Trolley 613

Trolley 613 was captured round the side of the new fast food joint - Rio Grill - which has taken on the 'Plaice To Eat' site in the middle of Epsom. A place which we should give a go. We liked the place before well enough, even if we did not use it very often.

A rather elderly trolley from the M&S food hall - or at least one which had spent quality time outside, to judge by the degree of oxidation of the cage. Does stainless steel - described by the French as INOX - oxidise? Are trolleys made of stainless steel?

Returning the trolley to the Ashley Centre entrance to the food hall, and then carrying on towards Smiths, I noticed that the fakes noticed at reference 2 were actually extruded, hollow, white plastic sections with a wood effect finish. Much the same as the stuff you make the frames for double glazed windows out of. My worries about whether they really were fakes were well misplaced.

Onto the Screwfix passage, where this trolley must have arrived in the past few days. I dare say a younger person with very strong fingers could work it up the fence and somehow get it over the top, but I doubted my strength and worried about the edoxaban flavoured (think warfarin) bloodshed that might follow a scrape. I then fell to wondering about how one might do it with less risk, but still single handed.

I had the grappling iron, a pulley and suitable rope. All I was missing was the twelve foot pole needed to give one the clearance needed to swing the trolley over the top. And even then, one could do with an apprentice to help.

And now I think, maybe lashing together a couple of shorter poles would do fine. A couple of frapped round lashings, probably as taught by the Boy Scouts, would be plenty strong enough to hoist a trolley into the air. A possibility, perhaps when we have suitable visitors.

PS 1: Bing seemed terribly keen to help, so I did not bother with Bard on this occasion. So from Bing and reference 3, I learn that I was probably a member of the 5th Cambridge Scout Troop and that my school was quite prominent in getting scouting going in Cambridge before the first world war, that is to say well before my time there. I suspect that this sort of rather military flavoured youth club - I associate to the Fascist outfits of the 1930's - is no longer considered to be a proper feature of a go-ahead, co-educational public school and has been allowed to wither away: but what happened to the small field they owned in West Runton, on the Norfolk coast, and which was used for the annual Scout camps? Complete with large supplies of hay with which to make bivvies? What happened to the Scout Hut at Hills Road? Probably another baby-and-bathwater job: there was some good stuff in among all the uniforms, flags and parades.

As I recall it, the Scout Hut was at the bottom right hand corner of the site snapped above, now a line of cars. And all the buildings to the left of the larger car park were playing fields, competitive sports then being thought important - even if I was no good at them and was relegated to the lower orders. The long thin building middle right was the CCF building - and the part of the car park to its left was the parade ground. More military flavouring - which might come back if we do not succeed in containing President Putin's colonial ambitions in other ways.

PS 2: there is an allegation at reference 4 that taking frapping turns on a round lashing, weakens the join rather than strengthens it. I don't believe it: I put my faith in frapping. And I don't tend to get in a lather about fracking either, at least not from the point of view of earthquakes.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/trolley-612.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/fake169.html.

Reference 3: https://www.rabbitmail.co.uk/cam_scouts_hist/history/70years.html.

Reference 4: https://scoutpioneering.com/2014/01/27/four-different-lashings-to-extend-the-length-of-a-spar/.

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