Trolleys 686 and 687

Captured in the Kokoro Passage on my way into town yesterday. A small trolley from the M&S food hall and a medium sized trolley from Waitrose. Being of two sizes, I took two trips to return them and so score two.

The busy plants in the planters a bit further down the passage have now declared themselves to be poppies. This despite all the talk of rocket, most recently at reference 2.

With the next planter along not being quite as advanced, but showing the distinctive drooping flower bud.

Which all goes to show that amateur identification of herbaceous plants - that is to say not trees, bushes or cacti - is a tricky business in the absence of flowers.

The next confusion was registered in Wetherspoon's, where I thought that my 250ml glass of red looked rather bigger than that. Closer inspection suggested that they were actually half pint glasses intended for lager, that is to say 284.1ml. Eventually the brain clicked into gear and I remembered that the usual form is to fill a beer glass to the brim and that this probably was 250ml after all. Perhaps being in this particular sort of glass makes it look more.

Back up the hill to check up on the fallen section of heritage wall along the top of Pound Lane. No change there since last reported at reference 3.

But there was some change at the posts planted along the bottom of Meadway in that they have started to sprout. I now think that they are hazel posts put in the ground while they were still fresh. I remember that when I was an allotment holder, I used to like posts which sprouted on the grounds that they were likely to wear better than dead posts. A belief encouraged by the posts of Robinson Crusoe's island stockade sprouting and knitting together nicely over over the years - the only catch there being that I have no idea if Defoe knew anything about gardening.

Reference 3 also, as it happens, includes first notice of these posts.

This evening, the next step was to go back to Google Images, which had been reasonably confident about the poppies, in the absence of buds or flowers, being some species of rocket or arugula, perhaps Eruca vesicaria subspecies sativa. The stuff you get in the better class of restaurants. BH, I might say, was not so sure. For which see reference 4.

I offered him the second of the two snaps above and he got into a muddle, with neither rocket or poppy making the cut. But I offer him the first snap and it is poppy all the way, almost certainly one of the 50 or more species in the Papaver genus, the type genus of the poppy family (Papaveraceae). Quite possibly the common poppy (Papaver rhoeas). Which all goes to show that Google Images is more comfortable with the flowers of flowering plants than with the plants, just like us.

I did think that I might ask Gemini what he made of all this, but that will have to wait for another day.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/trolley-685.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/trolley-681.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/spoons.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/trolley-672.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaver.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Bacon lite

A week or so back to St. Luke's for a couple of quartets from the Consone Quartet, whom I find today I last heard a little over four years ago, as noticed at reference 1. While their website is to be found at reference 2. The line-up does not appear to have changed in the interval.

Haydn Op.64 No.5 and Mozart K387.

BH was part of the party on this occasion, so train to Balham followed by tube to Old Street. A tube ride enlivened by an Asian girl in a very flashy white sari trimmed with gold, complete with an elaborate panel on her forehead. Riding with someone much more soberly dressed. We wondered whether they were off to a wedding, and if so why were they travelling unaccompanied on the tube. I did not get a suitable entry through which to inquire.

Took refreshment in a new-to-us coffee house called Trade (of reference 3). Seemingly a small, east end chain, not too long in the business. Featuring used floor boards on the walls, naked copper pipes (not all for the transport of fluids) and upcycled tin cans for the cutlery. I might say that the upcycled tin can we inherited from the naval uncle came with a handle. A rather more careful piece of work altogether.

BH took decaff with some form of croissant while I took coffee with a variation on cheese on toast. Freshly made and nicely turned out, with, by my standards, quite a high ratio of cheese to bread. But pretty good all the same.

Whatever the case, it certainly fuelled me to a fine concert. Where there was a fairly full house, no prong for the cello, two computers for the music and six microphones for the radio. One of them large and low for the cello.

The couple next to us carried a score, a very old and battered miniature score as it happened, something I have not seen at a concert for a good while. Not the commonplace yellow Edition Eulenberg. While the couple in front of us committed the solecism of filming the closing part of the concert on a very small camera, consisting mainly of the tube which one supposed held the lens. He was ticked off in absentia the following day by the lady doing the introduction - I think the chief executive of the LSO - specifically telling us not to do such a thing.

The encore was the minuet from Haydn's bird quartet. The only trouble with that being that Wikipedia does not list a minuet for Op.33 No.3. But digging, I find from reference 4, nearly all of which is far too deep for me, that the usual minuet may have been renamed 'scherzo', literally Italian for joke. Haydn, it seems, was very into musical jokes.

Digging further, I find the suggestion that 'minuet' is derived from the Latin 'minutus' for small or minute, the connection being the very small steps which make up this once French dance.

From where I associate to the claim once made by my younger brother, despite being himself very learned in musical matters, to the effect that musical knowledge of the sort exhibited at reference 4 is irrelevant to one's enjoyment - or not - of the music. The music can work its magic without that sort of help. But a tricky one to adjudicate: how on earth does one compare the musical experience of two different people without that sort of musical apparatus? And whether or not the claim is justified in the case of music, I do think that it is in the case of novels or plays. In the jargon of Sherlock Holmes, at least a three pipe problem.

None of which was an issue on the day; we just enjoyed the concert. Out to try the new-to us restaurant, also in Old Street, called Pasta Nostra, to be found at reference 5 where it tells us that the establishment is vibrant and unpretentious. We liked it anyway.

Garlic bread good, if a little dear for what one got.

We both took one of the pastas, also good. Except that I don't recognise it from the menu on the website.

For dessert, just the one scoop of passion fruit ice cream, ice cream being something that I do not take very often at all, except when they put a scoop on the side of something else, unasked. Plus grappa, of which I was expecting 50ml, but what I got was a tall glass which perhaps contained 100ml. Plus the entertainment of the waitress tripping down the stairs with it without spilling it. Presumably the hard stuff was kept upstairs for some reason.

With, a carafe of red on the side. Something else that I do not take very often, although there has been a bit of an outbreak in the past week or so.

One oddity was the window next to us which included an even scatter of small bubbles of air in the glass. Was it a flaw or a feature?

One curiosity was a hearing failure on my part. I thought the waitress was asking about whether BH wanted her green salad to start, or to be served with her pasta. Whereas in fact she was asking about whether we were bothered by the sun and wanted to move to a table way from the window. Which seems like quite a big jump, given that my hearing is not too bad in the usual way of things.

Out to a bit of the old, commercial side of Old Street. We are all creatives now.

From where we took a 243 bus to Waterloo, taking in this imperial sentiment from Bush House on the way. Not the sort of thing that one says out loud any more.

A better view of the church last snapped towards the end of the post at reference 6.

Into the station to hear the London Welsh Male Voice choir singing in aid of the lifeboats. Singing which was rather good, but which was rather spoiled by the announcer. A choir which wanted what seemed like the rather large sum of £30 a ticket for a concert in St.Clement Danes that very evening. But I did put something folding in their bucket.

Oddly, we could hear the choir much better when we moved away, towards the low numbered platforms which did Epsom. Perhaps it was all done to the placement of the loudspeakers carrying the announcements.

Checking this morning, it looks as if only a small part of the choir was turned out for the station. Which suggests that the full choir would have been quite something - although I dare say I would not have much cared for their choice of programme.

We took a train to Hampton Court, which meant a stopover at Raynes Park, with the haul snapped above. In red, on the right, the governing text used by the Quakers. In the middle, a substantial biography of a former archbishop of Canterbury, in the blue boards of OUP, and carrying the bookplate of the Reverend Paul J. Gibbons. I wonder if such people - archbishops that is - still rate 400 page biographies of this sort?

Spirits business above - companion comic to 'drinks business', noticed from time to time. Low to the right, already noticed. While Venom, also already noticed, arrived in the post while we were out. Plus BH got something about the young Attenborough and his zoological doings.

Last but not least a new inspection cover which I am sure was not there last time I looked.

PS 1: something went wrong with the paragraph spacing at the end of the references below, with return not coming with the line feed which gives a bit of white space between paragraphs. Peering at the HTML suggested that the problem was another manifestation of the tension between the '<p>' and '<div>' tags. But it does not seem to have damaged the published post and I can't muster the energy to sort it out. So I suppose I am going to have to let it go.

PS 2: search has so far failed to turn up previous notice of the inspection cover. The best I could do was reference 8, which at least show that I do take pictures of such things.

PS 3: but search does reveal a number of priests by the name of Paul Gibbons. The one that comes nearest is he of reference 9, but I don't think that a Catholic priest would have bothered in this way with an Anglican archbishop. And would he put 'reverend' on his bookplate rather than 'father'?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-near-thing.html.

Reference 2: https://www.consonequartet.com/.

Reference 3: https://trade-made.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.brentanoquartet.com/notes/haydn-quartet-opus-33-3-bird/.

Reference 5: https://www.pastanostralondon.com/.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/modigliani.html.

Reference 7: https://www.londonwelshmvc.org/.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/more-cello.html.

Reference 9: https://www.rcsouthwark.co.uk/news-events/news/death-of-fr-paul-gibbons-rip/.

Chapter II, Part II

This being the second and concluding part of what was started at reference 1, starting with lunch at Manicomio (Chelsea branch, to be found at reference 2).

There was both bar and eating indoors, but outdoors seemed to be the form on this day, despite it not being very warm at 14:00 - despite having been so earlier. Luckily I had a proper woolly and my substantial Dannimac, both of which I kept on, so I was fine - unlike some of the other customers. While our waiter sported some jeans with a Rémy Martin label - which Bing declines to find for me.

For the wine, a 2022 Domaine Treuillet Pouilly Fumé, perhaps at three or four times for what it can be had online. But a good wine for all that. From a chap with plenty of Internet footprint but no website that I can find. Just email and twitter accounts.

Some rather salty bread. Some mushrooms in a Scotch egg format. I thought about calf's liver but restaurants of this sort are apt to undercook it, which I don't like, so I settled for rabbit tagliatelle to be on the safe side.

Which was rather good. 

And just in case you were not convinced that it was rabbit, a few bones had been added to the mix, a trap for the careless client. BH almost certainly went for something a little lighter.

Winding up with a tiramisu and a spot of grappa, which I am pleased to be able to say came in a traditional glass.

A selection of interesting small dogs and interesting clothes on view, both customers and passers-by.

While in the gallery, if we were into private dining, we were offered a selection of 'north Norfolk Tractor Art by the renowned photographer Alessandro Durini'. A chap to be found at references 3 and 4, who does exhibit in Chelsea and who does take an interest in the tractors of Cromer.

Lunch done, over the road to take a look in Taschen, purveyors of flashy coffee table books and art books. Affordable, holiday maker stuff upstairs, with the proper gear downstairs. Large format art book with fancy covers going for prices up to £10,000. Considering which prices they seemed very relaxed about browsers such as ourselves.

No porn as such, but there were certainly some risqué images in some of the books - probably including the one noticed a couple of years back at reference 6.

There was also a fat book of rather good images of London, old and new. But apart the the pretentiously fancy boards, the price tag of near £750 was too much for me. Even with a framed version of one of the photographs thrown in.

Followed by confusion of Soanes and Sloanes. My position remains that this one was the chap who funded his botany by being a very successful society physician and that the other, architectural one lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Another art bookshop opposite the bus stop, from where we got our bus to Clapham Junction. Passing a heron on the mudflats by the Thames on the way.

Home to inspect our one and only book from Taschen, an upside-down double as it happens. Second hand from somewhere in Lyme Regis. Quite a good book to dip into, with all kinds of interesting stuff about famous paintings. And being German, northern Europe gets a reasonable look in - not all southern Europe. But I doubt whether we will buying any more, secondhand or otherwise.

While the Proust on the left, a decent US edition of a decent translation, largely unread, on the left, came from a stall under the arches of Waterloo Bridge. Standard of books there has rather fallen off since.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/chapter-ii-part-i.html.

Reference 2: https://www.manicomio.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://durini.com/gallery.

Reference 4: https://durini.com/mules-of-cromer.

Reference 5: https://www.taschen.com/en.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/another-brasserie.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/sir-hans-sloane.html.

First impressions

This being first notice of a book picked up recently at the Raynes Park platform library. A book which came in the form of a Faber proof, a paperback which was 99% finished, described as an 'uncorrected proof not for sale or quotation'. But plain yellow covers aside, a normal paperback of something over 200 pages. As per reference 1.

The story of a drug and grief fuelled weekend in Bombay, narrated by a chap who has just lost his wife and who is very keen on drugs of one sort of another, including alcohol, cocaine and heroin. Probably tobacco. Who seems to take the same sort of interest in taking drugs as a foodie might take in taking food. Who seems to be a member of the chattering classes and for whom money does not seem to be a problem. Who seems to be comfortable mixing with all kinds of people. One supposes all very autobiographical.

To judge by Bing's response, the author is highly regarded among the chattering classes here. A funny business when we are have both a war on drugs and chattering classes who can celebrate a book which celebrates them. But an entertaining read for all that, both informative and funny, very funny in parts. And maybe one day we will work ourselves through to a better place on drugs, second postscript to reference 2 notwithstanding.

Odds and ends

I learn that Bombay, like San Francisco, has a huge natural harbour behind, in addition to what I take to be the old harbour on the western coast. I also take 'Navi Mumbai' to be New Bombay, a city which has overflowed from its peninsular origins. Some of the action revolves around getting from old to new in a small ferry - a ferry which reads to be of much the same size at the one that operates at Shaldon here in the UK. For which see reference 5. Not a big city ferry at all.

That rich people in India can be just as unpleasant as rich people in the UK. Are the people who just inherit their money, get it for free as it were, necessarily worse than the ones who make it - or perhaps steal it - in the first place?

I read of the tension between anglophone Indians who look to the west and the ones who prefer one of their own languages, preferably Hindi. The unfinished business of all those Indians who do not speak Hindi, or at least do not speak it very well, or who, worse still, are not even practising Hindus.

Of the rather squalid activities that a heavy user of drugs is drawn into. 

Will I get myself a copy of the author's previous best seller, 'Narcopolis'. Perhaps a copy will turn up at Raynes Park.

PS: I wonder who this book, possibly a review copy, started out with? In the past we have had, for example, a batch of botany books, a batch of religious books and now we have someone who regularly drops off copies of 'drinks business' (of reference 3). Perhaps we now have a Guardian reader too?

References

Reference 1: Low - Jeet Thayil - 2020.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/machine-and-other-intelligence.html.

Reference 3: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeet_Thayil.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/shaldon.html.

Chapter II, Part I

This being notice of my second visit to the Burtynsky extraction/abstraction exhibition at the Saatchi gallery at the start of the Kings Road, once the haunt of the young and beautiful. The first visit being noticed at reference 1.

Train to Clapham Junction and from there a No.319 bus to Sloane Square, passing the Asparagus public house on the way. One of the houses put up for sale by Wetherspoon's, I think last year, and now being run by the Portobello Pubco of reference 2. It did not appear to have changed from the outside so clearly a visit to the interior is called for to see what, if anything, they have done to it. Will they make a go of something that the maestro walked away from, with all his flair, with all the muscle that comes with a large operation? Will small turn out to be beautiful?

To the Colbert of reference 3 for another bacon roll, not quite as good as the week before but still good. Perhaps there is a craving for the real thing from Whitecross Street, rather than one of these fancy imitations? But BH was quite happy with her decaff and Pain au Chocolat.

To Saatchi via the fancy shopping & eating area next door, snapped above. BH in blue to the left, taking a serious interest in something or other. We took the opportunity to book ourselves in for lunch, a little later than we had wanted, but as it turned out the time in the gallery melted away. The later time was the right time.

I had forgotten in a week how big the pillars are at the front entrance.

Sometimes, while still being impressed by the resolution, up close it was easy to forget that one is looking at a landscape from above. Road to the right aside, one could easily mistake this one for some kind of arty textile.

I also worried that in the larger photographs - or perhaps assembly would be a better word - there was probably not a single point of view, there was probably a short sequence of photographs taken from points which might easily be hundreds of metres apart. And to that extent, what one was seeing was not something that one could see for oneself, in one eyeful. At the time I thought that this was an important point, but I am not so sure now.

A lot of the colours were very strange.

But at least this time I did find a fish in the wall of coral, albeit only one. Albeit only a common or garden goldfish.

This one for a correspondent who wound up in Australia with a geologist who started out there spending quality time in Kalgoorlie.

No idea whether he was into gold. Presumably the property of the people at reference 4. Not the sort of thing that one can imagine flying in this country.

Despite it being my second time around, I still nearly missed out on a couple of rooms at the end, devoted to various aspects of waste disposal at scale. Or perhaps 'at pace' which seems to be a bit of management jargon presently infesting the airwaves.

Glad to have been for a second helping, the sense of lifelessness noted on the previous visit notwithstanding.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/saatchi-one.html.

Reference 2: https://portobellopubco.com/.

Reference 3: https://colbertrestaurant.com/.

Reference 4: https://www.superpit.com.au/.

Venomous

This being notice of the short glossy book from the Natural History Museum at reference 1 about the world of venomous animals. Around 200 pages organised into seven chapters. Lots of flashy pictures. A good introduction to the subject, even though the ‘popular’ style rather grates. There is also a fair bit of repetition. 

A book which turned up, by chance, in the course of looking into the outgroups which resulted in reference 2.

Venom is here defined as ‘a toxic secretion produced by specialised cells in one animal that is delivered to another animal via a delivery mechanism – typically through infliction of a wound – to disrupt normal physiological functioning in the interests of predation, feeding, defence, or other biological processes that benefit the venom-producing animal’.

A definition which includes all the many animals which feed on live blood, such as ticks, leeches and vampire bats. It also includes all the Cnidarians of reference 3, many insects; some snails, bats, fishes and snakes. Plus some oddities like the loris and the duck-billed platypus. 

The cnidarians have been around for a long time, say half a billion years, and it remains a puzzle to me that their complicated miniature harpoons (contained in cnidocytes) evolved so early. Another curious feature being that these cnidocytes are sometimes taken over by other animals for their own purposes.

Notwithstanding, the venomous animals that most of us think of first are the snakes, which, while they do not usually want to eat us, will deliver a painful, possibly fatal, shot of venom if disturbed, threatened or otherwise frightened.

Snakes must have been a serious problem for early humans because fear of snakes appears to be built into our genes; we do not have to learn about snakes to be frightened of them. We are also curious: we want to look and they pop-up in all kinds of places. Not least, plenty of horror films.

Snakes still cause a lot of damage and death in the tropics, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the rest of southeast Asia. Perhaps involving 400,000 amputations and 100,000 deaths a year. A lot of them in places where many people either do not have access to effective treatments or cannot afford them.

Odds and ends

Venoms are usually more or less complicated cocktails of peptides and proteins, that is to say gene specified strings of amino acids.

A lot of venoms are about blood (thinning it or clotting it), punching holes in cell walls, pain (causing it or stopping it), or neurotransmission. I was reminded that small changes in genes can make big differences: so some of the toxins to be found in venom can be rendered harmless by altering just one amino acid. Perhaps the one which locks onto an important ligand-gated ion channel, perhaps a channel on the nerves which are involved in getting arms, legs, ribs or diaphragms to move about.

Some venoms can bring on anaphylactic shock, with the shock sometimes killing before the venom finishes its work. Which can take some time; after all the point is often to immobilise the prey. The predator is not much interested in anything else and the killing is a side effect.

The authors do not have much time for traditional doctoring of snakebites, despite its thousands of years of history. They prefer the antivenoms made from the blood of horses injected with suitable doses of the toxins in question.

Given my fear of heights and injections, there was an interesting table about fears and phobias, quite possibly from the inaccessible reference 6, so I have snapped it from (page 157 of) the book instead. Oddly, while there is quite a lot of stuff about out there about fears and phobias, most of it is inaccessible, although I dare say a bit more work would start to turn up some freebies. Plus, I imagine they are tricky things to tackle from a statistical point of view.

And thinking of statistics, I suppose skunks with their stinking sprays are on the borderline of any classification. Not quite venomous, but there are venomous animals which spray.

And thinking of the systematics of reference 2, perhaps venom is an example where classification by behaviour is more helpful than classification by ancestry. The fact that venomous behaviour has evolved many times in many different parts of the tree of life is secondary.

Conclusions

A handy introduction to the subject. Also the sort of book that is handy for the advertisements breaks on television.

References 

Reference 1: Venom: the secrets of nature’s deadliest weapons – Ronald Jenner, Eivind Undheim – 2017.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/outgroups.html. 

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidaria.  

Reference 4: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anaphylaxis/.  

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligand-gated_ion_channel.    

Reference 6: Specific fears and phobias in the general population: Results from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS) – Marja F. I. A. Depla, Margreet L. ten Have, Anton J. L. M. van Balkom, Ron de Graaf – 2008.

Piano 84

The Bösendorfer piano in the Beckstein Room at the Wigmore Hall. Presumably used for the more intimate concerts offered to their more serious friends. Captured on the occasion already noticed at reference 2.

The website is very full of Austrian heritage and craftsmanship, but Yamaha come clean at the bottom of the 'about page'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/piano-83.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/ullman.html.

Reference 3: https://www.boesendorfer.com/en.

Group search key: pianosk.