Trolley 581

The second scoring trolley of the day was another small trolley from the M&S food hall, captured in the Kokoro passage. My impression is that not so long ago, Waitrose was my best provider of town trolleys and Sainsbury's was my best provider of East Street trolleys. Whereas now, M&S has the town spot and East Street trolleys are few and far between. If only I had opted to keep a spreadsheet, I would really know what is going on -  but I do not have the time or energy to back-fill on that one.

Home to turkey mince loaf with all the trimmings. Followed by a spot of brick walking, in the course of which I came across a minor swarming of small black ants out of a crack in the concrete of the brick path. No wings to be seen, so perhaps it was just some underground disturbance frightening them out of their nest.

Removed what I could of the duckweed from the water hawthorn, now coming into flower again. Control rather than eradication for the moment: a bit chary about chemical attack when summer life is blooming. See reference 2.

Followed by a spot of Scrabble. I thought I was heading for another drubbing, but managed a late spurt and then to catch BH out by going out when she was holding 14 or so points in tiles, a penalty of 28. So I lost by 2 points - but would have drawn had I thought to put down my terminal 'ay' on a 'c' rather than on an 'n' - and assuming that OED does not have 'cay' down as foreign. Webster's says mostly in the West Indies and in the US 'key' is more usual. Both from the Spanish. In any event, I don't need to feel too bad about the game after all.

PS: the following morning, that is to say Monday morning: I have now plumbed the depths of OED, where 'cay' is a perfectly respectable word which arrived here in England in the 17th century from the Spanish, from the Caribbean. Now naturalised, so allowed in Scrabble. Three column inches including: '... A low insular bank of sand, mud, coral etc...'. Closely related to kay, key and quay, the latter including some mix-up with the French. The ordinary sort of key is a very old and quite different usage, from our German side, getting many column inches, while this sort of key is the 17th century immigrant, along with cay.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/trolley-580.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/classification.html.

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