GPs under winter illness pressure
December 2008
BBC News | Health | World Edition: GPs have been inundated with patients over Christmas suffering from colds and flu, figures from the NHS Alliance suggest.
Sauce Dispensing Chopsticks
December 2008
Cooking Gadgets: 
This pretty much falls into the category of “Oh Brother, what next?” Which pretty much means that we need to talk about it! This gadget is now a couple of years old, but this is the first I’ve managed to come across it. Silly or useful…what say you?
Via: Michelle Cheung at OhGizmo!
Tags: cooking gadgets, kitchen gadgets, utensils, weird gadgetsShare This
Forty Hall
December 2008
The London Traveler: 
One of London’s nicest secrets - if you want some greenery, and a rest from the bustle of the city - is hidden just off the M25, to the north of the city. It’s not easy to find - it’s a good twenty minutes walk from Turkey Street train station - but believe me, it’s worth it.
Forty Hall is a splendid Jacobean country house. Tall, classical, beautifully square in its design, you can imagine the impact it would have made on contemporaries more used to the sprawling, impromptu buildings of the medieval and Tudor periods.
(Ever seen The Draughtsman’s Contract? It’s like the house in that film; marvellously classical, built for effect. Alas, without an avenue of topiary to lead up to it - you can’t have everything, you know…)
The hall was built by a City alderman in the 1620s. In the 1950s, it was bought by Enfield Council, and now the house and grounds are run by the council as a country park, with a working farm, and the house contains a museum, conference facilities and a cafe.
Inside you can still see fine period rooms with their ornate plasterwork ceilings. There’s also a collection of glass and pottery - if you’re into ceramics I’ve been told the Clarice Cliff collection is quite something.
Then outside you have over 150 acres of lawn, garden and woodland. There’s a walled garden. The New River flows down one side of the park - this river is of almost the same date as the house, since it was opened in 1613 to bring good drinking water from Hertfordshire into the heart of London. (You can walk almost the whole of the New River from its source near Ware to the point where it disappears underground, in Clissold…