What do you think you’re in control of?  What’s not in your control?  Where do you decide to draw the line? “You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control,” Elizabeth Gilbert writes (via Oliver Burkeman). “But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.” When you can clearly accept what’s […] The post Surrender, control, and anxiety appeared first on Herbert Lui.

10 items of post-Stockport housekeeping 100 largest towns and cities by population. At the start of the year I had 13 to go but since then I've ticked off Sunderland (32nd), Hartlepool (84th) and Stockport (60th). Of the ten that remain the largest is now Huddersfield (33rd), the southernmost is Mansfield (99th) and they're all in a sort of stripe between Lancashire and Lincolnshire. Visiting Sunderland ticked off another postcode area (SR), so my sole omissions within England and Wales are now BB and HD, i.e. Blackburn and Huddersfield. My trip to Stockport cost me just £15.20, thanks to buying ridiculously cheap tickets two months in advance during the Rail Sale earlier in the year. London to Crewe was £5.20 and Crewe to Stockport was £2.40. I can't currently find a way of getting to Stockport by train for less than £50 (or Chesterfield for less than £40, or Huddersfield for less than £90). If you like bargain fares, be aware that Southeastern are offering thousands of £5 fares over the weekend of April 5th/6th as part of their Network Weekend promotion. There are still some left. More information here. I've snapped up two so I can fill in another gap in my attempt to (eventually) walk the entire Kent coast. Fingers cross for non-windswept weather. My trip to Stockport very nearly never happened because the line north was blocked by "a casualty on the tracks" near Rugeley Trent Valley. My first train stalled at Milton Keynes for an hour while British Transport police 'conducted an investigation', which I fear was because this very train had been first over the tracks in Rugeley earlier that morning. Very few trains were going anywhere. I got lucky by eventually transferring to an Avanti service, next stop Crewe, although this subsequently went on a guided tour of the West Midlands which would have made certain trackbashers very happy. I was then permitted on a second Avanti where I sat amid business suits, somewhat embarrassed how little I'd paid, arriving into Stockport just half an hour late. That lost half hour ruined my chances of visiting a couple of attractions but it could have been much worse and I might have had to give up in Milton Keynes and go home. (We all have similar tales of "oh my it was a dreadful journey" which nobody else is interested in, but sometimes it's a fine line between a fabulous day out and a full refund) Bee Network in Manchester a single bus journey costs £2, and by scanning the QR code on the ticket "you can use it again to board any Bee Network bus within 60 minutes from the time it was issued." This is very similar to bus fares in London where the equivalent price is £1.75, but London's daily bus cap is £5.25 whereas Manchester offers a one-day bus ticket for just £2.50 which is a total bargain. I also stopped off in Crewe for an hour on the way back, this because the homebound connection was otherwise too tight to risk. I can confirm that the new bus station is finally open and looks quite pretty at dusk.

Unchosen Overground line names an excellent scoop yesterday by publishing the longlist of names which were under consideration for the six Overground lines. I'm not sure how much much of the list is behind his Substack paywall so what follows is abbreviated from someone else's cut-and-pasting on Twitter. I've organised the names into my own entirely unofficial categories. (if you don't like these names that's fine because they weren't chosen, so don't moan) Rejected because TfL ultimately decided not to name lines after people [Suffragette] [Lioness] [Liberty] [Mildmay] [Suffragette] [Lioness] [Weaver] [Weaver] Considered for Liberty line Considered for Mildmay line Considered for Suffragette line Considered for Weaver line Considered for Windrush line Also, somehow Discovering Hidden Stories Around the London Overground. This was published on the day the actual six names were announced, so I suspect this half-dozen got further through the process than most. fifty further names which didn't make the longlist, and if you hated these you'll hate them too. But it doesn't ultimately matter, remember, because none of them were chosen.

There's no sign of a cost of living crisis on the King's Road, but then the people of Chelsea aren't known for their frugality. The Cadogan Arms is a grand old Victorian boozer - which means it has nice high ceilings, stained glass and a big carved wooden bar - but then this is also Chelsea so they can do a good cocktail and have oysters and fancy salads on the menu. The place had been on my list for years thanks to the "new" owners (this was in 2021, when the country was in full plague mode) being JKS of Gymkhana, Hoppers and Trishna fame, but also because it's not that far from my house in Battersea, and living in Battersea, believe me, a short journey home is a rare treat indeed. It was a good thing we'd booked - the place was completely slammed on a Friday night, not at all a given in many city centre pubs I've noticed lately. Welcome cocktails (well, we welcomed ourselves with them) were very good - an El Diablo with both mezcal and tequila, and a Sticky Toffee Pudding Old Fashioned which combined buttered bourbon and PX to produce a remarkably authentic STP flavour profile. There's a definite North-American-Mexican lean to the drinks list - I also notice they sold Agua di Madre as a non-alcoholic option, and interesting range of drinks made with fermented kefir. I mean, this is Chelsea, after all. Now, I hesitate - usually - to review a place after having just one dish (each) but this is, after all, a gastropub and we definitely weren't the only people just popping in for one dish before heading home to watch the new White Lotus. My burger was perfectly fine - a good shape and size, easily eaten with my hands so many marks for that, but unfortunately the beef was overcooked to grey and rather dry. They didn't ask me how I'd like it cooked, so maybe this is just how they want to serve it. Much better was a £34 sirloin, a giant chunky thing cooked accurately albeit a little timidly - we'd like to have seen more of a dark crust - but it tasted great and it really was something almost approaching a bargain for your money. Both sets of chips - chunky and fries - were decent, and the bill which I completely forgot to take a photo of but we did pay honestly, was £47.88 each, about right really. I mean, we didn't leave hungry. It's almost always the case that when a restaurant doesn't have to be good to make money - when your customer base is the captive audience of an airport terminal, for example, or a posh suburb of London where residents are independently wealthy and not very discerning - it isn't. I have had some genuinely diabolical meals in Kensington and Chelsea - and Belgravia, and Hampstead - over the years, to the extent that it almost puts you off trying anywhere in this places again. But I'm glad I challenged my prejudices at the Cadogan, and found a place that both knows its audience and tries to do things well. And such an easy journey home, too. 7/10