Horton Lane

A long time ago, I used to walk what I call the Horton Lane Clockwise most days of the week. Down to Christchurch Road, up to Horton Lane, along Horton Lane, through Ewell West, then right down Longmead Road and so home. A walk that used to take me around an hour and a half.

I then switched to the Ewell village anti-clockwise, until that was interrupted by the plague, during which I survived on a diet of the Jubilee Way run on the bicycle. Then during 2023 things tailed off a bit, with either abbreviated versions of the the anti-clockwise or cycling the clockwise.

Record keeping, as it turns out not up to it, not making it clear whether a recent Horton Lane Clockwise was cycled or walked. I suspect mostly if not all the former. Which means that yesterday's walk might have been the first for a couple of years or more - and took me getting on for two hours. Searching the current volume, which starts towards the end of 2021, for 'horton clockwise' only returns visits to the Country Park, the place where nilgai are to be found, where we also do a clockwise walk, but that is not really conclusive. While search of the previous volume, turns up a definite walk in June 2021, reference 1, getting on for three years ago.

Lots of trees in white flower on the edge of the Common, just before the turning into Horton Lane. Whitethorn, blackthorn, damsons or something.

While the honeysuckle box, behind and slightly to the left, was not looking too well at all. Perhaps they need a bit of care and attention to keep them in good shape, to keep the brambles off them - although the ones at the bottom of our garden, in a rather shady position, get just a light pruning most years and seem to do OK on that. For this one in better days, see the middle of reference 2.

Lots more white flowers in Horton Lane. Plus on the right, the sort of tree at the sort of time of year that might have served Sue Scullard of reference 3 as a model.

Hawthorn just starting to come into leaf, seemingly from the bottom.

Not to mention the many Wellingtonia, already taken into that account.

While water was continuing to fall out of the bottom corner of Hook Road Arena. Perhaps with all this talk of new housing, the future of the Arena is a bit doubtful - and no-one wants to put in expensive land drains, as they did in Court Recreation Ground, perhaps twenty years ago. It is also probably the case that that ground gets more use for youth football and such. Whatever the case, I should be sorry to see all or part of the Arena go - but I don't think I would be moved to object or protest. If that is the best that the council can do to make more land for housing available, so be it. That's what we pay them for.

Home to read about chicken farming in the Ukraine at reference 4. It seems that there is a large agribusiness called MHP centred in the Ukraine but active in other places, for example in the Balkans. The boss was once close to power in the Ukraine, but rather than become an oligarch, as he might have done in Russia, he has become a chickenarch. Or perhaps an agriarch. He gets lots of loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Poles are unhappy about the threat to their chicken businesses. The company, for some reason, is incorporated in Cyprus, but we can't really hold that against them, with lots of otherwise respectable UK outfits incorporated in all kinds of funny places, or at the very least, deeply entangled with people who are. Then while MHP has a Wikipedia entry, the only website given is the rather odd 'https://www.mhp.com.ua/en/glorytoUkraine'. Not the sort of thing one would expect of an international agricultural operation at all. But then again, they are fighting for their survival as a country.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/pork-feast.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/malden-rushett-and-one-tweet.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/gnashed.html.

Reference 4: European funding for Ukraine chicken magnate angers farmers: Development bank has poured nearly $1bn into large agribusinesses in war-torn country - Andy Bounds, Raphael Minder, Barbara Erling, Financial Times - 2024.

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