Nonsuch herald

A week or ago saw a return visit to the Herald Copse snowdrops at Nonsuch Park, following the visit about a month previously, noticed at reference 1.

For some reason, which I can't now remember, to do with what we were going to do afterwards, we decided to park in the top car park, the one accessed by the entrance just past the High School for Girls entrance, the High School which appears to have made over a chunk of its land and buildings to a branch of David Lloyd. A girls' grammar school built by Surrey County Council in the 1930's and led in the first instance by one Ms. Dickie, who put in more than 25 years before retiring in 1964. Several headteachers later, the school is now part of something called the Girls' Learning Trust which appears to be headquartered in the Wallington member of the group. No doubt the group sports a senior management team which pays itself far more than the modest local government officials who used to staff up Surrey's education department. Greed at the top seems to get everywhere these days - and, as I read today, even into royal charities.

Weather a bit changeable, but if you had a good coat (as I did) and picked the right spot on the line of benches to the right of the snap above, quite warm enough to sit in the sun and doze. And admire the new-to-us box trim and topiary pillars of the the flower beds.

Onto the pine copse where we were able to admire the coastal redwood, not far from Wellingtonia No.62.

Snowdrops seemed a bit thinner than in previous years, an impression not helped by the track driven through the middle. A pity that whatever it was could not have waited until the snowdrops had died down for the year. Maybe not helped by too many people and too many dogs, not all of whom know to keep out.

On the way back to Epsom, picked up the Wellingtonia noticed on the way out, and separately noticed at reference 2, parking in St. Paul's church. Handsome bit of detailing just above where we had parked the car. I don't suppose it is the sort of thing that a church of today would care to spend its money on.

Auditorium format inside, seen here through a window as the place was firmly locked up, despite there being a few other cars. No crosses or candles that I could see, so probably no incense to please the nostrils of The Lord either. Even less of a churchy feel to the place than at the Baptist church noticed towards the end of reference 3.

Home to tidy up and then, for a change, to the Cricketers at Stamford Green Pond. Ratty all present and correct, looking big and cylindrical rather than rat shaped. Overfed or pregnant?

I went for the steak, which was OK but which had probably been cooked straight from the freezer, which meant it was pale, a bit stringy and not particularly tasty. But then it was not particularly expensive either. Chips chunky, but of the oven variety. All flavour outside and white mush inside. I think I prefer the thin chips you get in quite a lot of places these days - not least McDonald's. BH quite happy with her chicken salad, as usual.

And she took her salad with a pint of warm bitter shandy - order by mistake instead of a half pint - which meant that I had the bottle of wine to myself, a new-to-me branch from New Zealand, the people at reference 4.

Where you are invited to unleash your inner creature: 'at Leftfield, we’re exploring a wide world of flavour through the lens of wine. Unleashing our inner creature to create Leftfield wines that let you unleash yours. Sip or slug, swirl or swill, come with us and take a step into the creative side of wine. You’ve unleashed your inner creature, we’ll raise a glass to that'. Not to sure about all this inner creature stuff myself - thinking that sometimes inner creatures are best left inside, where they can be attended to by the Superego - Freudian concept which I believe will be rescued from its present obscurity one day. Or as the lady once told a nosey television journalist: 'if I told you all my inner secrets, they wouldn't be secret any more, would they'.

We also met an older chartered accountant and his wife who, as it happened, remembered the previous version of St. Paul's, replaced by the present building in 1989. He was also a sometime church organist and they were celebrating, almost but not quite teetotally, the fact that it was fifty years since their first date. Checking today, I can find no trace of the previous building, not even in the usually reliable (if sometimes bad tempered) Pevsner. Perhaps the previous building was more by way of a shed than a church. Perhaps even one of those corrugated iron jobs you come across from time to time.

Steak notwithstanding, a decent lunch in a pleasant atmosphere. We thought respectably busy for a midweek lunchtime.

PS 1: the chef looked terribly young. Six weeks at a Nescot cookery course before he was unleashed on the world of casual dining?

PS 2: Nescot being another educational establishment where the chief executive goes in for partnerships with sheiks in the Persian Gulf and pays herself a huge amount of dosh. Well in excess of a quarter of a million pounds a year as I recall. And it sounded as if her husband was doing pretty well too. But perhaps I should not carp. Perhaps she should be given a Queen's award for services to export.

PS 3: I remember the Queen's award from the 1960's, a time when we were still worrying about our disastrous balance of payments. A time when still exported stuff rather than services and when we were still aiming for balance, rather than plugging the hole with sales of real estate to Russians, Arabs and the like. No doubt the Chinese too. It took me a while to get Google to disentangle this award from the present award given for enterprise. But I finally got to the logo I remembered, even if it is blue rather than black, even if I did have to convert it from svg to jpg format. With a bonus being the bit of history at reference 5.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/wellingtonia-62.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/wellingtonia-66.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/two-churches.html.

Reference 4: https://leftfieldwines.com/pages/leftfield.

Reference 5: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C486.