Week 231: roux

Monday 21 August 2023

• For a long time I really slightly thought the mixture of flour and fat known as a “roux” was named after the Roux family (as in Michel Roux, Albert Roux etc). But no, it’s just a word meaning “browned”, the Roux brothers didn’t invent it. This is thinking Pontius Pilate invented Pilates all over again (it was actually Joseph Pilates).

• Had a superb cheap burrito thanks to the Too Good To Go app, and best of all I learnt that one of the Ortlieb Twin-City Urban bicycle pannier’s internal pockets is perfectly sized and shaped for the job of secure burrito-carrying.

  The last time I tried using that app, sadly Pizza Express cancelled my order upon running out of food, but in the process I read this on Google Maps:

  Chain pizzeria where chefs in striped t-shirts toss handmade pizzas in a relaxed space.

  A lovely bit of writing that’s weirdly parroted by various different websites, with no credit given to whoever first wrote it.

• Unlocking my bike/cramming shopping into a pannier outside a shop (the co-op in Spixworth), I head a man’s voice. Moments later, I recognised it as the voice of former shadow chancellor Ed Balls, I think … I’m unreasonably rueful that I didn’t linger there to see if Balls came out of the shop, and now I’ll never know if it was really him or just someone with a similar voice.

• An impromptu ride on a bicycle belonging to someone shorter than me. I’d raised the saddle, but the weight of my bum forced it back down, and I couldn’t be arsed to go back to get a spanner. But maybe pedalling along with one’s head (not quite) between one’s knees isn’t so bad – it’s a way of exercising different muscles you didn’t know you had – the main disadvantage is looking like you don’t know how to use a spanner.

• Some work. Converted my controversial mass of JavaScript to TypeScript, which was surprisingly both easy and not much help in preventing any bugs. Then I realised I had yet to enable “strict mode”, which I must have been using the time before when I moaned that the compiler was a cheeky wee shite.