Trolley 563

Trolley 563 was captured while it was still warm, as it were. With the older lady who had wheeled her shopping across the market place to wait for her taxi still in attendance, with her bags lined up beside her. We agreed that it would all be a lot easier if taxis could get at one of the entrances to M&S, as they can at Sainsbury's Kiln Lane. Except that Kiln Lane might not be so convenient if one is getting into Epsom on public transport or is walking from the wrong side of town.

Returned to the stack at back of the busy M&S food hall - this being Easter Monday, a day when nearly all shops would have been firmly shut when I was a child.

I noticed a few of these rather pretty plants on my circuit. For once BH failed to come up with the right name, but feeding a clipped version into Google's image search got us to reference 2, Symphytum tuberosum, otherwise comfrey. Clever stuff. We are now plotting how to get some - BH thinking that we have had some in the past, perhaps on an allotment.

While nearer home there was a fine thistle coming along. I thought Scotch thistle, which took me to reference 4, the Scotch or cotton thistle. Not the right thing at all. Poking harder, I get to reference 3, the thistle family proper. So my guess is that this is Cirsium vulgare, otherwise the common thistle, in its flowering year. The national flower of Scotland. But all very complicated, with lots of different thistles out there.

In any event, a flower which I dare say would not be welcome in our garden, even in my zone at the back.

PS 1: I said older, but it may well be that that the older lady in question was much the same age as I am.

PS 2: for some reason, OneDrive took a while to make the trolley snap above available on my laptop, even though the others turned up in the course of the afternoon. This one was not there first thing this morning either, although some more, taken yesterday lunchtime, were available to download. All very odd. But a download which prompted knowledge of the trolley snaps to arrive on my laptop (thumbnails with blue clouds in the snap above), after which they could be downloaded (thumbnails with green ticks). Another oddity was OneDrive's knowledge of the next snap. When you load a picture into Photos you usually, but not always, get chevrons right and left enabling navigation to next and previous photo in the hosting folder. But sometimes the chevron comes unstuck, so rather than getting the next photo, visible with blue cloud or green tick in File Explorer, it goes back to the beginning of the folder. Alternatively, the chevron just is not there. Then, after a short interval, it gets itself sorted out. All the perils of updating a database in real time, while a user is messing about with it.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/trolley-562.html.

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

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

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

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