Fed

The bird feeder went up about a week ago (as noticed at reference 1) and this morning I saw the first great tit. Rather tentative as he or she vanished as soon as I appeared in the kitchen.

I also offer a snippet from Maigret which struck me yesterday afternoon.

He asks a witness to a stabbing in the street - the sort of thing which was apt to happen several times a week in Maigret's Paris, usually some some settling of scores among thieves to which the authorities did not pay all that much attention - whether the assailant was wearing a hat.

It seems that at the time and place in question, generally speaking and heavy rain notwithstanding, young men did not wear hats while old men did. The inference here being that the presence of hat was evidence of age. While now, here in the Home Counties few people - men or women - wear hats at all, apart from young men with hoods and young women with woolly bobble hats in the winter - or silly hats at the races. To think that in the 1930's the bowler hat was the mark of a foreman on a building site.

It struck me first that this would have made the hat a useful disguise for a young man, although that usefulness would have been discounted by its providing grounds for suspicion in the event of its being found out to be a disguise.

And second, that the presence of a hat would probably encourage the witness's brain to find other signs of advancing years, signs which were quite possibly not really there. The unconscious brain would take on the 'assailant old' hypothesis and see what else it could dig up in favour. Maybe it requires conscious intervention to push back and see what could be dug up against.

Clearly matters to be borne in mind when watching similar stuff on ITV3.

PS: New Year's Day, after a spot of what Maigret sometimes calls 'Calva' and after getting a bit further into the story at reference 2, it occurs to me that Simenon was much more interested in the press and its interactions with crime and with the criminal justice system more generally than was Agatha. Which perhaps reflects his background as a cub reporter, his penchant for publicity and her preference for a more private life. But perhaps also the news value of crime as a generator of newsprint in the days before the television cameras took over. Simenon, to that extent, is a more balanced expression of his time than she was.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/feeding-time.html.

Reference 2: Maigret et le Tueur - Simenon - 1969. Page 39, Tome XXVII, Éditions Rencontre. Capitalisation of 'tueur' seems to vary a bit from place to place: maybe the French are not precious about that sort of thing.

Wellingtonia 57

Captured from the moving car in the course of the expedition noticed at reference 2. On the A25, more or less opposite the fancy gates into Clandon Park. Very near the junction with Trodds Lane.

Not particularly good specimens and we did not stop to snap, so scored as just the one.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/wellingtonia-55-and-56.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-cathedral-and-other-matters.html.

Reference 3: gmaps 51.2471916, -0.5253418.

Group search key: wgc.

The cathedral and other matters

Being well into my second pass of the book at reference 1, bought on the occasion of the visit to Guildford Cathedral noticed at reference 2, we thought it proper that our last outing before Christmas should be to Guildford Cathedral, that is to say on the Tuesday. Thinking, rightly as it turned out, that given the surging plague, it was unlikely that there would be many people there.

Started off by a walk around the outside, which I am pleased to report is possible, car park on the north side notwithstanding. Not something that is true of many cathedrals, with outbuildings, houses and monastic remnants usually taking at least one side.

Nicely proportioned stonework around the windows, but not sure about the merits of leaving all the tool marks. Maybe not even left there, maybe put there. Otherwise why the complicated markings lower left?

Two parking slots for the Bishop and his Lady, one parking slot for the Dean, as it happens another lady. No idea why this snap is so palid compared with the others: no doubt a proper geek would be able to match the colours to those of the next snap.

A complicated corner. I find some of the sculptures, some by Eric Gill, a long-time associate of Maufe, a bit crude in detail, to the point of being ugly. But the outside ones are growing on me, not least because of the smooth way they fit into the design as a whole.

One of these days, we will come by train and take the walk up from the station.

The south doors, of which the right hand one is visible and carries reliefs depicting occupations proper to gentlemen. Ladies to the left. I think the statue above is one of Gill's and is of John the Baptist. Plus a bad attack of image processing artefacts, possibly Moiré patterns.

The golden statue on top of the tower doesn't look so big from here, but we get a picture in the Maufe book, all fifteen feet of it. Gold leaf on copper on a wrought iron skeleton. They worked hard on the face of the angel to make it sexless. Not sure about that, given that one might think that archangels tend to have male names. On the other hand, Bing tells me that: '... archangels exist outside of any one religion or culture, and they exist outside of time and space. They are able to view reality, including our past, present and future as one stream of energy within the present moment, which enables them to offer powerful guidance and enlightening new perspectives...'. Maybe rank and file angels follow LGBTQ guidelines on such matters, while archangels are men.

The view snapped above brought Battersea and Bankside power stations to mind, and on checking this afternoon I find that they were approximately contemporary, allowing for the second world war. Brick must have been the material of the moment.

Inside, the nave was very impressive, once again, after its wash and brush-up. And fake, in the sense that I think the stone is mostly decorative rather than structural. With bricks for the walls and reinforced concrete for the roof - a novelty at the time. I dare say that the power stations are both roofed with streel trusses. While I remember some of the large churches in Paris being roofed very much in the way of a railway station, with elaborate steel arches.

I also remembered the large church on the edge of Tavistock, noticed at reference 4, declared surplus by the Anglican and made over to the Catholics. On one visit, the place was empty apart from the priest, about to celebrate some important event in the church calendar by himself. I think Catholics differ from Anglicans in that to them the ceremony is important, in monasteries (like Buckfast) is all important. The proper glorification of the Lord is more important than having herds of mere mortals as witnesses. I suppose paying a priest to say masses for your soul after you are dead is more of the same. While my recollection is that Greek and Roman pagan priests got on with their business, without bothering much about a congregation at all. What was important to them - and their paymasters - was that the various divinities got a whiff of a quality burnt offering.

Lots of quality joinery in the chapter house. But it looks as if the chapter prefer regular chairs - very much the sort of thing we had in the civil service, at least back in the 1980's, and very comfortable they were too.

Not sure about the Lady Chapel, which stuck me as a little fussy, despite the quality of the detailing. Maybe I will come to like it better - and it is a good place to be quiet in now. Sanctuary light was lit, but was rather inconspicuous. Just about visible lower left.

I liked the font, which had its covered raised on this occasion, giving one a view of the neat plug hole at the bottom. Practical sort of chap was Mr. Maufe.

At the time the cathedral was built, a photographic record was made, presumably now in the archives. The trusties scratched their heads a bit and thought that it was all available online - while the actual archive was probably closed for the duration. While all I can find online is the catalogue. Something to be followed up in due course as I would like to know more about how the place was built.

We decided that we would take a chance and try for Carlo's Trattoria at Newlands Corner, on the assumption that it would be as quiet as the cathedral - it certainly was quiet the last time we visited mid-week. That is to say, we needed to get from the left of the map, just inside the loop of the A3, to the loop of the A25 right. Taking the sort of inner by-pass which runs across the north of Guildford centre, again just inside the A3. Rather a tricky road for the novice with lots of traffic, lots of junctions and lots of lanes. But we made it with only one error, missing the right turn at Clandon, rather carrying onto what became the A246 to Leatherhead.

Carlo's was not busy, but quiet enough, and we got a table decently far from anyone else. Apparently they had been fully booked for the Christmas period since October - until the wave of cancellations hit them. We were given the Festive Lunch menu, rather more English flavoured than Italian, with things like roast lamb with roast potatoes. But I managed some rather good gnocci to start, small cylindrical gnocci in a brown sauce, probably involving tomatoes. Main course was pork fillets in a white sauce with a variety of vegetables, mostly not very suitable. Maybe it was a mistake having the white sauce after the brown sauce. Maybe it was more of a BH dish. But I wound up with a good tiramisu, in the traditional brick format, rather than the presently fashionable sundae glass format. Washed down with a spot of white wine by the glass, so as not to appear greedy before BH who was slated to drive. Washed down with a spot of grappa - what seemed like an enormous glass of the stuff, for which I was charged next to nothing. Very good it was too. While BH was very happy with her fish.

Round the back, just by where our car was. Same rat traps as you get everywhere.

Closed the outing by pulling into the fish ship at Great Bookham, with the result noticed at reference 3.

And wound up the day by losing at Scrabble. That is to say it was a draw on tile points, at a moderate  261 of them each, with neither of us pulling off any coups, but I lost by two penalty points because BH went out while I was holding an 'E'. I might add that we usually get four games to the envelope, a habit we got from FIL, always careful about such things.

PS 1: we saw various Wellingtonia in the course of our journey home from Guildford to Epsom. These will be noticed in due course. We also got a No.33 registration plate at 12:31, the nearest to the long sought after No.36 for a while. Although just today I got a No.35, a smart white cabriolet, possibly a Bentley, parked up outside the shops opposite what used to be the Organ Inn and roundabout, on my way to Jubilee Way. I'll get there in the end.

PS 2: I had thought that 'trattoria' was something to do with pavement cafés, the sort of thing you get in hot countries. But checking with Bing I find that I am quite wrong: ... trattoria, from trattore 'host, keeper of an eating house', from trattare 'to treat', from Latin tractare, frequentative of trahere (past participle tractus) 'to draw'. So there. But maybe I had better check in a proper dictionary when I get the opportunity.

References

Reference 1: Edward Maufe: Architect and Cathedral Builder - Juliet Dunmur - 2019.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/home-via-guildford.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/smoking-by-mouth.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=tavistock+catholic.

Reference 5: http://www.carlostrattoria.com/.

Two pounds of dates

The last of my Christmas shopping took place on the Thursday before Christmas, mostly in the Thursday market down in Epsom. And included two pounds, that is to say two boxes, of dates from the vegetable man, along with turnips and other important items. The Rolls Royce of dates he told me, a snip at four pounds a pound. And so they proved to be. Finest Medjool dates from the Jordan Valley, that is to say the part of Jordan the valley which still belongs to Jordan the country. Sweet and soft, but without any of the sugar syrup that is used to glaze lesser products. These dates were dry to the touch.

Along the same lines, but much better, than the Iranian dates we used to buy occasionally from the same chap. They could be a little damp to the touch, which I found rather off-putting.

First box finished today.

References

Reference 1: http://www.datesofjordan.com/.

Reference 2: https://thedelightsshop.com/. A sister company. Which includes a booth at the Queen Alia International Airport. The dates are very much like chocolates, so maybe the mixed dates and chocolates offered here would be good to try. Yet to investigate whether mail order works - on a shopping site with prices in Jordanian dinars.

Reference 3a: Progressive Agricultural Investment Company, Jabal Amman-3rd Circle, Amman, Amman, Jordan 1118.

Reference 3b: gmaps 31.9536794, 35.9109055. Street View works here - and it is all much more flashy looking and modern than I had expected. To look at at least, not that unlike somewhere in a hot part of the US. Apart, perhaps, from the only modest number of cars to be seen.

Reference 4: https://sweiss-liquor-store.business.site/. The result of searching for the website of the establishment snapped above. Not the same place at all, but clearly a long way from either the Riyadh or the Teheran varieties of religious police. 

Trolley 457 and trolley 458

Returned to the site of the 456th trolley capture yesterday, to recover one of the two trolleys from Sainsbury's that I had left behind. That is to say the one on the left in the snap above, behind the Waitrose trolley. The other Sainsbury's trolley, the one on the right, was a larger model, and it is not practical to wheel trolleys of different sizes any distance, so that one was left behind.

Sainsbury's car park fairly quiet, it now being around 11:00 Tuesday morning. A day when a lot of shops - including the Oxfam shop in the High Street - were open - but there were not many customers about.

After some thought, I decided to go back for the pound coin in the Waitrose trolley, executing a U-turn at the triangle by the turning into Ewell Village. Collected the Waitrose trolley, returned it to their stack in the Ashley centre, collected my pound and resisted the temptation to pop into Wetherspoons to spend it.

How many trolleys will the creationists have accumulated by the next time I visit them?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trolley-456.html.

Shen Yun

We had a substantial flyer through our door this afternoon, sixteen sides of full colour. The sort of paper you get in cheap magazines and catalogues, but the unusual size of 18cm by 30cm, no relation of the A4 and its friends that we use. I dare say the Europeans use this last too, so maybe its on the Tory checklist of things to be got rid of.

A flyer advertising the Shen Yun dance and music operation, due to put on shows in London and Birmingham at the end of February. The London venue is a place presently called the Eventim Apollo, once the Gaumont Palace cinema, built in 1932 in art deco. It still looks to seat thousands of people and the heritage people insisted that the large and ancient cinema organ be restored and reinstated. See reference 1.

A flyer which makes a point of telling us how terrible the current regime in China is, with a whiff of Falun Gong about it.

Off to Bing, to find that it is indeed a branch of the complicated Falun Gong empire, headquartered in the backwoods of New York State at a place called Deerpark, not to be confused with the one on Long Island. According to one report: 'Both Shen Yun and Epoch Times are funded and operated by members of Falun Gong, a controversial spiritual group that was banned by China's government in 1999 ... Falun Gong melds traditional Taoist principles with occasionally bizarre pronouncements from its Chinese-born founder and leader, Li Hongzhi. Among other pronouncements, Li has claimed that aliens started invading human minds in the beginning of the 20th century, leading to mass corruption and the invention of computers. He has also denounced feminism and homosexuality and claimed he can walk through walls and levitate. But the central tenet of the group's wide-ranging belief system is its fierce opposition to communism'.

Not very keen on evolution or atheists either. And I dare say that they are anti-vaxers. And obviously dodgy as they don't allow the Street View camera van into their site.

But where does all the money come from? How do they make so much money out of song and dance, a trick that not many others seem to manage?

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_Apollo.

Reference 2: for the HQ, ask gmaps for 41.4480412, -74.5904812.

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

Reference 4: https://www.shenyunperformingarts.org/.

Reference 5: http://dragonsprings.org/.

Social garbage

I read this morning that the Chinese authorities have cracked down on social media, cleaning out what they regard as anti-social content. Which category appears to include porn, libel, advertising luxury life styles and any kind of political dissent. Wholesome stories about the everyday lives of decent people like mushroom farmers are in. With the caption to the picture above being: 'Mushroom farmer Wang Jing Wang is one of the many internet stars whose educational videos are popular on China’s Douyin platform © Douyin'. The suggestion is that quite a lot of people in China like wholesome.

Now while it is true that what we are pleased to call the free press is a bulwark of sorts against abuse by overmighty governments, corporations and individuals, it is also true that the likes of Microsoft, Google and Facebook, indirectly promote all kinds of widely read anti-social content because such content generates revenue earning clicks on advertisements. Some people might like wholesome, but lots of other people like to be entertained with scurrilous tripe, some of which they end up believing. Just think of the long life of the News of the World, a paper which started out in 1843, to be killed off by Murdoch in 2011, having gone a bit too far, even for him.

So it will be interesting to watch, in the years to come, how all this plays out.

PS: Microsoft also appear to be very cosy with the Daily Express, which last provides a lot of the click-bait which powers its news feed. The Express was once the property of a former pornographer and is now the property of Reach PLC. I have not yet bottomed out whether the pornographer in question and Reach PLC are the same thing. Not identical, as the latter has publicly traded shares.

References 

Reference 1: China’s social media influencers play safe with wholesome content Beijing’s efforts to control online culture have increased since Xi’s ‘common prosperity’ drive - Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times - 2021. 28th December.

Reference 2: https://www.douyin.com/. They might do mushroom farms, but there is also a fair amount of leg to be seen. Quite a few white faces (and legs) too.

Trolley 456

Trolley 456 was captured outside the creationists' accommodation block in East Street, mid morning yesterday. A large trolley from Sainsbury's complete with the sticker with the Wanzl maintenance record. Returned to what seemed like a rather busy store in Kiln Lane, although I did not venture inside.

I thought about executing a U-turn around the tree on the triangle of grass at the turning into Ewell Village and capturing another trolley, perhaps the Waitrose trolley visible right at the back, but decided against and pushed on with my Ewell Village anti-clockwise. Ewell Village pretty quiet, mostly shut.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trolley-455.html.

Jigsaw 12, Series 3

Despite the vagaries of my record and what appear to be those of the Blogger search function (presumably from their search expert owner, Google), I think I have established that there should be 24 jigsaws to the series and that we are now on the third series. Jigsaw 12 is the first since last Christmas, last noticed at reference 1, and is, as it happens, a close relative of its predecessor. But this year, I am not so bothered with privacy as I was last year. Not sure what has changed.

Most of the activity is to be found in the early years of psmv2 - for which see reference 2 - with some in pumpkinstrokemarrow and a sprinkling in the more recent volumes.

Assembly of this puzzle started on the afternoon of Christmas Day, with the edge, barring the two missing pieces, completed by close. 500 pieces altogether, I number I much prefer to 1,000, which takes too long, with a good mixture of textures and patterns. With the bonnet of the car, and to a lesser extent the paving below, taking the place of the extensive sky usually to be found in what used to be called chocolate box jigsaws. That is to say, tasteful scenes of country side and country folk. All very heritage and National Trust.

A regular puzzle in that four pieces met at every interior corner. You did not have the corner of one piece meeting the side of another. A simple rectangular array, like the worksheet of an Excel workbook.

Rather than moving onto distinctive islands, I moved on by pushing in from the edges, in particular, pushing in from the middle of the two sides, onto the front of the car. 

At this point the card table being used for assembly was too small, not having enough room to sort. Wondered whether it would have been worth getting the trestle table out.

By close Boxing Day, I had completed a ribbon across the middle of the jigsaw. Still no islands.

By Monday morning, down to six lakes and one loch of varying sizes. With the largest lake being a a portion of left hand bonnet. And with the loch opening to the outside world through the gap of the missing pieces. Islands of distinctive pattern didn't seem to be the thing at all. Size of table no longer a problem.

Completed late afternoon Monday, ending with two lakes of blue bonnet. By the time I got down to around 30 pieces of what seemed like a uniform blue, I resorted to sorting the pieces into type - prong, prong, prong, hole sort of thing. Most of them being prong, hole, prong, hole, arranged in a simple, regular lattice, which meant that the others were easy. The unusual piece was quickly slotted into the unusual bit of shore line, as it were. While the rest were done by trial and error, generally much quicker than trying to be clever and pick the piece out by eye.

Project for today: recovery of missing pieces.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/jigsaw-11-series-3-notice-c.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=jigsaw.

An odd block

On our way to Long Grove Park yesterday, walking into the Manor Park estate, that is to say taking the first turning on the right as you head up Christchurch Road, past the church on your left, we came across this interesting concrete block.

Keeping unwanted caravans, caravan dwellers and their livestock out of this estate is mainly down to low earth banks, now mostly grassed over and no longer visually intrusive. In places, these are supplemented by concrete blocks, the sort of thing used to protect road works on big roads - the sort of thing which can be seen left in the snap above. But centre stage we have a much cruder concrete block, the sort of thing an enthusiastic but not very skillful DIY type might have knocked up on his back patio. So what is it doing here? Have the council redeployed some of their chaps to unsupervised block making duties?

A bit further round, we came across this Jaguar, possibly a thirty year old XJS, looking pretty good for its age. The sort of car you might pay £10,000 or more for. Although if you want something called a 'Jaguar XJS 'Lister' 7.0 V12', you might be asked near £90,000. Apart from the wheel hubs, it looked pretty much the same to me, but presumably not to the sort of person who might buy such a thing.

I am reminded of the Pontiac spotted on a sheep shoulder day back in June and noticed at reference 1.

PS 1: Bing doesn't recognise 'G08 FOO' as a number plate, let alone turn one up. But we will see whether recording the number here is noticed.

PS 2: Wednesday lunchtime: Blog search (search box top left) fails to find this post on either 'jaguar' or 'xjs', although it does after I have warmed it up by bringing the post up by hand. While Bing still doesn't recognise 'G08 FOO' and the few results from 'G08 FOO psmv5' are mostly in funny alphabets, about noodles or both. At least 'G08 FOO psmv5 blogspot' finds a few entries in the blog, if not the right one. Turning to Google, I get no results at all for the second search term and very few from the third, none of them relevant. So I don't seem to be making many waves out there.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/sheep-shoulder-day.html.

Let them eat cake

Possibly the second serious step towards Christmas was taken a bit less than a couple of weeks ago, with the baking of a Christmas cake. Following on from the boiling of the Christmas pudding some weeks previously. Not the full-on Christmas cake of my childhood as we now find that a bit strong, rather a Dundee cake. Or at least something close to a Dundee cake as we omit the almonds on top.

A cake we sometimes bake to take on holiday with us, that is to say, either to the Isle of Wight or to Dartmoor.

The first thing to do was to decide on which recipe to use, with at least three having been used in the past. Radiation Cook Book left, Creda Cook Book centre and Whitworth's Cookery book right. This last having been with us for maybe forty or more years. The Radiation Cook Book was another feature of my childhood, a time when we actually had one of their New World gas cookers, although this particular copy was bought much more recently. The Creda Cook Book probably came with our first Creda cooker, so maybe twenty five years old.

We eventually came down in favour of the smaller Dundee cake offered by Whitworth's, a recipe which BH had used before but which I had not.

More or less the end of the mix.

As it came out of the oven. Note the absence of paper lining to the tin, a performance I went through with the larger, Radiation version. Just grease with butter and dust with flour, which seemed to work fine.

As it came out of the tin, more than three hours later, by which time it had firmed up a bit: cakes are quite fragile when they are still hot. Not a big cake, but it looked well enough.

Packed in the Tupperware cake box, more or less sealed by the close fitting, soft plastic lid. Tupperware being in its hey-day when we were young, and we even knew one lady who ran Tupperware parties to keep her brain ticking over in the intervals between attending to her two small children.

Put away under the stairs to mature for Christmas, probably the coolest place inside the house, apart from the attic which would have been a bit of a performance. We have found that this sort of cake is much improved for storing for a week or more before cutting it.

Opened on Christmas Eve, when I was very pleased with it. Moist and not too rich, very much reminding me of the cut-and-come-again cake which BH's mother used to have on the go for quite a lot of the time. Furthermore, the neither the glacé cherries not anything else sunk, so I must have got the milk just right. Without going to the bother of washing the cherries either, as suggested, not very forcefully, by BH.

Left it alone Christmas Day, being rather full of Christmas pudding, but down to the last third or so by close Boxing Day.

References

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/10/sugar-fix.html. Creda Cook Book.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/sugar-fix.html. Radiation Cook Book. For the Isle of Wight.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/cake-time.html. Whitworth's Cookery Book. Cut and come again cake, taken in our Isle of Wight holiday cottage. The northern one near the church rather than the eastern one near the railway station by the looks of things.

Trolley 455

Fortified by the Christmas Eve beverage outside Wetherspoon's, I captured a second trolley, across the road, next to 'cabello HAIR & BEA TY'. One of those establishments which appears to abhor upper case letters in their title, although not elsewhere in their sign.

One more trolley from the M&S food hall.

Returning home via the passage to the station, came across several more trolleys, but decided against capturing any more. Settled instead for discovering that the 'Metro' bins in Epsom railway station were empty. Clearly not a day on which freebies publish, mindful perhaps of the abysmally low footfall through the station on such a day, a conjunction of plague with holiday.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trolley-454.html.

Two sorts of fake vision

Prompted by the newspaper article at reference 1, I bought the book at reference 2 and have, as a result been thinking about how we get to have the subjective experience of colour. After charging about for a bit, I came back to reference 3, which had been living on one of my book shelves for some time. All against the background of my pet hypothesis (LWS-R) about subjective experiences in general, also known as consciousness, most recently introduced at reference 4.

Charging around first this morning from a recumbent position there seemed to be two distinct varieties of imagined colour.

First variety

This first variety arises from looking with the eyes, but having one’s eyes shut. In a room where it is dark, but not completely dark. There is a bit of light getting in from somewhere.

One is experiencing vision, but at first there is nothing much there. One’s eyes can flit about behind the closed lids, but nothing. Perhaps just a rather matt, rather dark grey. Sometimes small objects appear, usually even darker, visual artefacts which one presumes to be the result of stuff floating around in the eye. Perhaps of some imperfection of one of the retinas. Perhaps some vascular activity in the eyelids.

One then tries to imagine a patch of colour. If one concentrates one can sometimes, not very reliably, get a faint but distinct impression of a circular patch of colour. Sometimes with the colour strongest (bright would be too strong a word) at the centre of the patch, fading to grey towards the rim. The sort of colour you get from an array of coloured dots rather than the glossy colour of some printed pictures; an array of dots with the dots dense enough to give a sense of colour, but not so dense that the impression of dots vanishes altogether.

Blue seems to be easiest, but red and green are possible.

Perhaps something like the snap above, taken from Microsoft’s Powerpoint. The faint vertical stripes of the grey, visible on my laptop, probably visible online, are irrelevant – and absent from the Powerpoint original. An image processing artefact.

But the experience is that of looking at something, albeit a fake experience.

Second variety

The second variety arises, still recumbent, still with eyes shut, but from imagining a child’s wooden brick, rather than trying to see one. The sort of bricks in the snap above, lifted from Dreamstime. A sort of brick with which I have spent quality time over the years and we still own some of them, although probably rather fewer than are shown here.

This morning anyway, this second variety seemed rather easier than the first. I could reliably call to mind individual coloured bricks. Either regular bricks like the blue one, top middle, or cylindrical bricks like the green one, top right. With practise, the other shapes. And I could do colours up to a point: red, green, yellow, blue, black and white. With blue being easiest and white hardest.

The imagined bricks were small, about the size they would appear for real. The experience of a brick was quite vivid, but I couldn’t hold it in mind for very long and I didn’t try moving it, rotating it or anything like that.

The present point is that they did not appear to be the product of looking at all. They had been called to mind ready made and were not in the visual field in the way of the faint blue disc in the first of the snaps above. They just popped up, somewhere else.

Comment

You need to be quiet and still for this sort of thing to work. To get extraneous stimulation down to a minimum.

I am presently at a loss to explain the difference in quality between these two experiences, why one is much harder to achieve than the other, why one seems like looking, while the other seems like calling something ready made to mind.

But perhaps the place to look is in one the layers supporting the visual experience of LWS-R, rather than in the layers generating the raw experience. The contents of these support layers might well be quite different in the two experiences, thus giving rise to the different subjective experiences.

Two associations here. First to the wraiths that Odysseus encounters when he visits Hades. They are the people they once were, up to a point, but they are just shadows of their former selves, without substance. Rather like the first of the varieties above. Second to the Mach bands (snapped above) and to the Craik-Cornsweet-O’Brien illusion which I read about in reference 3, with support from reference 5. To the effect that we see rather more than is there; the raw visual experience is touched up by the brain to make it a bit more intelligible. A touching up which the brain sometimes gets wrong.

References

Reference 1: What the platypus could tell us about climate change: The COP26 delegates would do well to look at the world from the perspective of animals – Jackie Higgins, Financial Times – 2021. 23rd October.

Reference 2: Sentient: What animals reveal about our senses – Jackie Higgins – 2021. In particular, Chapter 1 about the eyes of a curious sort of shrimp.

Reference 3: Image processing handbook – John C Russ – 1992. Fifth edition, 2007. In particular, Chapter 2 about human vision.

Reference 4: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-updated-introduction-to-lws-r.html.

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

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/on-seeing-colour-some-science-fiction.html. A previous product of this same venture.

Book your seats now!

The orbital hotel all looked very whizzy on the home page. Just like something out of the Star Trek of my formative years or the Star Wars which came later (complete with all the cuddly robots which I find so tiresome). A company apparently staffed up by all kinds of serious people from places like NASA and JPL - people who are looking for maybe $10bn to start to build something of the sort illustrated, or maybe something just a tad smaller. While according to the rather sceptical reference 2, they have so far raised $1m by crowdfunding. Maybe the serious people, the private equity outfits and the sovereign wealth funds are not rushing in with the readies. Maybe even Branson is not going to go for this one: he might be both a space but and a speed nut, but he has worked hard over the years to avoid tax men and other regulators, and does not intend to do anything as silly as this as he approaches his dotage. Maybe when he gets there.

Apparently there have been a number of speculations on similar lines over the years, all falling by the wayside at some point or other.

The website at reference 1 looks a bit thin to be punting for $10bn, but I was amused by the shopping tab. You might not be able to go into orbit quite yet, but you can buy the sweat top. Maybe that part of the operation is given over to some online shopping specialist who can deliver your online shopping experience from their computers - rather in the way that traditional fish finger manufacturers can deliver their frozen fingers in the livery of any supermarket chain you care to mention.

All brought to my attention by a correspondent.

PS: later on in the day, I wondered whether the whole thing was not an elaborate spoof. But poking around a bit more, the amount of stuff turned up by Bing makes this seem a bit unlikely.

References

Reference 1: https://orbitalassembly.com/.

Reference 2: The enduring fantasy of space hotels - A.J. Mackenzie, The Space Review - 2021

Trolley 454

Captured at the Horton Hill end of the Concorde Hall passage running through to Manor Green Road. An M&S food hall trolley which had been bashed around the handle. Still in one piece and still serviceable, but not straight. And like the trolley at reference 2, supplied by Wanzl, but without service record on this occasion. And with this being a trolley which really did need a spot of care and attention.

Prior to that, through the housing estate leading to Southfield Park. Some bird song in the hedges, but the only birds seen were crows, seagulls, magpies and parakeets. I wondered whether parakeets were the sort of bird which did not land on the ground and would have trouble taking off if they did. Presumably an arrangement which saved on legs: one didn't need the leg power either for walking or for leaping into the air. So it would have its points, particularly if the usual abode was forest.

Struck by the way that this lump of wall remained largely in one piece. Did it being slightly curved give it extra strength? Couldn't see why it should.

After I had returned the trolley to its stack at M&S and thinking back to the days when I was young and when Christmas Eve lunchtime was possibly the biggest pub scene of the year, packed out with everyone piling out of work into the pubs at noon, leaving their wives to make the necessary preparations, I thought I would take a beverage at Wetherspoon's. Quite busy inside, but with nobody other than the odd smoker on their fine new terrace, where I elected to sit - this despite the weather being plenty mild enough for sitting outdoors, certainly when wrapped in duffel coat, as I was. Note the recently planted, but dead, tree left.

Off camera, also to the left, we had a head on view of  the 'Spirit of speed' sculpture, snapped above in its former home outside the library - a library which I might say has held up surprisingly well given all the cuts to local authority funding. And while the sculpture looks much better in its new home, it does not look particularly well head on. Not a 360° piece: there are proper and not so proper viewing angles.

Inside, I noticed that the bar has been equipped with overhead glass racks, something which was common in the saloon bars of my youth (this despite my being more of a public bar man), but which then vanished, something to do with hygiene regulations as I recall. Perhaps all the tar from all the cigarettes settled on them. Perhaps Mr. Wetherspoon, as a noisy Brexiteer, has been quick off the blocks to do something until recently forbidden by the hateful men from Brussels.

PS 1: a good day for rubber bands. BH's collection of same grows apace.

PS 2: Bing turned up all kinds of strange images on the search term 'spirit of speed epsom'. But what I was looking for did come out very near the top of the list, including the snap above.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trolley-453.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trolley-452.html.

Wellingtonia 56 and 57

Some time ago now, possibly a year or more, we noticed that there were some Wellingtonia on the Epsom side of Epsom College, visible from Alexandra Road. A week or so ago we finally got around to investigation. Roughly the area between College Road (left) and Alexandra Road (right), as marked by the circle in the snap above.

It might be College Road, but they are not excused fly-tipping. Note also the previously scored Wellingtonia, just to the right of the tree, framed  by the rugby posts. The one by the front entrance of the College.

Wrong sort of pine tree, but a handsome specimen nonetheless.

A surprisingly mixed lot of housing, with prices to suited most pockets. But however did they get these flats past the heritage people, good looking though they may be? Note the white lap boarding behind to the right, of which there is quite a lot in and around Epsom. Very traditional, but a pain to keep looking smart and some people replace it with plastic.

Two Wellingtonia to be seen here.

One more here. I think from Copse Edge Avenue, a private road with Street View van access denied, so I can't check.

And another. Is it the same one from another angle?

And a last one, in the back garden of one of the grander houses. So quite a lot of Wellingtonia, but with them all being tucked away in back gardens, it was hard to be sure how many. All things considered, I thought it reasonable to score two for the lot.

What seemed like an enormous drain cover: one supposes that here must be a lot of surface water at times, maybe from the college playing fields adjacent. Good job they had been set this way round as I remember a story of a cyclist who got himself killed in London by putting his front wheel down something of the sort, when, as bad luck would have it, there was a lorry right behind him.

On the maps

We wondered why these trees were there, in the middle of what is now a housing estate. Were they a relic of some stately home? Which suggests taking a look at some of the old maps to be found at reference 2.

By the 1930's, the present roads and houses were mostly there, with Copse Edge Avenue having popped up between Alexandra Road and Albert Road, to the north of Epsom College at the bottom of the snap above.

By 1915, we had Alexandra Road and Albert Road, but the ground to the north of Epsom College was still open fields, or perhaps park.

While back in 1875, we just had College Road, and Alexandra Road, now the main road running from Epsom up to the college, not yet invented. While the college itself was still called the Royal Medical Benevolent College. All the ground to the north of the college still open fields.

But the line of what is to become Albert Road is visible, starting just above the 'M' of Epsom and heading north west. And to the east of that there is the short road which by 1915 is terminated by a building, possibly owning the field below showing a sprinkling of trees, probably including our Wellingtonia.

Possibly the place in the country of some tree nut who spent most of his town up in London? I say up, although geographically speaking it is very much down, Epsom being a couple of hundred feet or so above the Thames.

One can also see two lines of trees running roughly north and south in the playing fields of Epsom College. Old hedge lines? Lines which do not continue across College Road into the area of interest.

Not yet plugged into the sort of archive which might tell me more. Perhaps a visit to the archives held at Bourne Hall is indicated when the plague dies down a bit.

PS: the snap above is taken from a copy of the Lancet for 1903. Clearly hadn't changed the name at that point. Bing turned up plenty of other memorabilia of the same sort.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/wellingtonia-55.html.

Reference 2: https://maps.nls.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.epsomcollege.org.uk/. '... Full board £13,493 [a term]. School fees are payable a week before the start of term. You can pay termly or monthly by Direct Debit. If you choose to pay monthly, the annual fee will be spread in equal instalments over 10 months...'. Or how to throw a cheque book at fancy manners for your child. Or pumpkins. Do they do bogoff for people who live on the wrong side of the tracks?

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/10/so-off-we-went-to-upper-canada-village.html. For the real thing.

Group search key: wgc.