Trolley 637

Trolley 637 was marked down on Station Approach on the way to London and captured on the way back, some hours later. Intervening in the nick of time, while two school girls, possibly from Rosebery, were debating whether it would be fun for one of them to get in and the other to push it off on a joy-ride. I wondered afterwards if this was the sort of thing which landed trolleys in odd places on the outskirts of town centre.

Picked up a second large trolley on the way down the passage and returned both to the M&S food hall.

Noting in passing that Rosebery is a girls' school which sports a lady executive head teacher and a gentleman head of school - with the latter seemingly functioning as what used to be called the deputy head - or the first lieutenant (or No.1) on a middle sized ship of the Royal Navy. More complicated on a large ship which runs to one or more commanders as well as a captain. US aircraft carriers go further still: according to Gemini, carrying no fewer than three officers with the rank of captain. One of whom is the Commanding Officer, one the Executive Officer (or Exec or XO. Their funny name for No.1) and the other the Commander Air Wing (CAG). One wonders what the Russians and Chinese do.

While Rosebery was a right wing (for an old-time Liberal) Scottish politician, an aristo who married money and had a weakness for the horses. A graduate of Eton, so one of the chaps.

PS: later: thinking that I ought to check Gemini, I tried and failed, although I did turn up naval press releases from which one could infer that both the commanding officers and executive officers were captains and I did turn up reference 3, which talks of embarked rear admirals. Going back to Gemini, he is a bit sniffy, saying that rear admirals generally did their commanding from their own flagships, perhaps a destroyer or cruiser. Wouldn't want to cramp the style of the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier. But he is reduced to waffle when I try to find out where he gets his stuff on command structures from. Notwithstanding, on what I have so far, I suspect that on this occasion Gemini has provided a better answer than Wikipedia.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/trolley-636.html.

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

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_company.

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