Trolleys 705, 706 and 707

Trolley 705 was a mixed pair of trolleys from the M&S food hall. The first of them is snapped above.

While the second was added in the open part of the Kokoro Passage.

Returned to the M&S food hall, and I then returned to collect the pair of B&M trolleys making up trolley 706 and returned them to the small stack at the front of the new B&M store. More of a basket place really. But there were two older ladies waiting when I arrived and they were happy to take one of the pair off my hands. They declined the other.

Out to collect trolly 707 from a bus stop near the one snapped above, not liking to snap it in-situ, given the number of people waiting there. A Waitrose trolley which I have seen around before, and declined. Perhaps on account of the white tape around the handle, possibly marking condemnation by the Waitrose trolley team. But it was in working order, so on this occasion I returned it to the stack at the front of the store in the Ashley Centre.

On the way to town I had passed up on a pair of decent working (or cycling?) gloves, together with a pair of sunglasses. The gloves struck me as being rather well made, slightly worn, but slightly too small for me and I did not think BH would wear them. I did not try the sunglasses which looked brand new. Hung off a railing against the unlikely event of the owner coming back to look for them. We shall see how long they stay there - with some items of this sort surviving for several days.

After the trolleys, on around the Ewell Village anti-clockwise to find this fine display of roses at the bottom of Longmead Road.

With these little flowers catching my eye a bit further along. More petals than the usual four, five or six without there being lots in the way of a daisy or a dandelion.

I make it ten, so perhaps it is really a five of doubles. Doubles in the sense that I recently read that the grains of corn on a corn cob are really doubles, arranged in pairs across the cob, although I have not yet got to the bit where it is explained what a double is. Maybe in the same way that identical human twins are doubles?

The allegation about corn. From towards the end of the supplementary information attached to reference 2.

Left over beef stew (no dumplings left over) and potatoes warmed up in the microwave for lunch. I pondered, inconclusively, about the revolution in restaurant eating brought about by the arrival of the freezer, the microwave and boil-in-the-bag. Bidfood rules the waves!

Potato pie with chou pointu supplemented with runner beans from Morocco via Costcutter for tea. Beans which superficially looked like runner beans, but which were actually described as stringless beans and tasted more like slightly overcooked French beans. None of the bite, texture or taste of properly prepared and cooked, fresh runner beans. So dear but convenient, as is proper from a convenience store.

PS 1: Bidfood appears to be the main trading name of the BFS Group Ltd, a private limited company, once called Booker, slightly puzzling as I think one passes a large shed called Booker in the vicinity of Wimbledon on the way into Waterloo. As I recall, no longer anything to do with the famous book prize of the same name.

Not very enlightened by the substantial annual account offered, 48 pages of it, but I do learn that they have swallowed up all manner of other businesses along the way, with the snap above just being some of them. They are also mixed up with an IT services company based in Towcester.

A promotional video makes it all sound terribly attractive if you are a restaurant or public house, perhaps an independent or a short chain. Why would you do anything else?

PS 2: I have now confused matters by consulting Wikipedia which tells me that Bidfood is now owned by Bidvest, a large South African conglomerate. For which see references 5 and 6. But I go to reference 7, the Bidvest website, and despite using various lines of attack can find nothing about Bidfood. Perfectly possible that they do own Bidfood, but you would not know that from the otherwise helpful brochure at reference 8. But I have learned that the buck stops with Bidvest as they are traded on the Johannesburg stock exchange, as per snap above.

The rather impressive looking chief executive.

References 

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/trolley-704.html.

Reference 2: Phyllotaxis as geometric canalization during plant development - Christophe Godin, Christophe Golé, Stéphane Douady – 2020. Turned up by Google when I was looking for something else.

Reference 3: https://www.bidfood.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://youtu.be/V4m6PD8uh4g. Promotional video from same.

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

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidvest_Group.

Reference 7: https://bidvest.co.za/.

Reference 8: https://bidvest.co.za/pdf/home/product-brochure/bidvest-products-and-services-2024.pdf.

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