Trolley 577

Two more trolleys from M&S in the Kokoro passage this morning, one of them with an unusual green handle. Unusual, at least for Epsom. Returned to the stacks at M&S, where the young lady tidying the stacks looked far to harassed to bother about where the green handled trolley might have come from. Some neighbouring petrol station? Perhaps the one up South Street, maybe a kilometre away? As it happens, on the way to the creationists of reference 2, probably not relevant as most of them will be on vacation.

Plenty of cherries in the market, probably English and probably past their best, as were the last ones we had, I think from Tesco's at Leatherhead. I passed in favour of some Victoria plums. A little small and a little past their best, but the few I have had so far were fine.

On the way home, via the Screwfix underpass, I followed up on drain covers, taking a bit more care this time. So we had both Adamics and Adams of York, presumably the same people. Needham of Stockport. Both Broad and Broads of London. Gibb of London (one). Woodrow of London (one). Wrekin, possibly of the Wrekin, sometimes on behalf of Thames Water.

Long Humphrey of Chertsey, Surrey (one). And regarding the letters, for example those in the snap above, I came across another cover where most of the letters appeared to have come off: not worn off, come off - as if the letters were stuck on afterwards somehow, rather than being cast on. Not obvious to me which way would be easier. Need to find a foundryman to ask.

Quite a few Thames Water own brand, variously Thames Water, Water, TWA, TW and W. With the small circular ones actually being plastic meter covers. With the TWA presumably pre-dating selling the water companies off.

Plenty of anonymous. Plenty with company name or initials but with no place of manufacture. Looking forward, these might well be excluded, along with most of the own brands, by the rules committee.

Moving on from drain covers proper, we had own brands from CATV and Nymex. BT and the Post Office. The Urban District Council: Electricity Supply (one), Electricity Supply (one) and Gas (one).

It struck me, on this first serious outing, that it was not that unlike classifying and identifying plants and animals, in that one is casting about for the right properties on which to classify. One is building a taxonomy. One is also building up a history of sorts of manufacturers, organisations and localities. One might change the branding, but one is stuck with the drain covers. At least, unless you are prepared to go to a great deal of expense to change them all. In which connection, see reference 3.

I associate to Microsoft's Word, where the long suffering product architects have to carry around all kinds of ancient history, that is to say all the old versions of Word. The current, super whizzy version of Word has to be able to cope with all the files produced by all the old, not-so-whizzy versions - which some senior customers may be very attached to - or there are going to be a lot of very cross customers.

PS: brought down to ground later on by BH beating me at Scrabble by 282 points to 195. A low scoring game, but a big margin. Her second win in a row. Must do better tomorrow.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/one-of-much-sought-after-small-trolleys.html. Note clerical error in file name.

Reference 2: https://www.uca.ac.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/breslau-drain-covers.html.

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