New bag

Lunch being delayed by an hour and my needing to buy some bread, there having been a glitch in the bread making cycle, there was much cogitation about my route to Vauxhall, settling on the Battersea Park option with the black rucksack. I should say that I have two small rucksacks, both hanging in the garage, but the red one must have got damp at some point and the interior had become quite mouldy. Brought inside to dry out, but I am a bit dubious about washing it, being nervous about destroying the waterproofing of its mainly woven material.

The snag with either of the bags was the large number of pockets, straps and fastenings, which took a bit of getting used to. There were so many of them, one had a job to remember where one had put things. I could see that if you were doing a serious bit of solo backpacking, you might want lots of pockets in which to pack away all your worldly possessions, and you would get to know the pockets and what was in them, but for occasional use maybe not so clever.

First stop was the International (Turkish) store at Falcon Road, where I was able to buy some of their fine flat bread, some sausage from Kosovo and what I thought was a lump of bacon from Poland. Current thinking being that part of the attraction of this particular bread being the amount of salt in it, our regular diet being low salt. With my having coming across the sausage a bit less than a year ago, as noticed at reference 1. While the lump of bacon turned out to be reconstituted, that is to say spam dressed up as streaky bacon, complete with rind and substantial amounts of fat. Called pressed bacon and it was intended to be eaten out of the packet; no cooking required. I shall report further in due course.

Next up, past the Asparagus, still open and still sailing under Wetherspoon's colours, so they have not managed to sell it yet. See reference 2 - but it remains a puzzle how some cuddly independent will make a go of a large place like this, in a mixed area like this, if Wetherspoon can't.

The second stop was to have been the the public library in Battersea Park Road, but the attendant stand for my Bullingdon was full, so in the absence of the forgotten bicycle lock, that was not an option.

Into Battersea Park instead, which was busy with young mums with babies and with joggers. Some spring flowers. Temple by the river looking rather well.

Back onto the main road, past the dogs' home and right into Thessaly Road to be intrigued by the carefully screened Powerleague operation at the edge of the vegetable market. I thought perhaps the American version of football, with professional players, with the screening there to stop free-loading, but inspection today reveals a substantial five-a-side operation, to be found at references 3 and 4 and as snapped above.

No problem parking the Bullingdon in South Lambeth Road, in the stand between the marble shop (in front, left) and the new branch of Gail's (behind the telephone). Not for the first time, I wondered how much of one's original marble block ended up as rock dust when you sawed the block up into sheets that, from memory, were less than an inch thick.

And so to the Tate Library, just a few steps along the road. All the computers were vacant, reminding me of the days when libraries first took to providing computers in a big way, when they were often full up, more or less all day. Whereas now, they don't seem to do much business at all, with laptops and telephones having taken over the world. I suppose these computers will be thinned out over time, hopefully not too much, as I still use them from time to time, when on my travels. Can't beat a real screen when it comes to doing real work.

Once again impressed by the Internet, which was able to deliver the paper I wanted to take a quick look at in short order. A look which resulted, a day or so later, in the post about classifications at reference 5.

Also impressed by the large letter keyboard that came with the computer, which, given that I did not have my reading glasses about me, made things much easier.

Onto the Estrela where I took one of their dishes of the day, spare rib, Portuguese style. So spare rib, black pudding, white pudding and a lightly spiced version of the Spanish Chorizo. Plus potatoes, plus proper greens, something which is not available in most restaurants. The now traditional wine being visible behind. A substantial and satisfying meal.

Another option was something called wreck fish, which came in the form of large steaks, perhaps six inches deep by two or three wide. So probably not the conger eel which first came to mind, a fish which is to be found in wrecks. It turns out from reference 6 that it is a regular, deep water fish, present but not much fished in British waters. While I read somewhere else that it will sometimes take crabs and lobsters, presumably swallowed whole - which suggests plenty of acid in the stomach. The specimen above is from a tank in Monaco.

There was a selection of vaguely trifle-like desserts in glasses available, left over from Valentine's, but I settled for the almond tart. Which was good, but which would have been better had I asked them to replace the ice cream, which was too sweet, with regular cream or yoghurt. I think in the past that I have taken the same tart dry, but current thinking is that you need something wet by way of complement. Or perhaps compliment.

Out to catch a decorative pump lorry heading towards Stockwell, which I thought might be from the people at reference 8, first noticed at reference 7. Except that their elaborate paint jobs appear to be based on orange, while I remember this one in Vauxhall to have been based on green. Sadly I was not quick enough to get the telephone out for the record, so I make do with one lifted from reference 8.

The new bag, snapped on the way home.

Along with a rather messy looking inspection plate. Maybe it had been put back in too much of a hurry and is now leaking.

PS 1: it took me a while to trace Hydro Cleansing, not being able to find the pump lorry on the blog itself. But Bing turned it up on an open search, that is to say the wrong drain cleaning company together with the original blog post at reference 7. Proof that the blog is still being indexed by at least one of the big search engines, even if it only rarely turns up in search results. I suspect that declining to carry advertisements may have something to do with this, at least in so far as Google is concerned.

PS 2: curiously, there is talk at the very end reference 9 of remembering base green rather than the base orange at references 7 and 8. So either there is more than one pump lorry company out there doing fancy paint jobs, or my memory is playing tricks again.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/kosova-suxhuk.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/a-mystery-solved.html.

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

Reference 4: https://www.powerleague.co.uk/5aside/london/nineelms.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/in-praise-of-classifications.html.

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

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-finest-drain-pump-in-surrey.html.

Reference 8: https://hydro-cleansing.com/.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-tale-of-tyre.html.

Ajax

[An Ajax armoured vehicle on the training range at Bovington Camp in Dorset on Wednesday © Ben Birchall/PA]

I read at reference 1 that we are about to start paying General Dynamics for the troubled procurement of Ajax fighting vehicles, the various problems looking to have been dealt with. That said, someone is muttering about mitigation rather than solution, but that strikes me as a bit mean. Designs of complicated contraptions are going to involve trade-offs between competing - not to say conflicting - requirements and such trade-offs are usually going to be visible, the designers of genius who can hide such things away being fairly thin on the ground.

For those curious about what all these billions are being spent on, say £10m each for 500 vehicles, General Dynamics offer the glossy at reference 2, undated, but possibly now a little long in the tooth and including a shot of then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III. From which I learn that these vehicles occupy the space between the foot-slogger and the main battle tank, attracting no less than nine different roles, just one of which is moving the foot sloggers about in battlefield conditions. I liked the explanatory file name. Turned up by Bing.

A matter last noticed in a postscript to reference 3.

PS: by way of comparison, Bing tells me that you can spend up to $1m or so on a large new bulldozer from John Deere or Caterpillar. Should the AJAX people have made one of those two the main contractor...

References

Reference 1: British army’s troubled Ajax armoured vehicle back on track: Defence secretary says long-delayed £5.5bn programme has ‘turned a corner’ and deliveries could start in 18 months - Sylvia Pfeifer, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: AJAX: The Future of Armoured Fighting Vehicles for the British Army - General Dynamics, United Kingdom Ltd - 2015? Filename: GDUK2962 - AJAX Super Photo diary.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/leatherhead.html.

Reference 4: https://benbirchall.picfair.com/about. A photographer with plenty of Internet footprint, but no fancy website of his own. At least, Bing did not turn one up. Looks to be more into buildings than people.

Reference 5: https://www.picfair.com/. The picture shop.

Piano 65

Captured yesterday in the margins of a visit - the substance of which will be noticed in due course - to what used to be known as the Thorndike theatre in Leatherhead. In the café, not looking particularly loved. I had no idea what the stickers on the keys are about and I did not think that the young people working the café were likely to have any idea at all, so I did not trouble them. Thinking hat job.

Made by Challen, not previously heard of. Seemingly one of the biggest of the London manufacturers in its day, that is to say the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries. London enough that they did not bother with cod German script for their name above the keyboard. According to Bing: 'They were taken over by Barratt & Robinson in 1971 and again by Broadwood & Sons in 1984. A Malaysian piano manufacturer started building pianos with the Challen name in 1996'.

The morning after this post, the Financial Times brought me a piano flavoured advertisement for Hennessy brandy which I thought I would share. A video featuring lots of arty shots of nature and of the interior of pianos, together with voice and sound overs from Alicia Keys and Lang Lang, both piano flavoured musicians. Both important enough to score pages in Wikipedia. Neither averse to boosting their pension fund in this way. I did not stay with it long enough to get the brand of piano, so non-scoring. Nor far enough to glimpse of bottle of the good stuff. See reference 3.

PS: beware of the file name for this post. A not easily corrected clerical error.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/piano-64.html.

Reference 2: https://theleatherheadtheatre.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.hennessy.com/en-int/paradis-is-on-earth?dclid=CMml6fKStf0CFaSTUQodl5AAWg.

Group search key: pianosk.

A gift?

I read yesterday at reference 1 of a national treasure, a painting by Joshua Reynolds, the property of an Irish billionaire, in danger of leaving the British Isles, possibly ending up in a museum in the US or a private collector. Possibly someone who lives east of Suez. Maybe even an oligarch. Much ink is spilt on how this catastrophe might be averted, the big stumbling block being a price tag of the order of £50m.

But nowhere do I see the idea that this painting might be offered to the people of French Polynesia, a large group of islands, spread over a swathe of the southern Pacific, including both Tahiti and the island that the subject of this painting came from. An amiable and able chap from the middle reaches of the complicated and violent Polynesian society of the 18th century. A gesture of friendship towards the islands with which we once used to meddle and which might one day be independent.

The painting was painted in England well before French Polynesia was invented, so they can hardly claim it as their national treasure. Nevertheless, they might like to take it on as one. Maybe we ought to send some important person to ask them? Perhaps make our former fat leader a special ambassador for the purpose, which would also serve to get him out of the way? 

With the price tag looking quite modest compared with the monies dished out, on his watch, on defective protective clothing.

PS: there are only about a quarter of a million of these Polynesians and it is possible that they would prefer the cash alternative. If this proves to be the case, our ambassador would have to call on the British Council to provide some courses in art appreciation. Possibly delivered from the Royal Yacht or something of that sort. We do not expect people to look our gift horses in the mouth.

References

Reference 1: Joshua Reynolds’ ‘Portrait of Omai’ is a national treasure. Why is Britain struggling to keep it: The fight to save the iconic work reflects a painful truth about the UK’s financial state - John Gapper, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Omai. As it happens, I have used the snap from the Financial Times, credited to Kemka Ajoku, rather than the one offered here.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Polynesia.

Reference 4: https://www.commarts.com/fresh/kemka-ajoku. Something about the photographer. Plenty more out there for the curious.

Trolley 556

The first trolley for a couple of months, possibly reflecting lack of activity on my part, possibly increased activity of the Council's collection squad. A large Waitrose trolley in pretty good condition.

A good chunk of the market was given over to various varieties of street food. We still have two greengrocery stalls, but neither of them sell much in the way of green vegetables these days, and I did not spot any spring greens, a staple of our younger days at this time of year. But there was plenty of fruit and some salad stuff from far away places. One hopes that they don't lay on the jumbos especially for the food, rather that the food is sitting in their otherwise half empty holds. That that airlines are getting better at selling unused cargo space.

Down Hook Road to inspect the shed conversion, which is coming on fast since last noticed at reference 2. Looks quite well from this angle, but rather narrow from the other end. And we now have a sign from a regular builder out front - or at least a loft conversion specialist - so not entirely DIY, as had been previously suggested.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/trolley-555.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/front-land-development.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Valentine's

The snap above being lifted from Street View from Terni in Umbria. the town perhaps 50 miles north of Rome where one of the two or three Saint Valentines in the catalogue was bishop. Martyred in Rome, but we are not told what grisly death earned him his free-pass to Paradise. There must be lots of old bits of town somewhere, but in Street View it mainly seems to be fairly new apartment blocks, large and small and I failed to turn up a statue of their famous son. But I did come across this modest bit of old, no doubt left alone by the developers for some good, but unknown-to-me reason. A challenge for the curious reader.

While nearer home, on the basis of a sample of two, we appear to celebrate the day properly one year out of two. See references 1 and 2.

Preparation of lunch was fully delegated on this occasion, while I paid a visit to Epsom. First stop was the new-to-me kiosk in our health centre where I was able to measure my own height, weight, blood pressure and pulse rate. These last two in a remarkably easy to use contraption: a sort of inflatable sleeve into which you shoved your arm, upon which it did the business. From a company, to be found at reference 3, which appears to be headquartered in Australia. A kiosk which was supposed to be DIY, but where, in the event, I did need a bit of help, the business of getting the data from the two contraptions into my medical record on the computer being slightly creaky.

Second stop was Waitrose for flour (from Canada) and chocolates (from Lindt), where I discovered that newspapers were no longer free with purchases totalling a tenner or so (including the newspaper) and had not been for a couple of years. Odd that I had failed to notice for so long.

Third stop was the library to hunt down the Pevsner covering the Chandos visit noticed at reference 4. The first lady I spoke to had never heard of him but she sought assistance from a second lady who had and who also knew that most of them were in a cupboard out back, from where she retrieved the relevant volume - London 3: North West - which was available for loan. Which I don't think it would have been in the olden days when libraries had large reference departments. With newspapers and selected weeklies - and central heating for the greater comfort of visiting tramps. Plus, I wonder how long a place like Epsom library will carry a full set of Pevsners. I don't suppose there is that much call for them.

Pevsner being a chap whom I mention quite often in these pages, perhaps a chap whom I like to have a pop at, but my last visit to the library on his account looks to have been June last year, as noticed at reference 5. Where I am reminded that Yale have got in on the act, perhaps taking over from Penguin, although not in time for the present volume which looks to date back to the closing years of the last century.

The fourth and last stop was the cladding bricks used in some of the new buildings above or in the vicinity of Epsom station, first noticed at reference 6. The upshot was that these bricks are 29 by 9 by 4.5cm, a nominal 30 by 5cm, including cement, while regular, true-British bricks were 8.5 by 4 by 2.5 inches, a nominal 9 by 4.5 by 3 inches, including cement. 22.9 by 11.5 by 7.cm in new money. Which suggests that using the long bricks, one is more apt to be into cutting, a third being more awkward from that point of view than a half. Not clear what is happening in the corner in the snap above, although my guess is that both white and brown bricks stop at the corner, not filling in the corner.

No sign at all of them having been installed in panels, rather than properly laid in mortar.

Home to find the Valentine's fish pie more or less ready for the off. A dish we have reasonably often, a confection of white fish, prawns and white sauce, topped with mashed potato. A dish which I rather like but which I have never cooked myself.

On the plate. Taken on this occasion with a drop of a 2018 Pessac-Léognan from Château de Rochemorin via Waitrose, as previously noticed at, for example, reference 7.

Wound up with a spot of baked apple, English style. At Terroirs, they used rather smaller apples which they peeled at some point, certainly before delivery to table. As briefly noticed towards the end of reference 8, just about four years ago.

With a few chocolates for the very last knockings. Possibly involving a spot of own brand Calvados from Majestic, but my contemporaneous notes are vague on that particular point.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/valentines-again.html. Texas style.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-gigot-for-valentine.html. Epsom style.

Reference 3: https://www.andmedical.com.au/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/return-to-chandos.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/trolley-519.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/modigliani.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/festive-sprout.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/more-abbey.html.

Assault or malpractice?

I read this morning at reference 1 that sexual assault in a medical context in the State of Utah is usually covered by malpractice law, rather than by common law. The effect of which is to make it much harder for a person who has been assaulted (commonly female) to obtain redress from the courts, from the perpetrator (commonly male).

A helpful summary of the relevant law is provided by Epperson & Owens at reference 2. Law which appears to me to be very much directed against vexatious litigants complaining about medical practitioners of one sort or another acting in good faith - say a nurse who tried to stop someone on anti-coagulants bleeding to death in the street.

Which is a real problem, but it does seem that Utah have struck an unusual balance, a balance in the wrong place. But at least in this particular case, the plaintiffs are going to get a hearing in Utah's Supreme Court. Maybe things are on the move.

PS: it may also be that this is not entirely a legal problem. It may be that the state being the headquarters of  the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is another part of the problem. Horse's mouth at reference 3.

References

Reference 1: 94 Women Allege a Utah Doctor Sexually Assaulted Them. Here's Why a Judge Threw Out Their Case - Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune - 2023

Reference 2: https://www.eolawoffice.com/overview-of-utah-health-care-malpractice-law/. Partners snapped above.

Reference 3: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng.

Reference 4: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/topic/polygamy. It seems that while polygamy still goes on, it is no longer permitted or blessed by the church, forced to cave in at the end of the nineteenth century when the Feds threatened to confiscate their property. But like so much in this world, a fudge.

Excavation two

The second of what was to be three campaigns to empty the brick compost bin was kicked off yesterday (Thursday) morning. In the event, it proved convenient to take out the second and third tranches in one go, so the third campaign lapsed.

By 11:30 or so when the snap above was taken, maybe five barrow loads of compost had been extracted.

Some yellow-green slugs had been present on the left hand wall, but they mostly vanished while I was emptying the barrow. Maybe the cats, which were hanging around, had them, maybe they just squeezed into crevices somehow. The odd bone from the bottom of the heap, from the days when meat waste was allowed in the compost. The odd book, not fully decomposed. Some plastic film from the covers of books which had decomposed. Plenty more bio-degradable plastic wrapping from Neal's Yard Dairy. Plenty of fibrous roots.

Twenty minutes later, by around 11:50, I had broken through to the back wall. The end was in sight.

Forty minutes after that, by around 12:30, everything put back together again. With what had been the top layer of compost now the bottom layer. Agricultural rope back in place for the foxes and rats to chew on. They seem to baulk at the serious knots, that is to say the two round turns and two half hitches, but they like the loose ends well enough.

The bin front has lasted pretty well. Still perfectly sound and good for another round. With the slats below having been taken from the reducing heap of remnants from the garden shed we took down on arrival, more than thirty years ago.

I had misjudged the number of barrow loads of compost I was going to take out, with the result that the bank started higher on the left than it ended on the right. This irritated, so after lunch I took a fork to it to make amends. We will see how it settles - and how much mess the foxes make. Last time they had a rather desultory poke around at the left hand, that is to say the fence, end.

The two grids which used to cover the micro-ponds do well in their new role as compost retaining wall, although they have now been pushed a little out of vertical. Through which some of this year's daffodils can be seen. Last year's Baby Blue right, still not fully recovered from the hot dry summer.

PS: just about exactly five years since I walked the grids from the other side of Ewell Village, as noticed at reference 2. Not something I would venture to try now.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/excavation-one.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/new-wheeze.html.

Carducci one

Ten days ago now, to Dorking for the first of three concerts being given by the Carducci quartet, to be found at reference 1, with the brain, for the moment, continuing to render them as the Carlucci quartet. Inspection of the record suggests that I had heard the quartet maybe four times, all bar one around 2016, for which see reference 2. So in the period, say 2015-2020 when they went into administration, we probably paid more visits to Carluccio's, which is where the brain has rested.

The brain also erred in thinking that the quartet had done Dorking before, whereas the facts on the ground were on Old Street and Wigmore Street.

For some reason the programme was free and seemed much fatter than usual. The lady selling said something about not wanting to handle cash with COVID still flying around but hoping to get their money back from advertising.

While at reference 1, I learn, first, that they did good business with their complete Shostakovich quartets and, second, that some of their website was powered by Blogger, as is this blog. But that rather peters out, suggesting that they have found a proper website builder.

We also have this arty shot, taken by one Tom Barnes. Was it Photoshopped or did the quartet actually have to visit the wreck?

Reasonably good house at the Martineau Hall, where the first bit of news was that they managed to attract more than 700 people to hear the Grimethorpe Colliery band in the Grand Hall. I wondered about getting into the band. Presumably in the olden days, you had to be a miner, maybe to actually work underground, but maybe that got relaxed when the band got into competitions. And presumably now, with the mine long gone, you just have to be able to blow brass. There is even the odd lady to be seen at reference 3.

For myself, I rather like brass bands in bandstands in parks. Not so keen on them in concert halls. A bit like folk groups, which do better in pubs. You lose a lot in translation.

I think the photograph used in the programme must have been taken some time ago; in any event I did not at first recognise any of them when they came on. Three of them used computers, seemingly worked by a wireless foot pedal. What turned out to be an excellent programme: Haydn Op.33 No.2; Fanny Mendelssohn quartet in E flat major, Beethoven Op.127.

Despite the Haydn being called 'The Joke' and the joke being explained in the programme, plenty of people clapped at the wrong places. So the joke has worn well.

Not having previously heard of Fanny Mendelssohn, the sister of the famous one, I was rather taken with her quartet. It seems that she wrote a good deal, but little of it got published or played in her lifetime, there being something of a prejudice against lady composers at the time. But she did get to dabble in some of her brother's work. Sadly, both had rather poor health and both died young by today's standards. See reference 4.

And the Beethoven went well, performed with great zest.

Along the way we came across a couple from Chessington - about the same distance as Epsom - who knew all about concerts at the Conway Hall in Holborn. A place which seems rather like a hangover from between the two world wars, and which I have visited from time to time, but not, I think for a concert. With the record suggesting three visits in 2015, then an outlier in 2019. While a quick glance at reference 5 suggests that these concerts are early on Sunday evenings, so I don't suppose that we are going to make it.

But we were reminded of the travails of visitor attractions on the edge of the upcoming ULEZ expansion, that is say of Chessington Garden Centre and Chessington World of Adventures. They worry about that proportion of their business which comes from the south and which might be deterred. But what can you do? As long as there are boundaries, there are going to be problems.

The tall Wellingtonia on the brow of a hill south of Leatherhead continued to taunt us on the way home. One day soon we will get to run the thing down.

At home, I attended to the lentil soup that had been started early in the morning of the Chandos outing noticed at reference 6. Brought the lentils back to heat. Added cross-sliced carrots 7 minutes from the off. Chopped a couple of cloves of garlic and fried it gently in butter. Added some onions. Added some cross-sliced wet streaky bacon - one advantage of which is that it is not too salty. Dry cured can be a bit fierce in that regard. Add to the lentils 2 minutes from the off.

It did very well, with maybe half a litre left for my breakfast, BH not caring for that sort of thing so early in the day.

References

Reference 1: https://carducciquartet.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=carducci.

Reference 3: https://grimethorpeband.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Mendelssohn.

Reference 5: https://www.conwayhall.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/return-to-chandos.html.

Excavation one

This morning saw the the right hand tranche, the first of three, of compost taken out of the brick compost bin and banked up behind the new daffodil bed. The snap above taken about a third of the way in. Mattock handle visible right - the mattock being just the thing for initial breaking out. Then the spade for cutting. Then the fork for transfer to barrow.

Plenty of young woodlice and not so young pale green slugs behind the front cover.Just the one worm of any size inside. Plenty of fibrous roots, possibly from the hawthorn behind and the honeysuckle box to th right.

Now cut most of the way through to the back now. In the course of which I discovered that the various plastic bags which came with the cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy (mostly when I was doing mail order at the height of the recent pandemic), were not bio-degradable as advertised, despite being cut into quite small pieces, and despite some of them having been there for getting on for two years. I picked quite a lot of the pieces out before moving the compost on, visible left in the snap above, in the hope that another few years at the bottom of the heap will do the trick. Perhaps by bio-degradable they meant in one of those big digesters, not in a natural compost heap. Which would be a bit odd given that I believe that the founder of Neal's Yard Dairy is big in the world of (natural) woodland burials.

First tranche being backfilled with the yet-to-rot top cover.

Up close and personal. From where I associate to hills when cycling, say the one running up to the Ruxley Lane junction on the Ewell by-pass: they look much steeper when you are looking straight at them than they really are.

Two more tranches to go. Let's hope the foxes do not make too much of a mess of the bank which is now coming on behind the new daffodil bed. Where, I might say, we have a few fewer daffodils coming up blind than has usually been the case in recent years.

PS 1: to get the front cover off, there was some undoing knot action with the spike on my trusty army knife. All the stuff they used to tell us about stones and horses hooves is for the birds. See the end of reference 3 for snap of same.

PS 2: does not look as if I am going to manage as neat a job as I have managed in the past. Not very used to this sort of thing any more.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=empty+brick+compost. The last emptying that I have managed to turn up. There must have been one since then, so maybe I will find it in the hours to come.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/compost-bin-second-day.html. Minutes as it turned out. Clerical error.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/pain-one.html.

Chatter

I have several emails about ChatGPT, mostly from the feed from the MIT Technology Review, waiting for my attention, but they have been pre-empted by a correspondent telling me how easy it is to use. So I logged on, somewhere in the vicinity of reference 1.

And it is indeed easy to use. You type in some text and it types something back. Sometimes it is spot on, it knows what you are talking about and tells you some stuff, in quite respectable English, that you did not know. Sometimes it does not know and tells you so. And sometimes it clearly just makes stuff up - but in my ten minutes or so with it, the story seemed to be that you needed to pitch your text right to get it to do this. Put in something too outlandish and it stalls, maybe with soothing words about local myths and legends which it does not yet know about. I thought it did quite well with panning for gold in the Ouse, snapped above.

Texts which did produce plausible nonsense included 'Toller play writer', 'battle of Chatteris Cut', 'Huntington 5th hussars' and 'Bulbeck sluice'.

A product which appears to be pitched somewhere in the space presently occupied by the likes of the Bing and Google search engines and the Wikipedia encyclopedia. With the difference that while Bing and Google may turn up rubbish - much less likely with Wikipedia in my experience - there are usually some clues to alert you. Whereas here it is all dished up just the same.

Annoyingly, it failed to find anything about the famous Toller giant and told me so. For whom see reference 3. Maybe in a few years time Openai will be offering a reading service, whereby you pay them to include your stuff in their databases. Rather as you can pay Google and Bing now to appear in their hit lists.

So no doubt clever, but I hope people in high places are worrying about how to manage and control such beasts. The track record with the likes of Facebook, Twitter and (most recently) TikTok being poor.

PS: in Anil Seth's book at reference 4, say in Chapter 5 about wizards, there is much talk of perception being, in some large part, a matter of top-down processing (aka feed back) rather than the bottom-up processing (aka feed forward) favoured (say) twenty years ago. So perhaps here, when ChatGPT is in fantasy mode, it latches onto a few facts - true or false - at the top of the heap and then drills down to generate the details which plausibly join up the dots. Not so unlike what television detectives do in the middle reaches of their stories. Or large florid gentlemen when holding forth to their cronies in the saloon bars of old.

References

Reference 1: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/.

Reference 2: https://openai.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-disappointment.html.

Reference 4: Being You: A New Science of Consciousness – Anil Seth – 2021.

Return to Chandos

Following the visit to the Chandos of Tragalgar Square noticed at reference 1, we have finally got around to visiting the Chandos church in Little Stanmore, more properly St. Lawrence Whitchurch and the Chandos mausoleum attached.

An overcast but mild day, and we had woken to no frost. To be surprised at how much easier it is to get up when it is not seriously cold!

Started the day by starting the lentil soup destined for the evening. 8oz of red lentils in 3 pints of water. Brought to the boil, frothed for a few minutes then left to stand while we were out.

Two trolleys on station approach, one on each side. Both from the M&S food hall. But they had gone by the time I got around to them, a day or so later.

I had remembered to take a tape measure for the bricks noticed at reference 2, but forgot to take the measurements. Rushing to get the train on the way in, rushing to catch a taxi on the way out. But I did get to it on Sr. Valentine's Day, to be noticed in due course.

The resident indigent was present and, for once, declaiming into empty space. Probably nonsense, but I did not pause to take any of it in.

The 10:49 to Waterloo was surprisingly full. But it took BH to observe that it was the start of half term.

And so onto the Jubilee Line, emerging into the open air somewhere north of Baker Street and proceeding well above street level. Presumably it was cheaper and simpler to build the line on a viaduct: less disturbance to pre-existing buildings and no level crossings. Impressed by the scale of Wembley Park station, where there was clearly lots going on.

Clearly more significant than one would deduce from the tube map alone.

Poking around afterwards, we found that Wembley Park was an interesting place, once sporting its own version of the Eiffel Tower. A place which had its origins in trade in the second half of the eighteenth century, when a successful tradesman thought to turn it into a stately home, complete with a Repton landscaped park. But he lost interest and eventually, by the second half of the nineteenth century the place had become a pleasure gardens. But that did not work out either, and by the middle of the twentieth century suburban housing had taken over - with Wembley Stadium surviving a little to the south of the tube station.

Shortly after leaving the station we passed some open ground. There were also long views to the south. But the houses soon resumed and we were soon on the pavement outside the tube station.

A little early, so we thought early lunch was the answer, with Melissa of reference 4, right next to the station, turning out to be the answer. A Turkish restaurant offering a Turkish flavoured menu - and what we got was good, plentiful and very reasonably priced. Flat bread - very good and fresh - with the two usual dips. Döner, rice and green salad. Water, although other drinks, including alcohol, were available. Cheerfully served. And busy by the time we left. Thus fortified we headed east to what was left of Canons Park - Canons having been the very flashy country house of an eighteenth century Duke of Chandos - and St. Lawrence Whitchurch.

The notice board for the park included a basic map, which told us that there was a Wellingtonia to be found, although by the time we had finished next door, we decided that it was time for home. There was also a modest country house to be seen in the distance which we later learned had been built by a successful furniture man on what had been the site of Canons.

Our private tour started with the outside of the tower, the earliest part of the church now present, with the construction including flint, local pudding stone and Roman tiles. Once painted white in the local custom, hence the 'Whitchurch' bit of the name.

Inside to a church of modest dimensions, with large box pews and a great deal of painted decoration on walls and ceiling. Some of it trompe d'oeil architectural, such as might be seen at Ham House or Hampton Court Palace, some of it religious, painted by visiting Italians. And expensively restored about fifty years ago by Germans from Tübingen. It seems that the skills needed to restore these paintings, in a Continental Baroque style, were not to be had here. It also seems that some of the paintings might be more honestly described as reconstructed rather than restored, things having got pretty bad by the 1970's.

Brightly lit skyscape behind the altar, not the sort of thing you usually get in an Anglican Church at all, first floor throne room at the west end so that the duke could enjoy divine service in appropriate splendour. There was also a fire place, very much after the fashion of the old church at Esher, noticed at reference 6. Guards from Chelsea Hospital in a small compartment to the left and servants from the big house to the right. One down side was that, being quite high up, the trompe d'oeil effects on the ceiling were spoiled. One was far too close to it. And in the compartments one was too close to both ceiling and walls, a double whammy.

A heritage organ, once sporting a single manual of just two or three octaves and half a dozen or so stops, now tastefully enlarged and still used, on occasion, when an authentic Baroque sound is what is wanted. There were also plenty of cameras and other other electrical gear, apparently installed during Covid for those who felt more comfortable worshipping from their own homes.

The main church was warm enough, which must have cost the parish a good deal, but the mausoleum for the duke adjoining was very cold. A mausoleum containing some elaborate memorials, the largest for the duke, with first and second wives kneeling right and left. He was portrayed in the Roman style, but with his big wig. I don't think it was thought very dukely in his day for a duke to appear in public without one.

A curious bit of memorial sculpture. I dare say such a thing can only be done using one of the better grades of marble - and even then one supposes that a good band of backing stone has been left underneath where it can't be seen.

Back on the road, we came across the extensive grounds of the Barnet Bees football club, clearly quite a serious operation. Not premier league, but founder members of the Vanarama National League, with Vanarama being a vehicle (not to say van) leasing operation headquartered in Hemel Hempstead. To be found at reference 7.

And so back to the platform library at Raynes Park where I acquired a book about pig husbandry, written by a pig scholar from Cambridge called Davidson and first published in 1948, the year before I was born. First sold by Goodmans of Lusaka, a book seller who appears to be with us no more, with neither Bing nor Google turning anything much up.

But all sorts of fascinating information about pigs. For example, while Africa is not very big on pig production, within Africa, in 1935 or so, Madagascar was second only to the Union of South Africa. And grocers in this country, at about the same time, distinguished getting on for a dozen different cuts of bacon. In the good old days when grocers bought in sides of bacon and the watery stuff sold shrink wrapped by the likes of Sainsbury's and Tesco's had not been invented. And when the grocer use to hose the sides down in the yard before bringing them into the shop.

However, despite this priming, we were still too full of lunch to contemplate the lentil soup contemplated earlier, with or without bacon, dry cured or shrink wrapped. We made do with something much lighter.

A few days later to Epsom Library to borrow a copy of Pevsner for London North West, in which a more than three pages is devoted to church, mausoleum and the once famed country house. Generally quite polite by his rather low standard, but with in the sting in the tail that English Baroque works better in England than foreign Baroque. And this from a chap who came from the centre of foreign baroque, that is to say Germany. I learn that the country house was called 'Canons' for the Canons of St. Bartholomew the Great (of West Smithfield and reference 8), who once owned all the land.

PS: Street View seems to have gone missing at Little Stanmore. It was alive and well a week or so ago, so perhaps there is some planned maintenance on the go, to borrow a phrase from Network Rail. But it is the first time that I have noticed such a thing.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-chandos.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/modigliani.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wembley_Park.

Reference 4: http://edgware.melissarestaurant.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Lawrence%27s_Church,_Whitchurch.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/09/project-proust-1.html. The church in Esher with a fire for his lordship.

Reference 7: https://www.barnetfc.com/.

Reference 8: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/05/another-first.html. Probably my first visit to this unusual church.

Reference 9: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=888734275735982. Be patient. It does get started. Snapped above.

The crazies are coming!

I learned yesterday, reading the piece at reference 1, about a congresswoman called Marjorie Taylor Greene. A lady of extreme, not to say bizarre, views who represents the electors of Georgia's 14th congressional district. Before entering politics in 2015 or so, her experience in the real world looks to amount to having participated in the founding of a branch of the CrossFit franchise, a gym for people who want to be, or at least to look, muscle bound. There is a big branch under the arches at Clapham Junction, a branch where I occasionally notice the performance of seriously muscular feats.

In the elections of 2020 she got well over 200,000 of the 300,000 or so votes available in her district, so clearly lots of people think that she is a good thing. Notwithstanding, she was expelled from house committees in 2021 for bad behaviour, but has now been reinstalled in three such committees, part of the deal to confirm Kevin McCarthy as (Republican) speaker of the House, an event noticed a few weeks ago now at reference 4. Two of these committees, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Committee on Homeland Security, look quite important. Not really good places for crazies.

But she is a big fan of Trump, one of the many undesirables attracted to his tent.

It struck me yesterday that Putin, another politician with bizarre views, seemingly close to all  kinds of organised crime, must attract lots of undesirables to his tent too. 

Undesirables whom might prove hard to put back in their boxes in both the US and Russia. Something which I dare say more mainstream people in both places will come to be sorry about.

References

Reference 1: America’s new McCarthyism — this time as farce: Unlike his 1950s forebear, Kevin McCarthy has no known beliefs - Edward Luce, Financial Times - 2023.

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

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrossFit.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/political-parties.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Point_Community_Church. Greene was born into a Catholic family, left over the child abuse scandal and threw in her lot with this lot. With the mother church accommodating 5,000 people to its services. A little to the north of Atlanta, in a place called Alpharetta, around 55% white non Hispanic. Which leads me to wonder about who exactly these people are. Church snapped above.

The end of an era

After more than ten years of it, I may this evening have taken my last dose of warfarin, presently consisting on Saturday's of one blue pill and two brown pills. The plan is to switch over tomorrow, at the start of the pill box week, to Edoxaban branded as Lixiana. One yellow pill of 60mg a day and a blood test once in a while - a simple regime which replaces the rather more complicated warfarin regime, which last is unfortunately subject to the vagaries of warfarin uptake and metabolism, with relevant levels in the blood prone to strange - and potentially dangerous - variations.

We shall see how I get on.

PS 1: the parent company is clearly Japanese. But I have no idea where this particular drug came from or where it is made. I dare say I could find out.

PS 2: the stuff appears to be sold all over the place, in lots of slightly different packages. My package is not the one snapped above, but this snap does show off the colour coding of the new pills, in which respect they are the same as warfarin pills, which are also colour coded.

References

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

Reference 2: https://www.daiichisankyo.com/.

In praise of classifications

Prompted by a reading of Nicholas Humphrey’s essay at reference 1.

Humphrey offers an attractive argument concerning the selective value of an ability to classify things. In brief, a human who is quickly able, for example, to identify a tiger or a fruit which may be safely eaten is more apt to survive to reproduce, to be selected in the jargon of evolution. He points in support to the speed with which young children learn how to do this. With all the alphabet books helping them on their way. Young children are mostly very good, for example, at picking cats out of a very mixed heap of animals, quite possibly on the basis of just one named example.

He adds three further wrinkles. First, evolution arranges it that we enjoy classification, much in the same way that it arranges for us to enjoy food and to enjoy sex. Further encouragement, certainly for the conscious human. Second, we have the notion of a property, where, ideally, things either have the property or they do not or the property takes some fairly small number of categorical values. Furry would be an example of the first sort of property and number of legs would an example of the second sort. With the third wrinkle of having an ‘everything else’ category, because while most animals have either no legs, two, four, six or eight legs there are some which have too many to conveniently count, animals like millipedes and centipedes. It seems quite possible that the growing brain learns to use properties, before language is available to organise and teach them.

One result of evolution arranging for people to take pleasure in classification is that classification takes on a life of its own, possibly moving away from, of growing out of its adaptive function. We do it for its own sake. Think, for example, of all the many people over the years who have taken great pleasure from organising and reorganising their stamps into albums. An activity which, at least superficially, has no adaptive value at all.

Activity which also illustrates the pleasure to be had from variety within identity. The pleasure taken in all the different animals that, to use a word from Macbeth, are clept by the name of dog. We get a bit bored when they are all the same, but take an interest in the ones that push the envelope out a bit. 

He regards the passion for collecting as an extension of the passion for classifying. Collecting as a vehicle for classifying. We organise our collection on organising properties or principles, in the case of stamps perhaps country of origin and year of first issue.

Humphrey then goes on to look at the function of this variety in art, but we do not need to go that far for present purposes.

Properties, hierarchies and networks

Properties can be used to organise things into hierarchies and networks. So if A is a node in our tree or network, the inferior node B might be defined as that subset of A for which property C equals D.

I only observe here that we stray into slightly deeper water, in that there are going to be lots of different ways of doing this, some more useful or helpful than others. One can, for example first organise things by whether they have fur or not, then by the number of legs and lastly by whether they have horns or not. Or you could use the same three properties in a different order. One might arrive at the same answer in the end, but you will get different intermediate nodes and different terminal orders.

Some more examples

The pleasure to be had from identifying other parts that an actor in a television drama that one is watching has played before. Before in the sense of time of watching if not of time of acting - a fussy way of saying that one might not watch television dramas in the order in which they were made. Another case of variety within identity: we have the same person appearing in a variety of roles, perhaps to the extent of coming in 57 varieties, in the way of Heinz.

A small child came to BH’s attention who had trouble, when visiting his grandparents, with the notion that you can only watch your favourite programme at the time at which it is broadcast. The child has, perhaps, assimilated the television to the class of cupboard, the cupboard to which you go when you want something. The notion of waiting for some particular time is much more complicated and takes rather more explaining.

Then we have classifications of disease, work on which across the globe amounting to a substantial industry in its own right, but essential tools in the fight against disease. So we have the international classification of disease, outlined at reference 3 and its relative from the United States, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Important, inter alia, when it comes to making insurance claims regarding same.

Then, lastly, there was the three volume CODOT classification of occupation here in the UK, the work of the statisticians of what was then called the Department of Employment Group, then headquartered in St. James’ Square. With the first of quite a few mentions in these pages being found at reference 5.

Conclusions

I find the notion that evolution has treated classification in this way attractive. But I do wonder what the devil’s advocate might have to say about it all.

PS: something similar to the drift of classification away from its adaptive roots is quite common in today’s real world. So we decide that learning is a good thing and invent exams to test learning. But then people target the exams without regard to the learning. With an example from government computer project inspections of the first decade of this century – then known as Gateway reviews – being the risk register. The management people decided that projects would be less likely to fail if they operated a risk register. So, surprise, surprise, all the projects sprouted Excel workbooks called ‘Project Risk Register’ which they showed to the inspectors. Checking that these registers were actually used in the way intended was another matter.

References

Reference 1: The illusion of beauty – Nicholas Humphrey – 1973.

Reference 2: Seeing red – a study in consciousness – Nicholas Humphrey – 2006. A book which has been noticed in these pages in the past.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Classification_of_Diseases.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders.

Reference 5: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/02/quartets.html. 

Who owns who?

From time to time I worry about the difficulty of tracking down who exactly owns what in the world of big business. In what I think is the jargon, who is the beneficial owner of some entity in which you are taking an interest?

Then yesterday, the Financial Times ran an article about a huge purchase of Tesla shares by a company which was supposed to specialise in safe investments for insurance companies. This turned out to be a clerical error, albeit one which might be thought to be market moving.

But along the way, I learn that if you can afford an account with Bloomberg, you can find out who owns the shares in public companies. At least, that is how I read the snap above.

Also, that large investment companies in the US have to make something called 13F filings which enumerate the companies in which they have invested. Reference 3 tells you about the filings and reference 4 looks to supply the actual filings in the form of one zip file per quarter. The catch being that my laptop suggests opening the contents in Notepad, which falls down in a heap when you present it with 60Mb of data file. Maybe you need specialist software to actually get at the data. For another day.

References

Reference 1: Has Natixis made $17bn gain on a huge Tesla bet? (No): Adventures in Betteridge’s law and 13F filings - Robin Wigglesworth, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://www.bloomberg.com/uk. I believe that the Bloomberg terminals or accounts you need to get access to the real stuff are far too expensive for the general public. Financial Times yes, Bloomberg no.

Reference 3: https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13ffaq. More than you want to know about 13F.

Reference 4: https://www.sec.gov/dera/data/form-13f. The whole story.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_13F. The short story.