Trolley 505

Noticed on the way into town to find some salt beef, which I failed to find but will be noticing properly in due course, and captured on the way back, from the top of the second passage down to the High Street from Station Approach. That is to say the one furthest from West Hill.

Returned to the stack at Waitrose. Mask wearing in the Ashley Centre is well down now, although such wearing that there is is not confined to the elderly. I am still a wearer, although I am started to forget, only putting the mask on when I am already inside the premises in question. Hopefully, better late than never.

Since then, a dream which I think was mainly concerned with the management of large naval engines. A dream, at least in part, probably driven by the recent visit to the engine rooms of H.M.S. Belfast, for which see reference 3.

The paper pushing end of management rather than the oily rag end. We needed to authorise a fairly hefty spend - in excess of £50,000 - to clean all the salt out of the engine, something which it seems accumulated over time. A process which was all mixed up with nacre. When it suddenly dawned on me that a tabernacle was a place used to keep nacre, sometimes in a church, rather in the way of a stoop for Holy Water. This was confirmed by a rather studious, academic lady, a temporary participant of the dream. She explained to me that the 'taber' bit was from a Latin word for giving.

Waking up, this was clearly something that needed to be checked, a something which turns out to be nonsense. Nacre is a complicated substance, mainly made up of very small plates of a variety of calcium carbonate, the stuff that chalk and limestone is made of, secreted by various molluscs, and going on to become pearl and mother of pearl. Nothing much to do with salt, but see reference 2 for the full story. With OED providing a similar, but older take on the same word.

While OED also explains that tabernacle is derived from the Latin for tent, and is mainly used to describe the place or object in which something holy is kept. Originally the Ark of the Covenant on its travels around the wilderness. But also some odd meanings, like the hefty wooden contraption used to hold the butt of the hinged mast of a sailing barge. Hinged so that they could shoot bridges, that is to say to slide underneath them. The diminutive of the word from which our 'tavern' is derived, originally just a hut or booth. In any event, nothing to do with nacre at all.

Lesson: dreams are unreliable sources of information.

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/trolley-504.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacre.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/03/belfast.html.