few weeks ago, the site was still looking empty. There didn't seem to be anything above ground level. We drove past this evening and the building work seemed to have progressed quite well. The brick shell was in place and it looked very 'shop shaped'.
It was a toss-up between the lunchtime buffet at China Red in Hertford Street, or the Handy Nasty (Han Dynasty) near West Orchards. We chose China Red simply because we were nearer to it at the time.
The buffet was fairly cheap at £5.90-ish. The selection was reasonable given the price. Starters included prawn toast, chicken satay sticks, ribs, spring rolls. Main courses included beef curry, sweet and sour chicken, noodles, rice.
The food was tasty, but the disadvantage of eating at lunchtime is that I can't eat as much as in the evenings, so I didn't get to have as many platesful as normal.
I mentioned the weather yesterday. While we were up north, we missed the worst of the rain. Driving to work this morning, part of the London Road were flooded and we passed a few fields which had turned into ponds. We were definitely in the right part of the country for the Bank Holiday.
Update
Driving home tonight (by a different route) there were branches on the side of the Kenilworth road, which must have been blown down by the wind.
The Langar on offer consisted of bread dipped in a spiced batter and deep fried, and what looked like some kind of bhaji with onion, potato and spinach. There was also the sweet spiced tea available.
Walking around the stalls, we noticed some strange orange coloured food. We were told it was a kind of sweet so we bought a bag. It turned out to be a sweet spiced batter which had been deep fried. We watched it being cooked and it went into the oil a normal batter colour but came out a brilliant orange colour. I can't remember what it was called but I'll certainly look out for it again.
Coventry City Farm is being forced to close soon, due to lack of funds. At the moment it is still open and they are accepting donations so they can still afford to feed the animals. While we were there, we lent our support by dropping some money in the collection box and also by buying a few things from the shop.
Some enormous pigs.
I was driving a hire car today. I don't know whether the University regularly hires automatic cars but that's what I got. It's only the 2nd time I've driven one - I'm more used to a normal manual gearbox. It feels weird driving a car without a handbrake or a clutch, and the sluggishness from a standing start is a bit annoying (although the last point may have been because it was also a diesel).
When I got back this afternoon and returned the car, I got back into my own car to drive home. It then started to feel weird needing to press the clutch. The steering also felt strange - the hire car had very light steering whereas my car doesn't have power assisted steering so it felt very heavy.
While I was out, I heard about an unexploded 2nd World War bomb found in the city centre. Later this afternoon I read about the ring road being closed in an anticlockwise direction, but it was open and moving freely when I drove home. It looks like I got home just in time.
It was very windy as walked into town this morning. We pass a pond, and I noticed some ducks swimming in the middle. As I was passing, a sudden strong gust of wind blew them sideways, almost capsizing one of them. They seemed to have difficulty swimming in a straight line.
Coventry's new Ikea store opens tomorrow. The local news has been full of scare stories about how the traffic to the store will throttle the ring road and bring the city to a standstill. As a countermeasure, the council has set up signed diversions especially for Ikea traffic.
The shop was actually open this morning, although only to 'Ikea Family Card' holders. We had received a letter telling us about this sneak preview and a voucher for free delivery if we spent over £150, so we went along to see what the shop was like and to pick up some furniture for the front room (which we are in the middle of decorating).
There were a lot of security guards and crowd control barriers outside the shop, but a surprising lack of people. The shop was fairly quiet inside too. Apparently it's the tallest Ikea in europe, according to the announcement we heard on the instore 'radio' while we were in the restaurant. One advantage of this height is the view - you can see a lot of Coventry from there.
We managed to buy enough furniture to qualify for the free delivery. Everything arrived this afternoon, just as we were about to resume stripping the wallpaper in the front room. Our hallway is now full of rolls of carpet and flat-packs of furniture.
There were predictions of around 15,000 visitors to the store today, but I don't think they will have had anything like that many. They are expecting 20,000 tomorrow for the Grand Opening. There are 'Gift Cards' for the first 500 in the queue, and plenty of special offers and price reductions, so I expect there will be quite a few people lining up outside when the shop opens.
I don't know whether the population of Coventry doubled over the weekend but the traffic was much busier than usual on the way home tonight.
Near one one the many roundabouts on the way home, there is a bus lane. It is separated from the main carriageways by a traffic island. There are traffic lights here, the ones for the bus lane are always red unless there is a bus approaching.
Tonight, a lot of cars seemed to want to use the bus lane. They didn't seem to realise that the light was never going to turn green for them. The traffic in our lane was moving so slowly, we got a good look at the long queue of cars stuck in the bus lane, waiting in vain for the lights to change.
We found out earlier today that a friend of ours was in a band. They were playing live at the Beer Engine pub. As that is only on Far Gosford Street, not far from here, we decided to go along and see what they were like.
Their opening song was a solo piece featuring their vocalist/guitarist, and reminded me of a Badly Drawn Boy song, which isn't a bad thing. The band is a 5-piece: vocalist/lead guitar, keyboards, saxophone, bass guitar, drums.
They were pretty good. Worth going to see if they're playing nearby. They'll be performing at a local Battle of the Bands and I wish them the best of luck.
They have a page on myspace but there doesn't seem to be much there at the moment.
It normally takes us around 30-45 minutes to drive to the University in the mornings. We normally encounter bottlenecks of traffic near the railway station, along Kenilworth road near the A45, and on Charter Avenue. This week it has only taken around 10 minutes to do the same drive, with no hold-ups anywhere.
We were wondering where all the traffic had gone, then it occurred to us that it was school half term. Some of the decrease in traffic would be due to people taking time off work to take their children on holiday, but I'm sure most of it is due to the absence of parents driving their kids to school.
I find it amazing that all the extra 'school run mums' add enough traffic to make the roads grind to a halt and increase journey time by a factor of 3 or 4.
Part of the Coventry ring road was closed yesterday - there was a long queue of traffic approaching junction 5. Thankfully we managed to avoid it by staying on the slip road and got to our exit ok. The rest of our drive to work was uneventful. There was hardly any traffic on the Kenilworth road - all the cars must have been stuck on the ring road.
According to the news, the incident was caused by a deer on the road. Unfortunately the animal had been hit by a car and had to be put down.
What I find puzzling is where the deer came from. There aren't any large expanses of green near junction 5 of the ring road. Coventry might be a small city but a deer still has a long way to walk to get there from either the parks or the surrounding countryside.
