My first internship was at Virtual Team Builders, a company that helped companies work remotely. I had no idea this was even possible. I would go on to work remotely, or in a hybrid workplace, for most of my career. Working remotely doesn’t necessarily mean working from home. Getting out of the house can feel […] The post Where you work changes how you work appeared first on Herbert Lui.

I never expected applying for my 60+ Oyster Photocard would be so impractically sluggishly difficult. ...and then went pear-shaped when my application ended up on the Imbecilic Duff-Coded Screen of Digital Quicksand. Day -14 photocard website and set up an account. Simple. I have definitely entered my correct date of birth. However I don't appear to have the option of applying for a 60+ Oyster Photocard. The options are there for an 18+ Student Oyster or Apprentice Oyster but not the card I'm supposed to be eligible for. Ah well, not yet. Day -13 Day -12 Day -11 I already have an up-to-date photograph because I've just renewed my passport. I upload that and position it nicely in the box. I've also already scanned my passport in readiness. I upload the necessary page and type in the ridiculously long serial number underneath. I doublecheck to make sure every character is correct. Finally I enter my credit card details ready to pay the necessary £20. Hurrah, I think as I press Pay, my 60+ card will be with me within days. I upload my photograph and my passport again, then re-enter my bank details. This time I get through the verify screen, receive a verification code and enter it on the page. Easy, I think, here we go. But instead of accepting my payment I get an error message. Your payment was unsuccessful. And I am taken to the Imbecilic Duff-Coded Screen of Digital Quicksand. But the letter won't download. If I try to open the file it says "Format error: Not a PDF or corrupted". I try downloading it several times and it won't. I try this in more than one browser and thus confirm it's not me at fault, it's the letter. This is particularly peeving because I don't know what the next step is. "Print off your verification letter and follow the instructions" isn't much use if you can't open the letter. Application in progress I ring the helpline again. I explain that I'm trying to download the letter but the pdf is corrupt. Oh yeah that happens, says the callguy. This is not entirely reassuring. I ask if he can email me a proper pdf but he says he can't. I ask if he can delete my application and let me start again but he says he can't. What he can do is arrange for a paper copy of that letter to be sent to my home address. I then have to take it to a Post Office with two forms of ID and £20 so that my application can proceed. I am not keen. Day -10 Day -9 Day -8 Day -7 Day -6 Day -5 Day -4 Day -3 Thank you for your recent application online for a 60+ Oyster photocard. Day -2 Day -1 "Your application is currently awaiting approval. Please check back here for updates to the status of your application." I don't hold out much hope that anyone will approve my application over the weekend. What I do instead is take my Senior Railcard to a tube station and get the bloke at the barrier to add its discount to my ordinary Oyster card. I'll take that as a small win, one day before I'm actually a Senior. Day 0 Day +1 Aha, an update. "Your application has been approved and your card is being created." Hurrah, it's finally made it to the printers. But this is the stage I should have been at ELEVEN days ago if only that first payment had gone through properly. Day +2 Aha, an update. "Your card has been despatched and should be with you within five working days." At long last, hurrah. Although five working days is essentially a week so it could be a long time before my card actually arrives. BestMate's birthday card arrives belatedly in my letterbox. "Oh, I sent that ages ago", he says. Day +3 Probably much too early but I check my letterbox enthusiastically. Obviously no. Day +4 I spot the postman coming down the street and wait expectantly on the other side of the flap as he reaches into his bag. No, nothing. Day +5 Still nothing. However my 60+ Oyster account has suddenly sprung into action enabling me to manage the card online. One of the options allows me to view my journey history... which is of course blank because my card is still in the post. Day +6 I get slightly excited when I spot a white envelope in my letterbox, but it's another letter from British Gas telling me they're raising prices. Day +7 I've been 60 FOR A WEEK and my 60+ card still hasn't turned up. A more typical experience, from what I've read on Reddit, is that the card arrives five days early. Day +8 Oh come on, it must arrive today. It doesn't. Day +9 Today is the fifth working day after my card was despatched. I check my letterbox at midday, nothing. I check it again at 1pm and my postman is firing envelopes into various slots. Sigh, a council tax bill. But underneath is an envelope from Northampton and HOO-BLOODY-RAH my 60+ Oyster photocard has finally arrived. I hate the photo, I love the card. "Please find attached your Oyster photocard. It is for your use only and you should start to use it immediately." Now the card's arrived it'll transform my ability to travel around London, of which more later. It is a totally marvellous thing for a newly-old person to own. But I cannot believe I applied ELEVEN DAYS BEFORE I was 60 and it only arrived NINE DAYS AFTER, and all due to the Imbecilic Duff-Coded Screen of Digital Quicksand. longer than usual postage times, which is totally Royal Mail's fault. I was also unfortunate in that validating my application stretched either side of a weekend, slowing things down. But I was really scuppered by the need for TfL to mail me a copy of the pdf I couldn't download from their website because it was corrupt, without which the pink and blue phases wouldn't have happened. Fundamentally I was shafted by bad programming and by a system that failed to mitigate its impact. If you're turning 60 any time soon, or if you're thinking of applying for any related photocard, I urge you not to end up on the Imbecilic Duff-Coded Screen of Digital Quicksand. It's irreversible, it's inescapable, it's corrupted and it'll cost you, so for the sake of everyone who comes after me I hope someone fixes it soon.

If there's one thing I've learned after nearly twenty years of writing about food in this country, it's that fine dining can happen pretty much anywhere. If Ormskirk, an otherwise unremarkable town in Lancashire previously best known as the childhood home of Marianne Faithful (and very little else) can in 2025 hold five Michelin stars then all bets are off - there's no excuse for anywhere not being a food destination. So let me introduce you to West Sussex, and specifically to the South Downs just outside of Horsham, where on the same short stretch of road sit no less than two Michelin starred restaurants. And although I'm sure Ben Wilkinson at The Pass has plenty to recommend it (another time, maybe), today I'm going to talk about Interlude at Leonardslee House, a local, seasonal, South African-leaning fine dining spot quite unlike anywhere else I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. They don't make much of the South African angle on the website - perhaps because if you're trying to sell yourself as hyper-local and seasonal then I suppose you risk confusing people a bit. But in practice it all works incredibly well - a South African-led kitchen, working out of South African-owned vineyard and estate, is cooking ingredients grown, foraged and caught within shouting distance of the restaurant using African-inspired techniques and recipes. Lunch began in the spectacularly comfortable (think St James' private members club) bar, with a beetroot and goat's cheese meringue which burst on the tongue into a riot of flavour, and a prettily decorated cheese stick with home mate "Marmite", powerfully rich with umami and with a lovely delicate bite. After those, a dainty little Jerusalem artichoke and Hamachi tuna taco, which involved curry leaf emulsion to great effect, dressed with some micro herbs and what looked like mini vine leaves. Leonardslee have a couple of vineyards on the estate with which they make 3 varieties of (actually very reasonably priced) sparkling wine, and part of the 'experience' at Interlude is to be talked through them before lunch at an entertaining little tasting. And I'm happy to report that working through 3 glasses of fizz and a cocktail before lunch even starts is a great way to get into the right mood. We were then led from the bar into an anteroom on the way to the dining room, where stood a cute little presentation of some of the estate's bounty - their own venison biltong on one side, various herbs, seeds and oils on the other, and between them a glass teapot of rich, silky venison consommé. The pride in showing off the variety of elements available to work with was evident - even the chocolate was "local", made in Horsham using fair-trade cocoa. Now reseated in a gorgeous, high-ceilinged dining room with a commanding view of the gardens, the lunch proper began, with this oak-smoked oyster. The smoking had turned the bivalve from its usual texture to a firmer, meatier style, which various dots of sharp citrussy jelly offset nicely. As is so often the case in fine dining places, bread was a course unto itself - a mosbolletjie loaf, all soft and brioch-y and made using fermented grape juice (the estate's own, of course) as a leavening agent. It arrived with koji-cultured (another little ingredient I'm seeing a lot around lately) butter and some home made preserve, which is apparently a nod to how this bread is eaten back in Africa, with butter and jam. Next came what I assume was either a last-minute or usually-dinner-only dish as I don't seem to have it on my menu - a cute little quenelle of some kind of lobster tartare, topped (well why not indeed) with a dollop of Exmoor caviar. It tasted exactly as good as you might hope lobster and caviar would taste - extremely good, and the theatre of the caviar presentation, arriving under its own little crystal dome, added another bit of joy. It's interesting to note at this point that while Interlude is not a cheap date, unlike some multi-course places the prices do reflect the ingredients - there's some high-end stuff on offer here. "Rabbit eats carrot" is, we were told, a dish that has been on the menu in some form at Interlude more or less since day one, but has gone through several metamorphoses. Here you see it as a little boat-shaped snack of estate rabbit topped with some of the herbs and vegetables (carrot, of course, included) it feeds on. Also part of the same dish, little tartlets of I think rabbit tartare, and miniature millefeuille-type mouthfuls of what I think were rabbit jelly sandwiched between layers of carrot emulsion. Sorry for the vagueness, it all rushed past in a happy blur and after those introductory glasses of wine my brain was very much in 2nd gear. Fish course was aged turbot, the fillet of which glinted with a mother of pearl sheen, indicating (I have been told) both an extremely high-quality fish and a delicate touch in cooking it. The sauce was one of those beautiful French types, at once both light but buttery and rich, and accompanying were various types of foraged (at Shoreham-by-Sea, the closest bit of coastline to Horsham) sea greens like monks beard, sea kale and sea purslane. Oh yes, and an absolute truckload of winter truffles, because if you can, you absolutely should. The "main" meat course was their own venison. Leonardslee are lucky enough to have four different types of deer on the estate, and this is sika, served both as a lovely pink bit of seared loin and a bitesize nugget of slow-cooked game served skewered over coals. The loin came with more winter mushrooms of various kinds, and a crisp, salty slice of grilled kale, and it was all just completely perfect. The transition to the dessert courses began with sorrel granita soaked in Leonardslee sloe gin, yet more showcasing of their seemingly endless ability to make any food or beverage out of what they find growing around the place. I'm still kicking myself for not taking a bottle of it home with me, but I suppose there's always next time. Blackberry - preserved (literally, as in made into a preserve) from earlier in the year was topped with crumbled ice cream blast-frozen theatrically tableside. And then shortly after the classic pairing of chocolate and mint, albeit foraged water mint (they grow next to the estate's lakes) and chocolate from J Cocoa, a bean-to-bar producer from Hassocks. The mint flavour in particular was incredibly arresting - your mouth felt like it had been lovingly cleaned from the inside out. There was yet more - a superbly-kept cheeseboard that focussed on serving a small (although not tiny) selection well rather than have a trolley groaning with a bewildering number of options (not that I don't often enjoy that approach too). And once we had finished with that it was time for a final flourish of petits fours back in the bar, expertly crafted little choux buns, citrussy bitesize jellies, and chocolate truffles all variously infused with acorn, eucalyptus and their own homemade walnut butter. OK, so, let's get the locally foraged elephant in the room out of the way before we go any further. Interlude is not cheap. Our lunch had we been paying full whack, with wines and cheeseboard and welcome cocktail (etc. etc.) would have conservatively come to about £250pp, perhaps more if you made more use of the bar, which puts it all pretty firmly in the "special occasion" budget bracket. But Interlude is a special occasion, in a hundred different ways at once, and this is exactly the kind of experience that you'd hope to get when paying that amount for your lunch. In its own way, it's great value. While waiting for the uber home, sozzled and sated, my friend said "I think I've just seen a kangaroo". I looked blearily up at her, then without even bothering to follow up such a ridiculous statement, replied "No, you haven't" and went back to checking my phone. It was only when I got home and visited the restaurant website that I discovered that Leonardslee does indeed have its own population of not kangaroos but wallabies, which have lived on the estate since the late 19th century. So if after reading all of the above you still needed a reason to visit, there are also marsupials. 10/10 I was invited to Interlude and didn't see a bill. Lunch menu is £120, dinner £195 and rooms start at £525 for a two night stay.

My apologies that today's main posts were for old people. Watch Out Children About This sign appears in Colman Road, Beckton E16. It includes the name G.R.ILEY C.ENG.,M.I.M.E.,M.I.Mun.E.,F.Inst.H.E. » C.ENG. = Chartered Engineer (now normally abbreviated CEng) Institution of Civil Engineers Institution of Municipal Engineers Institute of Highway Engineers But more notably... This may be the British road sign which includes the most full stops. It includes 16 full stops altogether.

Five years ago, there was precious little to look forward to. And then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Donald Glover released his fourth album as Childish Gambino, 3.15.20.  It was surprising, because Donald’s best known for his rollouts. Because the Internet’s rollout was accompanied by listening parties, a nationwide tour, and a short […] The post 3.15.20 appeared first on Herbert Lui.