Trolley 592

Trolley 592, an M&S large, was recovered this morning from the Kokoro passage and returned to the food hall. Where I noticed a display full of quite decent looking steak for sale - with choice. Loose wrapped rather than shrink wrapped, so it looked OK - better than OK in fact; quite hard for a small independent to keep up with.

New clothes for what was, until recently, a chipper called 'The Plaice to Eat'. Quite a decent chipper too, but here one day, shuttered up the next. Presumably some kind of south American meat flavoured eatery.

Will it be anything like the place noticed at reference 4, near fifteen years ago now? I believe, long gone.

Answer: no. The place might now be up and running and the menu does not look particularly exotic at reference 7. But there is lots of grilling and lots of chicken. And like the chipper which went before, it looks to cater to the eat-in, the eat-out and the delivery trades. Halal certified throughout. I wonder if McDonald's does that? Answer: no. Some of their stuff is vegetarian but they do not do Halal certification.

Cargo bikes are all the thing in the cycle shop in Upper High Street.

With the one in the next window a snip at just under £6,000. Maybe it is the fancy wooden box which jacks the price up. Is it really plastic dressed up as wood? I see such quite of lot of these cargo bikes in London, but don't recall coming across one here in Epsom. Perhaps the shop is trying to build demand for them. But at half the price of a new car? One can buy quite a lot of quite fancy shoe leather for that sort of money.

While a quick view at Bing's shopping options suggests that near £6,000 is very much at the top of the price range. Clearly quite a premium for buying from bricks & mortar rather than screen & click.

While back at TB in Manor Green Road, the cheerful but tatty pots of the previous management have been replaced by plants planted in the ground. Not as cheerful, but a good deal easier to maintain and they are much more likely to go the distance. Furthermore, there is something going in the annex housing the kitchen (and before that the offie attached to the house). Apparently the kitchen, despite being stainless steel everywhere and not that old, had got into a bit of a state. All they need now is to build the clientele back up again.

PS 1: it looks as if I have averaged about a trolley a week over the last year or so. A lot slower than it was, at least at times, before that - but if I keep at it I might make the 1,000 before I am eighty. But who knows, I might be into litter picking before then, something which does seem to afflict older colleagues.

PS 2: a short while later: I have just read in the NYT that 'about 77 percent of young people are ineligible to enlist [in the armed forces] because they are overweight, or have disqualifying mental or physical conditions or issues with drug use, according to a Defense Department report'. And I thought that the US was a healthy place. See references 5 and 6. Note: according to reference 6, the sample is not just the people who show up at recruitment centres, rather something a bit more respectable.

PS 3: a long while later: just got around to the Metro, where I find that I have been completely outclassed on the trolley front by some characters in Worcestershire. One could spend a happy hour in the pub speculating on how it was done and what equipment was used. One could even plan a reality show on TV where the winning team was the one that managed with the least equipment by weight. Or perhaps rope only. Break the light and you are disqualified.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/trolley-591.html.

Reference 2: https://www.babboe.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/trolley-517.html. Towards the end of this post, a snap of the more exuberant version of the front garden at TB.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-shops.html.

Reference 5: U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force Struggle for Recruits. The Marines Have Plenty: As the other large military branches fall short of their goals despite offering signing bonuses and other incentives, the Marine Corps easily fills its ranks on swagger alone - Dave Philipps, New York Times - 2023.

Reference 6: https://prod-media.asvabprogram.com/CEP_PDF_Contents/Qualified_Military_Available.pdf.

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

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