More trivia

Came back from a morning spin around Horton Lane - cycling, oddly, being a much more practical proposition in this heat than walking - to find a Thames Water trench half way across the lower end of our road, perhaps two or three feet below our end. The first hole in the road, as it happens, since our road was nicely resurfaced a year or so ago. Much jealously in neighbouring roads which are still waiting their turn.

With a thin layer of chalk visible just below the surface, the thin remnant of Epsom Downs to the south and the south facing scarp which includes Box Hill running along the bottom of the snap above. Chalk which I have never hit in our garden, despite digging down, on occasion, for a couple of feet. From which I deduce that the chalk does not run uphill with the road.

From where I associated to a recently acquired bit of trivia from Pearl on minerals, a book first noticed at reference 1, getting on for a year ago now, and looked at from time to time since then; a book I keep handy. The bit of trivia being that brickearth, a variety of loess (which I associate with China), which you get in the Thames Valley amongst other places and which was once widely used for making bricks. And I had thought, without thinking, that the stuff was so named for being brick coloured.

Also that it is prone to settlement when wet, so it makes for poor foundations.

Back to the second knead of Batch No.689 of bread. In the course of which I found that the butter used to grease the tins for flouring was a lot more sticky in this warm weather than it is otherwise. And so soaked up a lot more flour. An example of the sort of things that homeostasis people go on about: that is to say, the chemical and physical reactions going on inside bodies are very sensitive to the ambient temperature. Another example being that it is much easier to wash off the flour stuck to one's hands in warm water than cold water.

I close with a bit more theatrical trivia, this time from the National Theatre. The thought here being that it will take a lot more than this bit of email to get me to shell out that £250 or so it costs to make an expedition to the theatre. In reasonable comfort that is.

I don't suppose I shall ever know what this 'physical theatre company' does. Luvvies doing gymnastics with their bodies rather than with their mouths? From where I associate to a rather gymnastic version of 'Romeo and Juliet' once put on by a troupe from Iceland at the Young Vic and noticed at reference 2. Just their sort of thing...

Whereas my sort of thing is something I have previously heard of, preferably something from the regular repertoire, perhaps a spot of Chekov, not too mucked about with in the interests of accessibility or relevance to today's younger audiences...

PS: as it turned out, the high temperature really got the yeast going and batch No.689 went on to a very fast second rise, catching me out when I took a look after an hour, when it had probably been ready to go at 45 minutes; the shortest second rise in the recent record, and would have been even shorter had I looked in earlier and had the oven been free. Luckily, as it was, the oven had only just been released from turkey meat loaf duty and did not take long to come up to bread heat. And while one loaf did blister, at least there was no collapse, which is what quite often happens when the second rise has been left too long. I expect that it will be fine inside. Could have been much worse; not in the same league at all as Batch No.567, noticed at reference 3.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/up-junction.html.

Reference 2: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/oct/02/theatre.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/disaster-567.html.