Wellingtonia 52

This small specimen was captured in Sheridan Road on our way to the Nelson Health Centre near Raynes Park. An area containing an interesting variety of housing, some of it expensive looking, and some handsome, tree lined roads in all their autumn glory.

There was also a John Innes Park. Now I had thought that John Innes was a successful nurseryman, but it turns out he was in trade in London and then moved into property development in Merton, more particularly the area called Merton Park. He was also a serious philanthropist and one of the things he endowed was the John Innes Institute (or Centre), now relocated to Norwich. During the 1930's, the Institute developed four recipes for compost, released into the public domain in 1938.

Buried in or outside the nearby (and surprisingly old) Church of St. Mary the Virgin of reference 6. A place which we may have attended for the purposes of a wedding and which the lady who was to be in front of me in the queue outside the health centre attended for the purposes of nine lessons and carols for Christmas.

Backing up a little, from the Wellingtonia onto the Nelson Health Centre, where I was booked for my booster jab, chosen on the grounds that a full-on health centre was more likely to be able to cope with my special needs - a life-long tendency to faint more or less immediately after injections - than a pharmacist sporting a couple of seats in the corner of his shop - be he or she ever so good with a needle.

The centre was busy this Saturday morning, with a long queue outside, but a queue which was moving along pretty briskly. All very good humoured - including here customers, staff and volunteers. Pretty busy inside, but everyone I saw was masked up. Altogether a much more metropolitan experience than my last couple of shots, earlier in the year, at Epsom race course.

Special needs duly catered for, after which I learned that the point of the 15 minute wait was that a few people keeled over during that time - so it was a good plan to keel over where some help was available. I associated to the long-off time when I did exactly that, maybe 10 minutes after a tetanus injection, after I had got outside the hospital. Long enough ago that children were dispatched to hospitals for such purposes without chaperones. One broken spectacle lens and one messy abrasion under the corresponding eye. I must have attracted some odd looks on the bus home: I don't remember them, but I do remember sitting on one of the seats near the back entry, facing the central aisle, where I would have been somewhat conspicuous. Maybe the conductor kept an eye on me. Maybe he had told me to sit there so that he could.

As it happened, rather to my surprise, this Health Centre had a car park around the back and we were able to slip into one of the few vacant spaces just after we arrived. All very convenient. And the good manners continued all the way to the congestion at the entry when BH was getting us out.

And so far, so good. And I have a sticker for my coat to prove it.

PS: given that we passed a Lord Nelson public house, and the name of the health centre, I started to wonder this afternoon about the admiral and his connection, if any to Merton. It turns out that he bought himself a country house there, Merton Place, now vanished under the estates now present. I think I must have known this once before, otherwise the brain would not have got cracking on it. See references 7 and 8. The exact location of Merton Place has yet to be traced.

References 

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/wellingtonia-51.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Innes_(philanthropist).

Reference 3: https://www.jic.ac.uk/. 'We are an independent, international centre of excellence in plant science, genetics and microbiology. Our institute fosters a creative, curiosity-driven approach to fundamental questions in bio-science, with a view to translating that into societal benefits. Over the last 110 years, we have achieved a range of fundamental breakthroughs, resulting in major societal impacts. The director of the John Innes Centre is Professor Dale Sanders FRS'.

Reference 4: https://swlondonccg.nhs.uk/.

Reference 5: https://swlondonccg.nhs.uk/your-area/merton/merton-covid-19-vaccination-programme-update/. All looks very well organised. I have not had occasion to look at the corresponding website for Epsom, but I dare say it is much the same.

Reference 6: https://www.stmarysmerton.org.uk/.

Reference 7: https://mertonhistoricalsociety.org.uk/topics/admiral-lord-nelson/.

Reference 8: https://mertonhistoricalsociety.org.uk/a-history-of-lord-nelsons-merton-place/.

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