Pork stew

The day started well with the Epsom Clinic - I think a place run by our local health authority - did a good job on my special needs COVID jab, special needs in the sense that being upright for my jabs is apt to lead to trouble.

However, I thought that cycling in London was perhaps not a good plan, so I took train directly to Vauxhall. A little early for the train, I spent a little time with the computers of Epsom Library. Clocking on the way the new Epsom Picturehouse, last mentioned at reference 1, which has now been stalled for some months. BH says that they are waiting until they have clocked up enough local members before actually opening up. Members who will now enjoy all the benefits of the Picturehouse membership partnership with Kia, the car people from South Korea who are all mixed up with Hyundai. While I wonder about how finished it all is inside. Are all the seats in? Are all the vending stations ready to vend?

From there, given that I was still a little early, to take a turn around Vauxhall Park, which I had not visited for some years. Not long refurbished and looking rather well. I tried one of the benches in the new Fawcett Sensory Garden, named for the near blind father of the Phillipa Fawcett who gave her name to the teacher training college in Streatham at which BH did her time. And I learn today from reference 4 that she was also a pioneering mathematician at Cambridge. A political, suffragette and blue-stocking family. But a teacher training college which, I think, has been long gone. Reduced to a Facebook page for former inmates. But I did turn up a lot of pictures at reference 5, including the one above of the refectory, where I used to take a very reasonable Sunday lunch from time to time, taken I might say on the very same (green) Beryl Ware on which we now take Sunday lunch. As once used by British Rail and the better class of mental hospital.

Vauxhall gardens - snap 1

One of several handsome shows of Japanese anemones, aka windflowers. They are popular and grow well in our part of Surrey too, although we do not have the space for a show such as this.

Vauxhall gardens - snap 2

Looking south. And closing with the surprise capture of the young Wellingtonia already noticed at reference 3.

From thence to the Estrela, where on being assured that COVID jabs and alcohol work different paths, I indulged in a little Deu Deu, as noticed from time to time in these pages, for example at reference 6. Bread and olives, better than usual. Followed by a substantial pork stew which I have had before - but which I had forgotten came with too much garlic and possibly vinegar too - with my liking the former in moderation well enough, but not liking the latter at all. Household cleaning product (when I am out), yes. Something to ingest, no. Followed by a slice of their rather good passion fruit pudding, the sort of thing made in one of those moulds with a hole in the middle.

There was a shared interest in posset, possibly fuelled by shared distaff televiewing, but also mentioned in the programme for 'Noises Off', the show noticed at reference 1. A very thin mention in Dorothy Hartley (originally written in 1954), but she does include a poem, snapped above. Prompted by the first two lines, Google turns up at least two other books about food which contain the same poem, both with the same rather uncertain attribution to Alexander Pope.

While the Wikipedia entry suggests that the talk in the programme of Elizabethan posset factories was twaddle. Do not believe all that you might read in the programmes for farces!

In any event, according to Wikipedia (reference 8), originally a 'hot drink made of milk curdled with wine or ale, often spiced'. Presumably, very mildly alcoholic. And while there may not have been factories, there were posset sets, once popular as gifts among the higher classes.

Was posset any relation of the central Asian kumis, usually made with horses' milk rather than cows' milk?

Estrela - snap 1

Odd, given the number of times that I have visited the Estrela, that I had not noticed this olive tree before. It does quite well as a pavement tree. Does quite well here anyway.

I managed just the one aeroplane at Vauxhall, with the sun being a bit strong in the west for serious spotting. Whatever had happened to the threatened storm Boudiccan?

On getting home, it took me a while to take the snap above, the unread COVID small print, with my telephone being much more interested in the QR code - and in taking me to some website or other - than my snap. It was not until some days later that I learned how to stop this, as noticed at reference 7.

PS 1: more recently, distaff televiewing turned up the word 'fraught', which I now know is a member of the freight family. A very old word, originally the charge for carrying something, then the something. Then one was fraught with something, perhaps in-laws, illness or some other difficulty. While now one can just be fraught, with a negative tone, but not further specified. I suppose one could be fraught with something good, but I do not think I have ever seen or heard the word used in that way.

PS 2: the various Google compression algorithms involved result in Vauxhall gardens snaps 1 and 2 being pretty fuzzy on my large if elderly HP screen. While Estrela snap 1 fares rather better.

PS 3: I am still getting daily advertisements from Aigue-Mortes in Microsoft Start, following notice of the place at reference 8, back in the middle of September.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/noises-off.html.

Reference 2: https://www.picturehouses.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/wellingtonia-107.html.

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

Reference 5: https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk/quick-search?q=phillipa%20fawcett&WINID=1698919075711.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/battersea-beef.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/testing.html.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posset.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/bastides.html.