Fake 178

It was convenient to visit the cheese shop in Shorts Gardens yesterday afternoon. In conversation with the knowledgeable counter hand, I learned that the truckles to the left above are fakes. They are made out of real matured cheese cloth but contain no cheese.

The point being, I think, that one want to have impressive cheese in the window, but you don't want people to touch it. So best if the pile nearest the customers is fake.

Apparently a young drunk, a wannabee thief, made a grab for such a truckle in the shop in Borough Market and came near to falling over backwards when there was no weight in it. A proper truckle, it seems, might weigh 30kg or more, more than I would want to carry about these days, even if it was free.

30kg seems about right, relative to the 1,000g in two, roughly equal wedges that I buy. The first step being to cut the truckle in half cross wise, then to cut the two halves into quarters vertically. Then again into two 90° wedges to the quarter. Then to cut little wedges for the customers off the big wedges. My 1,000g measures maybe 2 inches across the two fat ends. 30 = 2 × π × r seems to give a sensible value for r, the radius. Or, doing it another way, four of my purchases to the big wedge seems about right.

Waitrose, when I used to buy the stuff in Epsom, used truckles which had been cut into three, rather than two. Which meant that some people did better on the rind front that others, which I always thought was rather unfair. And irritating when one was sure one got a rindy piece nearly every time.

On the prompt: 'What would a truckle of Lincolnshire Poacher cheddar cheese weigh', Gemini, to my surprise, did not have a clue what a truckle was, guessing the weight at 200g. The usual grovel when I corrected him: 'You are absolutely right. I apologize for the mistake in my previous response'. Copilot did much better, knew what a truckle was and claimed that a truckle of Lincolnshire Poacher might weigh 20kg. On querying the 20kg, he said this was an average for this type of cheese, rather than this particular one, but thought that 30kg sounded rather a lot. Certainly rather a lot to carry, even in a rucksack.

PS: I am reminded that Gemini - or perhaps his predecessor Bard - was very erratic at sums when I last tried. Perhaps time for another try.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/fake-177.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/classical-and-literary-allusions.html. More Gemini.

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