In transition

Ten days ago to the Burma exhibition at the British Museum, drawn in some large part from the time Burma was part of the British Empire: a country that started as a shifting and diverse collection of states, some large, some small, passing through the colonial period and emerging today as the militarised Myanmar with its troubled minorities. I associate to what was the Union of India now drifting into a period of Hindu domination.

The snap above gives some idea of the British push east from India into what is now Myanmar. With the Lushal Hills, blue in the map above, holding out until nearly the end of nineteenth century. Perhaps too poor and too hilly to bother with. Now part of the Mizoram state in northeastern India.

I should declare a family connection to Mongmit, one of the Shan states in the northeastern part of what is now Myanmar. See reference 1.

A cold if bright start to the day, and I elected for a lift to the station, but we got stuck in the queue on West Hill and arrived with not much time to spare at all. But there was enough and I made it to Waterloo to find an unpleasantly noisy announcer on the Northern Line platform there. An announcer who was all too fond of the sound of his own voice.

From Tottenham Court Road to the queue outside the museum - I had not realised the museum did not open until 10:00 - where a chatty Belgian couple just behind us helped to pass the time away. The lady harked back to the glory days of Charles V while the husband had done his time as an altar boy. He knew all about the cold early mornings that Simenon had complained of before him. And once the doors did open the queue moved along fast enough, especially for those with tickets. To find ourselves in an impressively empty museum, just limbering up into receptive life for the day.

Then waiting for my rendez-vous, I was able to spend quality time with the head of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, more than 3,000 years old. The father of the heretic Akhenaten. An impressive bit of sculpture. See reference 2 for the man rather than the rock.

I think at least some of the catering at the museum was provided by Benugo and this was one of their sticky buns, involving at least a dab of cinnamon. Very sticky it was too, but entirely fit for the purpose of keeping me going after what was for me an early start.

From there into the exhibition, nicely laid out in the large segment of what was the Reading Room called Room 35. Cunningly broken up with tasteful wooden screens. Crowded, but not impossibly so. I thought the whole display was well put together. The curator knew his or her stuff - the rather snooty review I read somewhere, with its comments about stodgy labels more suitable for a postgraduate seminar, notwithstanding.

One of the objects that impressed me was that snapped above. Partly because I would not think why there would be a screw fitting at the top, partly because if it was gold, it must be worth a good deal as gold, never mind an antiquity. For some reason I neither read nor snapped the accompanying ticket, but it is very probably be the same as the large reliquary described at reference 4, turned up via Google Lens. The screw fitting was for the spire, which probably went missing at the time the reliquary was looted in the mid 19th century. The reliquary is made of thin gold sheets, worked using the repoussé technique of punching or pushed out the decoration from the inside.

There were a couple of amusing posters advertising well known household goods from the home country, one of which is snapped above.

Towards the end, this disembowelled snake, a modern piece, perhaps from someone taking lessons from Cadaver Hirst. But Google Lens suggested Myanmar artist, Soe Yu Nwe, to be found at reference 5, from where I have lifted the snap below, possibly from the same snake.

Along the way quite a lot of textiles. I was quite struck by the amount of interaction between the cloth workers of colonial Burma and those of neighbouring countries, in particular China to the north, and then the UK to the far west - with Burma taking both modern dyes and textiles from this last, to be worked into native products. And with fashions, designs and motifs moving all over the place.

To close, a map. Clearly the sort of topographical fidelity we value here in the west was either not valued or not wanted in the east. A map to be taken into my reading of Gombrich (already noticed at reference 6) on this very matter.

Still plenty of queue when we left at around 12:30. This being a Saturday. At this point, we had thought to go to Vinotec at Kings Cross, a place probably last visited before the plague, but in the event our taxi took us up York Way and so we jumped out at Kings Place to take a look in there.

The Google building across the way is coming on. How long before Google move in? Or have sub-let half of it in the light of the new after-plague working habits? A building mentioned at, for example, reference 7.

Downstairs to inspect the concert halls and where I was pleased to find the upside-down-do-not-climb-on-the-art pangolin (or some such) still present. 

Back upstairs to inspect the bar, hosting some kind of party at one end, a party involving a party girl clad in a slinky number covered in gold sequins. Higher grade bar staff. Captured the piano already noticed at reference 3. Thought about eating, but the menu turned out to be very meatist - with the offering including one of those glass fronted refrigerators you get in butchers these days, containing all kinds of good looking meat, including foreribs cut as chops.

Out front to inspect the art, from a sculptor based in Kampala, one Peter Oloya. Some biography is to be found at reference 8. 

A striking demonstration of the way it takes a lot of elbow-grease to get the look we know & love of marble from the raw material.

Out properly to take a look at the impressive crane from the people at reference 9, where there are lots of pictures. The one snapped above gave you a lot of height on a very modest base, possibly something from their Genie range.

Then to the canal - which included the sound of some brass instrument drifting over the water - and then down past the new Google building to Vinotec, where we were able to take a table and admire the presently fashionable ventilation system décor.

But sadly, the size of the new Google building had made the passage down to Vinotec - past lots of fancy trainer shops - a bit oppressive, new trees notwithstanding.

The grub, bread apart, was good, in my case vension with black pudding and real crinkly cabbage. For once, I quite liked the OTT gravy, even if it made it hard to pick out either the flavour or the texture of the black pudding.

Lots of people passing by. We wondered if they were passengers on the nearby Eurostar.

And so home, via a tube which was hot and crowded. Out at Vauxhall to a waxing moon, more than half, rising over the Vauxhall Tavern. A lot of cloud, but I managed a two but not a three at the aeroplane game. Fell asleep at Wimbledon, but woke to get out at Ewell West as intended and stroll down Longmead Road to take in the Saturday scene at TB. I was ejected from the private party in the saloon bar and settled down in the busy public bar, where there were at least some faces that I knew from the olden days. But mostly young people whom I didn't know, without vans.

PS 1: I notice from reference 4, that things go missing from the V&A too, although the author of that paper seems to think they wind up in one of the boxes, drawers or display cabinets of some learned society.

PS 2: and talking of moons, a waning half-moon is to be seen in the lightening sky, about 20° above the southern horizon, as I type this.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongmit_State.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_III.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/piano.html. Piano 79, misspelt.

Reference 4: https://thesiamsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/JSS_103_0d_Stadtner_RajadhirajsRangoonRelics.pdf. Rajadhiraj’s Rangoon Relics and a Mon Funerary Stupa - Donald M. Stadtner, Journal of the Siam Society - 2015.

Reference 5: https://www.soeyunwe.com/.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/constable.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/trolley-578.html.

Reference 8: https://www.pangolinlondon.com/artists/118-peter-oloya/biography/.

Reference 9: https://www.hiresafesolutions.com/.

Trolley 624

A brace of small trolleys from the Kokoro Passage. One from the M&S food hall, one from Waitrose, this last configured slightly differently. Scored as one as they could be wheeled together easily enough and the two stacks are only yards apart.

On round the Ewell Village anti-clockwise, but taking in Upper High Street and Mill Road (for a windmill I think) as I had a bit of business that way.

There used to be a long strip of rough ground between Mill Road and the railway line below, rough ground where I once used to pick damsons from time to time, as noticed at reference 2. Now mostly given over to housing, much to the annoyance of the people on the other side of Mill Road who used to have a better view. On the up side, the new houses probably block out a fair bit of the noise from the railway - maybe as much as a dozen trains an hour, counting the two directions.

But the top end of the rough ground survives. Presumably not suitable for housing for one reason or another.

Home to a spot of jigsaw, having cracked out Garafalo a few days ago, with my third go at same - and not necessarily the last - being noticed at reference 3. Co-opted the large drawing board - perhaps sixty years old now - in aid of the card table on this occasion - but for some reason it took me a long time to get the perimeter done. Slowed down by having managed to switch the top right and bottom left corners, which took a while to sort out. And it has taken longer than I think it should to attune eyes and brain to the palette of the puzzle, so that I can, for example, say which sort of flesh tone goes where. Things have speeded up now I am onto the figures, with just two pieces which I think ought to be easy to place, with what look like very distinctive markings, but which I have failed to place.

After the mid-week haggis & neaps, puzzling continued with Scrabble, with the lucky fall of the tiles handing me a substantial victory, although our combined score was still short of 600, not attained for some time now.

BH did not challenge me during the game, but after the game we thought it best to look up 'droves', 'fixer' and 'lipped'. Droves I thought might be obsolete, but it turns out to be an old word, still current at the time of writing the OED, say 1900 or so. Fixer I thought might be slang, but is included both in the sense of a tradesman, as in the modern second-fixer (of a carpenter) or as a chemical used for fixing something (perhaps a dye). First used in the 19th century. Lipped, I thought might be slang, but no. Inter alia, a botanical term used to describe a flower. So my victory was not tainted.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/trolley-623.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/07/hedgerow-jam.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/03/jigsaw-5-series-3.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Ivy

Following the big ivy noticed at reference 1, I have been looking out for more of same, with today turning some up at the foot of one of the bridge abutments at the East Street end of Hook Road. A spot which faces east, faces the other abutment, so probably not much sun in the winter, but it might do alright in the summer. But why some leaves and not others? Age of leaf? Accidents of birth?

While the trolley marked down yesterday afternoon by the cash point on Station Approach had vanished. Perhaps M&S and Waitrose take it in turns to do a sweep of the immediate vicinity of their stores first thing in the morning.

B&M is limbering up to take on the newly-new Wilko store, dating from the closing years of the twentieth century. Definite signs of interior activity. From their website at reference 2, they look to be in the same marketplace as Wilko, so maybe that marketplace had just got a bit overcrowded. The Home Bargains people, one of whose warehouses we pass at Solstice Services, look from reference 3 to carry the same sort of offering, but I don't know whether they do bricks & mortar.

Past the garage redevelopment noticed almost exactly four years ago at reference 4. Not newly started then, but I think nearing completion now, with workers visible inside this morning. But there is a large, boarded hole out front, maybe something to do with a service connection. Maybe whoever is running with the development had owned the (unused, unfinished) garages for years, so has not been paying interest on the current market price of the land for all this time. Where I also see mention of the Amber Group, visiting our house this very day to tidy up the space vacated by our old boiler, condemned on irritating grounds by British Gas. Where I also see mention of Herald Copse: a reminder that we need to visit the snowdrops there.

Home to the Metro, to be completely unimpressed by a picture of yet another monster cruise ship, the 'Icon of the Seas', carrying 7,500 passengers and getting on for 2,500 crew. Plus an ice skating rink. Given the present state of the world, something rather distasteful about it all. But I suppose the 7,500 passengers will get the dubious benefit of cheap labour from the Philippines and what used to be called Indo-China without taking the pain of allowing said labourers to live among us. And perhaps staffing up bricks & mortar care homes rather than ones that float. And no doubt my email inbox will now be infested with advertisements for same, on the strength of visiting reference 5. Within minutes?

From where I moved on to the piece at reference 6 in the NYRB, a two page (four columns each) essay built around three fat books - maybe 1,500 pages in all - about crime fiction. An essay where Simenon does not get a look in. I learned that together we consume an awful lot of the stuff, and have done for a long time, not to mention the volume of crime on television. But what I did not get was a psychological, not to say Freudian take, on why we do it. We can provide cover by talking about the skill with which the Conan-Doyles, the Christies and the Simenons provide interesting, now period, backdrops for their stories, but that is well short of the whole truth. However, we are told of a couple of essays by Edmund Wilson from the mid 1940s, references 7 and 8, and shall take a look. And O'Brien himself seems to be something of a Christie fan, with talk of real literary qualities.

PS 1: no advertisements in the ten minutes so far.

PS 2: 20:00: the second Wilson essay took a little longer to track down, but Google found it at reference 8b. Both essays now read & enjoyed, and towards the end of the second one we do get a few clues as to why we do it. But not really what I was looking for. I shall try asking Bard.

PS 3: 21:15: Bard gives quite a helpful response to 'Can you tell me of [of] psychologists or serious writers who have written about why we read so much crime and murder mystery?'. He did not appeared to have missed a beat over my typo. I shall start with Freud's 'Civilisation and its Discontents'.

PS 4: 22:00: I have now skimmed 'Civilisation and its Discontents' and searched the collected works for the word 'crime', and while this essay does bear on the subject and there is a lot about real and fictional (primal) crime in the collected works, it does not appear to directly address our seeming need for crime fiction. What Bard said is plausible as something that a psycho-analyst might come up with, but is not actually to be found in the words of the Master. Once again, Bard has been joining up the dots a bit too energetically. And, in his defence, he more or less admits as much when further prompted. On another tack, no mention of Conan-Doyle in the collected works. But three mentions of Edgar Allen Poe, so I have now got reference 9 to take a look at.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/trolley-616.html.

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

Reference 3: https://home.bargains/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/herald-copse.html.

Reference 5: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/icon-of-the-seas.

Reference 6: A craving for crime - Geoffrey O'Brian, New York Review of Books - 2024.

Reference 7: Why do people read crime stories - Edmund Wilson - 1944. Freely available from the New Yorker website.

Reference 8a: Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd? - Edmund Wilson - 1945.

Reference 8b: http://detective.gumer.info/txt/wilson-2.pdf. 

Reference 9: Preface to Marie Bonaparte's 'The life and works of Edgar Allan Poe: A psycho-analytic interpretation' - S. Freud - 1933.

Musical moments

A fortnight ago to the Wigmore Hall to hear Schubert's musical moments (D780) and a selection of same from Rachmaninov (Op.16), with Inon Barnaton on the ivories, a gentleman to be found at reference 1.

A cold, bright morning. No.2 woolly and gloves, No.1 jacket and hat. Where No.1 is warmest. One of the new trains that Southwestern Trains is deploying on the Epsom to Waterloo line. 

Crowded tube between Victoria and Oxford Circus, this being around 11:30 on a Monday morning. And among the crowd we had a young man sporting a smart jacket from the new-to-me Naked Wolfe upstairs and very battered jeans downstairs. Bing's first effort was shoes, but digging deeper I find that they do do other stuff - and call themselves a luxury brand. So presumably expensive. Perhaps this combo is all the thing in the right part of London. Perhaps they do them at T. K. Maxx. See reference 2.

Out usual pit stop at All Bar One, but being after noon, I was able to take wine instead of my usual tea. I had forgotten that they dish it up in little carafes.

The previously noticed kitchen robot from Moley Robotics was in action, although it was not actually handling food.

A fine concert, although I would say that I got on better with the Schubert, whom I am used to, even if not these particular pieces, than the Rachmaninov.

The first two restaurants we tried down Marylebone Road - one of which was Delamina of reference 3 - were full, so we pushed onto the chipper known as the Golden Hind, which seemed to have been refurbished since we were last there. Perfectly serviceable fish and chips, if a little bland. A drop of wine from South Africa and a fine crescent moon to the south on exit.

The next stop was the Phillip's auction rooms in Berkeley Square to admire their 'Editions', up for sale in the couple of days following. Passing on the way the Duke Street sub-station on the roof of which we once made our first visit to a Benugo outlet. The main entrance to the Ukrainian church behind the camera was firmly shut, according to the reference 4 properly the home of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family of London. While reference 5 explains that the Eparchy is a sort of semi-detached part of the Roman Church and that the building was actually put up for the Congregationalists. Not to be confused with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine which reports to the Eastern Orthodox Church. No doubt there is some complicated history behind all this.

Then to a viewing of the outside of the window first noticed at reference 6 - a post where I think I confused Chester Cathedral with Carlisle Cathedral, the latter being a much older foundation and for which see reference 7. Rather knocked about in the Civil War and restored in the 19th century. With the east window being described by Wikipedia as 'one of the finest examples of flowing Decorated tracery'.

On into Phillips, where one of the first paintings to catch my eye was a version of 'Olympia', a rather smaller version of which I have in front of me as I type this and which I first saw in the Jeu de Paume in Paris, back in the 1970's. I had thought that this gallery had decamped to a disused railway station on the river, but it seems from reference 8 that it is still a gallery, photography rather than painting, and that they have just closed an exhibition of the work of our own Julia Margaret Cameron, well known on the Isle of Wight.

This version by Jeff Koons - the chap who makes cartoon animals out of what look like brightly coloured balloons - with an estimate of £10,000-£15,000. I think my version is better value, even if it is rather smaller.

The object which attracted our attention, perhaps in the Guardian, in the first place. By one Keith Haring, estimate £150,000-£200,000. I should add that most of the stuff was estimated at under £10,000, and a lot of that a lot less. So there was affordable art to be had.

Lots of stuff by lots of people one had heard of, I thought mostly prints, but looking at the prices in the catalogue - which is not very raisonné - I am not so sure. The biggest number of entries might have been from Andy Warhol. 

But our own people do get a look in. For example Cadaver Hirst, Dame Trace and Bridget Riley. From Hirst we had a few of his skulls, but he now seems to have regressed to nature studies: perhaps he has made enough dosh out of pharmaceuticals and cadavers and now feels free to do what he really wanted to do all along.

There were prints by both Miro (which I liked) and Chagall (which I was not so keen on), and I decided that Miro was the chap who did some work in the French Church in Soho, while BH opted for Chagall. Checking at reference 9, I find that we were both wrong, and that the chap in question was Cocteau. BH wins on points as she got the first letter right. Furthermore, I had thought that the place had once been a cinema, which was not right either. Rather it started out as Burford's Panorama and was bought and repurposed by the French church in the middle of the nineteenth century, quite a long time before the arrival of the cinema. Memory not what it used to be. But see reference 11, from well over a decade ago.

I learn today that these panoramas were quite big attractions in the first part of the nineteenth century at least. See, for example, reference 10.

A print depicting a brothel (aka maison close) by Picasso. 25/50. £1,000-£1,500. I rather liked it. Identified and located by Google Lens today without fuss at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, but they were not into freebies there. So had I known about the real thing a bit sooner, I might have been tempted. 

Phillips offer the one above - framing apart, much poorer quality than my telephone managed - and also the information that it actually went for £2,286. Does that include VAT, premiums, fees and so forth? In any event, a bit too strong for me. Hopefully, had I actually showed up, as a beginner, I would have stuck to my limit.

I have also learned that Picasso did a lot of these limited edition prints. I wonder if they brought in a significant proportion of his income? A nice little earner in his old age?

A nearby left-over. Odd the way the roof covers what appears to be two once separate buildings. Notice also the way that they did not bother with facial decoration at the side, despite having gone to town at the front.

We had thought to take tea and cake at this point, but nothing suitable turned up between Berkeley Square and Green Park tube station, so tube station had it.

References

Reference 1: https://www.inonbarnatan.com/.

Reference 2: https://uk.nakedwolfe.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.delaminakitchen.co.uk/delamina-marylebone/. Clearly worth a look at some point.

Reference 4: https://www.ucc-gb.com/cathedral.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Catholic_Cathedral_of_the_Holy_Family_in_Exile.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-last-day.html.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_Cathedral.

Reference 8: https://jeudepaume.org/.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_de_France.

Reference 10: https://journals.openedition.org/artelogie/796?lang=en.

Reference 11: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/07/plinth-life-2.html. A previous visit to the Cocteau.

Reference 12a: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/10/hpc-2010-later.html. A previous visit to the sub-station. But no mention of Benugo.

Reference 12b: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/10/hpc-2010.html.

Reference 12c: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/10/hpc1906.html. A view source job. Must have edited the title after posting; a title which gets built into the file name at the time of posting.

As you like it

Or, to be more precise, as I like it. With the 'it' being beef fore rib - it being hard to get back rib and top rib these days. I have the notion that standing is better, so guyed to stop it falling over. 

The same, cooked. Quite a decent cut, except that the butcher cut through the bones at the right before I thought to stop him. This cutting might be called chining. This beef from Ben's Butchery in Upper High Street, in 2022, as noticed at reference 1.

This one has not been so cut. Good thick blanket of fat.

And cooked. This beef almost certainly from Master Butchers of Manor Green Road (upper previous management), in 2021, as noticed at reference 2. The Pomerol to the left was well enough, but we never made a habit of it. Maybe it does not catch the eye at Waitrose, the place I am most likely to buy such a wine from.

I remember from Florence (memorable) and then from 2Veneti (not bad, but not up to the Florentine version) a long tailed version, served for two in restaurants as a single rib. 

I could not find a picture (search 'beef fore rib'), but at least the tails have been left on, even if the other bones have been cut out. From the butcher at reference 3. English high street butchers often seem all too keen to trim these tails and to cut most if not all of the bones out. 

While this one seems to be more or less entire. Not sure about the yellow fat on top. And not much white fat: a good blanket of the stuff is good. From the farm at reference 4.

This while keeping an eye on batch No.708. Which turned out quite well, despite a worry that I had left the second rise 5 minutes or so too long - which can lead to bubbles or worse in the crust - a reminder that it better to cook while not doing something else - at least not an important something else - at the same time. And despite appearances, the right hand loaf is the same diameter and slightly higher than that on the left. New yeast and new, higher temperature (225°C).

PS 1: I wonder what the slaughtering arrangements are at Haye Farm? My understanding is that current hygiene and animal welfare rules make small scale slaughtering rather expensive.

PS 2: I forget to make a note of the source for the Haye Farm meat snap above. But Google Image Search turned it up in seconds.

PS 3: slightly later. Rather perturbed to read that the US, the UK and others have suspended funding for UNRWA on the grounds that 'several' of its employees were involved in the Hamas attacks in October. UNRWA appears to employ around 30,000 people, mostly Palestinians, 13,000 of them in Gaza, and exists to help Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East. This seems to me to be a disproportionate response to what might be regarded as an HR glitch in an organisation doing a difficult job in a difficult part of the world. Do we stop funding the Metropolitan Police because they turn up some bad apples - and worse? It seems likely that a lot, I dare say most, people in the Middle East will also regard this decision as disproportionate and it will do our (already poor) standing in that part of the world no good at all. Maybe we will get to know a bit more in the days to come. In the meantime there are references 5 and 6.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/new-beef.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/beef-two.html.

Reference 3: https://www.eastendbutchers.co.uk/product/beef-fore-rib/.

Reference 4: https://www.hayefarmdevon.co.uk/store/p76/ORGANIC_RIB_OF_BEEF.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA.

Reference 6: More countries pull funding from UN agency over October 7 attack allegations: Britain, Italy and Finland put support for UNRWA on hold after agency said ‘several’ staff may have participated - Mehul Srivastava, Financial Times - 2024.

Registration plates

Following the No.38 noticed at reference 1, there has been a scattering of No.40s, a No.33, a No.44 and a No.55. Force not quite with me.

But today there was a consolation prize in the form of a lorry at the Ewell end of East Street, with a paint job and what looked like a custom registration plate, after the fashion of First Line Recovery (FLR). For who, see, for example, reference 2. Maybe getting hold of these special registration plates is not as difficult or expensive as you might think. Visit to the FLR office in Blenheim Road indicated.

The paint job was confined to the cab, but perhaps that will change as time goes on. See reference 3 for a sighting of the other paint job.

Rounded off the proceedings with a snap of one of the two young Wellingtonia in Longmead Road. Too young to score yet, but both seem to be coming on well.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/no38.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-534.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/new-bag.html.

Reference 4: https://www.djgrabservices.co.uk/. Plenty more snaps of lorries to be found here.

Woodcraft

On fine morning about ten days ago we thought to take a stroll around Horton Country Park, the last recorded visit seeming to be that noticed at reference 1, well over a year ago.

When we started - we usually do anti-clockwise - we were pretty much by ourselves, but by the time we were on the home stretch there seemed to be a lot more people about. This being between 10:30 and 11:30 on a Sunday morning.

A notice somewhere told us that they do coppicing on a seven year cycle. Coppicing meaning to me cutting down all the young trees, more or less to the ground, so that they put out new shoots the following year. A good way, as I understand it, of growing posts, bean poles and firewood. Also, as I recall from Brading Downs, a good way of making habitat for red squirrels, particularly if a good proportion of the trees are hazels. Not that we have any red squirrels round here and grey squirrels are close to being considered a pest.

But which does not look to be quite what is going on above, where a selection of the better trees are being left to mature.

Then a bit further round, we came across some hedge layering. Which looks all very well, but I am not convinced that they are not cutting the saplings too far through, that there will not be enough sap getting through to feed the now horizontal stems.

Which may result in something like the above, snapped a bit further along. Still, I suppose I have no business carping, never having had much stomach for this kind of communal activity.

Sheep, small horses (Shetland?), camels (Bactrian) and nilgai all present and correct, over the fence in Hobbledown. Possible redwing.

While the fields given over to polo ponies in the Country Park were looking a bit battered, especially around the gates. To be expected, I suppose, at this time of year.

While barbecues now seem to have been forbidden. Brick barbecues notwithstanding. I wonder whether this was because people having barbecues were not clearing up after themselves or because of planetary health considerations?

But all said and done, a very pleasant place for an undemanding walk. Not as busy with dogs as Nonsuch Park.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/horton-country-park.html.

Reference 2: https://www.hobbledown.com/. The Hounslow branch now seems to be up and running, which it was not when I first noticed it at reference 1 above.

Trolley 623

A trolley captured from the town end of the Kokoro passage. Snapped under the bemused eye of a food delivery driver and returned to the M&S food hall.

Having received an unexpected test message about a prescription being ready, I called in at the chemist to see what was cooking. And after a short interval a bag was forthcoming, not the usual sealed bag from the warehouse - but it was the right sort of stuff. Opened it up at home to find an open sealed bag containing some boxes of pills and a couple of boxes loose. All stuff that I use, all the new stuff as it happens, so they will not be wasted, even though I think their arrival was the result of some glitch in the computer system between GP and chemist.

Carried on round the Screwfix underpass circuit. In the course of which I wondered how many street scenes like that above were to be found in Epsom, with a lane running along the backs of a row of houses. The sort of thing I associate with Coronation Street and up-north generally, rather than leafy Surrey.

Home to polish off the stew already noticed at reference 2. With a stump of chou pointu.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/trolley-622.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-first-stew.html.

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