Hook Road

I had been warned that I might not feel great for a few days after the procedure noticed at reference 1 and they were right. So a couple of days later, I was not ill, but not full of bounce either. Just about good enough for a gentle stroll around West Hill and Hook Road.

The conversion of the garage block at the Epsom end of Hook Road remains 99% complete, at least from the outside, and we now have a screened off area (left in the snap above) for sitting out, barbecues and so forth. A conversion which started back in 2019 if reference 2 is anything to go by, so a long running story. What on earth is the chap doing it going to do with himself when it finally comes to an end?

I think Amber, who did our new boiler last year, used to live in the back land down the alley running to the right, now houses.

Work on the mosque continues, once the church hall attached to St. Barnabas of Temple Road, once a well-endowed high church operation, now reduced to teaming up with St. Paul's of Howell Hill. This despite a handsome & expensive looking new church frontage, installed perhaps twenty years ago now. The work, I imagine, of a serious ecclesiastical contractor. I believe that they also do good work with people with mental health problems, of which Epsom, with its mental hospital cluster, used to have more than its fair share. See reference 3.

Has the work on the mosque stalled for lack of funds? Things have been quiet for a while. See references 4 and 5.

The church frontage in Temple Road, taken from Street View. And as well as the former church hall, there is also a large vicarage. We used to know the son of the vicar, from whom we learned that the place was a swine to heat in the winter on a parson's salary, well endowed urban vicars being a thing of the past. This one might even have been one of those second career men from the Ministry of Defence or the armed forces, of whom there seem to be a few about. Not just the oil industry coming up with Archbishop Welby. No need for all that Hebrew and Greek Bible stuff these days.

Dustbins apart, a rather flattering view of the place. I dare say if I worked at it I could get rid of the helpful blue cross in the middle.

Pleased to see that the weeping Atlas cedar was still present and correct, even if being hemmed in a bit by native growth.

Home to turn three nuts out of my pocket, picked up in the course of our second outing to the Church House Inn at Holne the Friday previous. They had browned off a bit in my pocket, having started rather green. One dud, one yellow and one white. BH said the yellow one was fine, as was the white one. Rather riper and rather better than those noticed at reference 6. Still failed to spot any actually on a bush, in the hedge.

PS 1: earlier today I was struck by a headline on the front page of a recent Guardian pink job saying that: 'to avoid more cuts, Labour must relax its borrowing rules'. Or put another way, let's have some public cake we can't afford today and hope that private growth tomorrow will pay for it. Track record on growth notwithstanding. Anyway, tomorrow is another day altogether, definitely mañana. I suppose the trouble is that banging on about living beyond our means and needing to wean ourselves off growth - all that jetting off on foreign holidays, all those fancy new cars, all those fancy new kitchens - is a bit tedious. A bit like banging on about save the planet. Doesn't get bums on seats, doesn't get the clicks that more cheerful & jolly news gets. With the result, that nothing much gets done and we just dig ourselves deeper in - while the chaps with all the oil buy themselves a few more slices of London. Maybe the odd country estate. And the chaps in financial and legal services take commission. Solution: time for the people of my generation, the post-war bulge, who have done well out of housing and who are now burning up lots of health and social care to take a haircut. Give the next generation a break.

PS 2: not forgetting that President Putin is one of the chaps with all the oil. And the gas. And the uranium needed to power our upcoming nuclear power stations. Good job we are still pally with the Canadians and the Australians.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/rite-of-passage.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/herald-copse.html.

Reference 3: https://www.stbarnabas-epsom.org.uk/.

Reference 4: https://ipsumconstructions.com/.

Reference 5: https://www.eeis.co.uk/. Clocks seem to be important here.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/green-berries.html.

Trolley 726

Happening to be in town with BH yesterday (Monday) afternoon, as a treat, she minded the rollator from a bench - not one of the find-a-friend variety left over from the days of the plague - while I captured a trolley from the M&S food hall, the first for several weeks. She also commented that the trolley was in mint condition, rather better than those she was used to at Sainsbury's Kiln Lane - one difference being that there they are stored outside.

A proper trolley from Wanzl, good for 100kg, which makes the shopping bag attached to the rollator look rather puny at 5kg. BH thought that you would need plenty of booze to take you anywhere near the 100kg - but then people do do that - and the shopkeeper does not want to have to worry about the possibility of collapsing trolleys.

I rewarded myself with some more English plums, rather different from those which have been available elsewhere, but I shall report on them properly in the proper place. That is to say, mañana.

The newish trees in the market square were mostly looking well in the late afternoon sun, with just the two replacements outside Wetherspoon's a bit feeble compared with the rest of them. Feeble, but alive and not obviously ailing. Maybe there is something wrong with that bit of land which cannot easily be fixed.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/trolley-725.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-529.html. The last outing for Civic Trees, the people who do for the trees. No more long-service council gardeners for that sort of thing. A post which also involves some genuine Victoria plums.

Group search key: trolleysk.

To Holne

Via Chippenham then RD&E for social calls. RD&E being the main Exeter hospital.

Set off in good order, pleased with the organisation which had got us out of house not long after 09:00, to be pulled up a little short of the M25 with what turned out to be a leaky radiator. Crept back to Epsom Autos and from thence to Enterprise, as previously reported at reference 1. Not much more to report, except that I found it a bit power light in the lower gears and I had terrible trouble getting the windscreen wipers under control. Minor complaint in that Enterprise bounced us into buying some expensive insurance just as we were climbing into the car with the threat of massive insurance excesses. It would have been proper to explain them while we were still in the office.

All this meant that I was able to walk some bricks, taking in the dwarf cyclamen at the bottom of the garden, now coming into flower. But not over the brown patch left in the snap above, site of either a very large corm or that of a colony of smaller ones, at the foot of a small bay tree. I had thought the former.

The terms corm, bulb and tuber might all amount to the same thing in this context and the ones that I have seen are flattened spheres in shape, like a small flat turnip. Bing is not much help on the search term 'cyclamen corm size', but Google turns up the confusing snap above. While a bit further down it offers: 'Cyclamen are a genus of about 20 tuberous perennials grown for their pink and white flowers. Most grow to about 10cm tall, although established tubers can reach the size of a dinner plate and produce dozens of flowers'. Do not trust everything that flies under the flag of 'AI'.

Given that we were now starting out late afternoon in a new car rather than early morning in our old car, I decided that M25 then M4 to Chippenham was the way forward. Less to think about when I was tired.

Took a break at Membury Services near Swindon, where I bought a pint of hard core orange juice from Waitrose. Maybe a bit cold and sweet to be drinking it as fast as I did as the journey proceeded. Also a Bounty Bar, coconut version, something we do from time to time when travelling. Also took in the piano noticed at reference 2. 

In the circumstances, I was impressed that BH got us off the M4 and to our destination in Chippenham without fuss. Stopped for a bit there and then checked into the Angel where we found that they have taken to charging to use their car park. Only a fiver, but irritating just the same: I suppose too many people were taking advantage, and when they got around to doing something about it, it was easiest just to go the whole hog.

We were given a very large room with a very large bathroom - this last complete with an iron bath with feet and with a separate shower. While the room contained a good variety of furniture, some of it brown wood. Our cupboard, for example, was mahogany and had started life with shelves, perhaps for storing linen rather than shirts, jackets and hanging things of that sort. Our bed was noticed at reference 3.

The room was in the old part of the hotel, rather than in one of the courtyard sheds or in the large new annex beyond that, which meant we had some stairs to climb. I might have only had a small suitcase, but what with laptop and the odd book, it was heavy enough. I was glad that I had not attempted, the day previous, to carry it from home, over the hill to Enterprise, electing rather to go back for it once we had collected the hire car - and transferred to it the rest of the luggage from our own car, by then holed up in Epsom Autos. The rest of the books were packed separately and, in the event, were not used. But in the matter of reading, even with the Kindle, better safe than sorry.

Breakfast the following morning was a bit mixed. Orange juice and tea bad. Orange and bread adequate. Sausages good. From which it may be deduced that I took sausage sandwiches for breakfast. A bus load of what I took for pensioners from the Netherlands for company. Which made me think that I was not quite ready for bus holidays - something that FIL & MIL (especially FIL) got a lot of pleasure out of in their retirement. And they are very cheap, with a day rate well below what it would cost you for the hotels, travelling independently. I dare say that aspect appealed to FIL.

Waitrose for a spot of shopping, where we found that car parking was operated by the council - machine or Mipermit of reference 5, a parking outfit we were not signed up with. I think we must have done cash.

Decided once again that the straightforward motorway route was the way forward: M4 to Bristol then M5 to Exeter, rather than cutting cross country down to the A303 - a route which I remember as being pretty but time consuming. Took a break somewhere in the vicinity of Bristol, possibly the Gordano Services, just west of the River Avon.

Where we came across a football team from Aveley on the estuary, complete with the odd girlfriend and hanger-on. I think they were on their way to play Torquay United and they must have got up very early in the morning to be at Bristol at the time they were. Another Bounty Bar, this time pushing out as far as one each.

BH got us to a hospital fine enough, but it turned out to be the wrong hospital, or at least the wrong part of the right hospital. The car park was suspiciously empty for a peak visiting time. Shortly after that we found the right hospital with a large and busy car park. Connected to Apcoa of reference 6, which my telephone did know about, so that was alright.

The RD&E turned out to be a large, fairly new, hospital, probably a bit smaller than St. George's at Tooting, but a good deal bigger than our hospital at Epsom. The canteen, for example, was much bigger and better. And one of the courtyards contained a fine sumac, of recent interest. And the lifts started at level one rather than ground. The second time I had come across this convention - with the first time possibly being the South Bank Centre at Waterloo.

Very different to the old red building that I remember, somewhere near the old city walls. But I don't remember what the red was: brick, red rendering or the red sandstone you get a fair bit of in Devon.

From there just the last stretch from Exeter to Ashburton and from thence to Holne, where we arrived late afternoon. Having managed not to scratch or otherwise damage our hire car. A result!

PS: Wikipedia rapidly tells me that it was red brick with white stone trim. I don't remember this last at all. I just remember red, old and shabby. But why? I don't think that I was ever actually inside the place.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/function-rich.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/piano-90.html. 

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/fake.html.

Reference 4: https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/aveley.

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

Reference 6: https://www.apcoa.co.uk/.

Dirty business

For once in a while I have actually read one of those rather long pieces in the Guardian called the long read. They usually look far too heavy for me, but this one, reference 1, for some reason, I actually read.

Once upon a time, more than ten years ago now, a company called ENRC was incorporated in London and was a proud member of the FTSE100. An energy and minerals company which had started in Kazakhstan, but which had expanded to Brazil and in a bigger way to southern Africa. It was owned by a clunch of politicians and businessmen who had done well out of the break up of the Soviet Union, aka dictators and oligarchs. Their operations were a bit wild west, but for a while it suited them to be listed in London, while retaining four fifths of the shares themselves. See references 3 and 4.

Then around ten years ago a manganese mine called Kongoni, owned by the clunch, changed hands for around $150m more than it was worth, that is to say around $150m. The transaction appeared to involve ENRC paying the $300m and then writing the asset down to zero. Lots of shady intermediate companies in funny places. In so far as this involved sucking money out of a listed company which they mostly owned, it is not clear to me what was in it for the clunch. Except that they were probably up to no good: one does not go in for shenanigans of this sort unless one is doing something wrong.

At the same time there was talk of large scale bribery in their other African operations. And a geologist was murdered - a crime which does not appear to be domestic (as it were) and which has not been cleared up. 

As a result of all of which the SFO got cracking. ENRC hired a policeman turned lawyer to help them deal with the SRO, a lawyer who went on (it seems) to play both sides for gain and to lie in court about it. Which fatally damaged the SRO case against ENRC, abandoned last year. Part of this being the widely applied rule that you cannot use tainted evidence, even if that evidence proves the defendant guilty. We are told that the SRO has now set aside £250m to pay damages, should ENRC win their forthcoming case against them, I think for defamation, abuse of powers or both.

The winners in this sorry tale, apart from the clunch, appear to be all the City lawyers who have made a fortune out of it. Hundreds of millions. Plus the more modest sums gathered in by the arguably more dubious types operating around the fringes.

When all this kicked off, ENRC decided that a London listing was not the thing after all, went private and decamped to Luxembourg where they are not anything like so nosey.

My thought was that our green and pleasant land is in a sorry state if we are reduced to this sort of thing to make a living. No so very different from poor countries making a living out of rich sex tourists.

PS 1: maybe our new prime minister, with his legal background, will make a serious attempt to fix the SFO. But I am not holding my breath: it's all just too difficult: Davids do not usually win when up against Goliaths; only in the Bible.

PS 2: I remember going to a talk at the London Wikimania conference, some years ago now, where an editor talked of the abuse that editors editing articles of topical interest can be subject too, enough of it and unpleasant enough that most editors hide behind pseudonyms. Probably not proof against serious attack, but good enough to keep the average yobbo off your back. I dare say the article at reference 3 has attracted the interest and attention of ENRC. If Burgis is to be believed, they would certainly be good for some deniable yobbo-hiring.

PS 3: the mine in question appears to be alive and well, with the snap above not being very old at all. But it does not tell us what it is worth, just that that worth is very sensitive to the price of manganese. Which, like that of most commodities, goes up and down.

PS 4: the good news is that with the cooler weather, the second rise is back under control and batch No.729 of (wholemeal) bread turned out very well. Helped along by turning the oven on a little early, rather than waiting for the dough to be nearly ready, which, of late, has been all too easy to get wrong.

References

Reference 1: how the oligarchs took on the UK fraud squad and won: It began as a routine investigation into a multinational called ENRC. It became a decade-long saga that has rocked the UK's financial crime agency - Tom Burgis, Guardian - 2024.

Reference 2: https://tomburgis.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.eurasianresources.lu/en/home.

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

Third attempt

Concerning the plant first identified by Google Images as Ngai camphor, as noticed at reference 1. Then the flurry of activity noticed at reference 2.

This time, I try a different version of the original snap and Google Images now seems keen on ploughman's spikenard (Inula conyzae), which seems much more plausible. It points me to some useful images at reference 3, only tainted by my failing to find out anything about the ownership or funding of this well-illustrated website (reference 4). And the absence of teeth on the leaves in my snap.

Confusion in that the plant seems to have been moved out of the Inula genus and is now known to Wikipedia (reference 5) as Pentanema squarrosum, another genus in the large aster family.

Bentham & Hooker, once again, supportive if not conclusive.

In the margins I have learned about ray flowers, a feature of the asters generally. So in the snap above of a typical aster flower (Bidens torta), lifted from reference 6, we have five ray flowers - usually somewhat degraded from the regular flower format - and around 16 florets doing the real business in the middle. From which came the old family name of Compositae, for the compound flowers. Think daisies, dandelions and sunflowers.

For the dedicated, a rather more technical description of all this is provided in the aster section of reference 7. Technicalities which I bounced off.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/his-and-hers.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-church-house.html.

Reference 3: https://www.uksouthwest.net/wildflowers/asteraceae/inula-conyza.html.

Reference 4: https://www.uksouthwest.net/.

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

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteraceae.

Reference 7: Guide to flowering plant families - Wendy B. Zomlefer - 1994. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

The church house

We have known about the Church House Inn at Holne for some years now, during which time it seems to have mainly been closed and I don't think we ever managed to eat there, although we did manage the odd drink. An old building, until recently owned by the church and said to have been originally built to house the people building the church adjacent - a story which is not confirmed at reference 2, which talks of the late 16th century for the Inn. We were once told that being owned by the church complicated trying to make a living out of the place, with various things being forbidden.

It is now open again, I think for four and a half days a week, although it does not seem to run to a website and its standing with Companies House, snapped above, is a bit murky, at least to me. The people near Dudley (near Birmingham) at line 3 appear to have the property on a long lease. In any event, not many days to make a living in.

One of the reasons we have kept an eye on the place is that our one-time next door neighbours, some years ago now, used to stay there from time to time, from time to time meeting the then Archbishop Ramsey there, the chap noticed at reference 1. The Inn certainly knows about Ramsey as he is in some of the pictures on the walls, some of them in full regalia. Decent of him to bother to dress up for such a small place. 

But no mention of holidays in Devon in the Chadwick biography that I can find - not that it is the sort of biography where one would expect to find domestic details of that sort. On a higher plane altogether.

Having somehow ascertained that it was up for Sunday lunch, the day after we arrived from Chippenham we decided to walk down the hill from Forestoke to the village and give it a go. With rollator naturally, if only because we could take it in turns to take a break on its seat on the way back up. The first item of interest was the plant snapped above, which put us in mind of the mystery plant at reference 3. Google Images seems quite keen on hemp agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum), one of the other Eupatoria or Eutrochium maculatum. This last ruled out, I think, on the grounds that it is a north American plant. All in all, not much further ahead.

There were blackberries and some of them had quite a good flavour.

There were also some dwarf cyclamen coming into flower, which was odd as my understanding was that you usually grew them at the base of trees where the ground would be very dry in the summer when they were dormant. Certainly, my father did very well with them at the foot of the two hazel nut trees flanking his short drive. And the white ones in our own garden do best at the top of the garden where there are lots of trees large and small and the ground is rock-hard in the summer. Which is probably not the case above. Drained yes, dry no.

We arrived at the Inn quite early, around 12:00, which meant that they could fit us in, despite the reserved signs scattered about. We both opted for the roast beef Sunday lunch, which turned out to be rather good. It may have been that we did well to take an early lunch, when it was all quite fresh and had not been standing around in bains maries for hours.

On a subsequent visit we learned that the white confection to the left of the beef was a cunning blend of parsnip, swede and cream, a blend that the chef knew from his childhood. A blending which did involve a blender. It was rather good and BH has plans to give it a go herself.

A chef who is clearly signed up to the theory which says the greater the number of trimmings and vegetables the better. Variety more important than quantity or quality. A theory I am not signed up to: I prefer to get a decent whack of a few things that I can get stuck in to. But not a problem on this occasion.

Next to us we had some twigs in water, which had come into some leaf and which had grown lots of roots. Had some potion been added to the water? How long would the twigs last?

While across the bar, we had an ancient radio, very like the one my parents bought in the 1950s, but of a brand I had not heard of, that is to say McMichael. I learn from reference 4, that it was a serious company in its day, doing serious work during the second war, eventually being absorbed by GEC in 1981. My memory is that the white piano switches (as they were called) were fashionable in the 1950s, but were frowned on by radio cognoscenti who preferred the mechanically more reliable rotary switches, visible here right and left.

The hours one used to spend trying to pick up signals from strange places far away - with some of the radios of this sort having rather more stations than this one, some of them exotic indeed. Television being, at the time, quite some years away, at least in our house - although my elder brother did manage to install a 9 inch set - housed in a substantial & fairly fancy wooden cabinet - in his bedroom. Maybe it had valves and stuff like that and got quite hot when it had been on for a while.

The radio was found, we were told, in a skip, more or less in working order.

Before attempting the climb home, we paid a visit to the church, which sported a very small side door. No idea why.

Also a pair of old, if not particularly big, yew trees. One of them is alleged to have been planted around 1300, around the time the church was built.

Piano still there, captured at reference 5 before the piano series was properly underway, well before the search key was added for convenience of retrieval. But captured just the same, that is to say, back in 2018: I had forgotten that the series was that old. Possibly made by the Broadwood who featured in the history of the RLYC, noticed at reference 7. As I recall, he was well regarded there because he was very rich and, despite being in trade, was not pushy. Knew his place in the world.

The ancient painted screen, an unusual survival. Pulpit also unusual, not least because it has detached steps, to be found in the north transept. Presumably not much used. The columns may well be granite monoliths, as found in a number of churches in the area.

A nice feature was a collection of photograph albums with a fine collection of photographs taken in and around Holne. We rather liked the idea of being able to give your family treasures to the church, where someone might actually look at them, rather just sticking them in the attic or chucking them in the skip. The archbishop is to be found top left, his wife top right.

The pews were relatively modern, so there must have been some money in the system, despite the small size of the village and the steady decline of church life.

A long serving vicar got pride of place outside. Now, it seems, better known for his grave marking the site of a cross which did time as a gatepost - rather than for himself or his long reign over the parish. See reference 11.

Strawberries in the lane on the way home. Not something one usually sees in quite this format.

A fine display of what we thought might have been old man's beard. However, today, the Google Images majority suggestion is golden clematis, and I agree with him.

The view to the east, approaching Forestoke.

Later in the day, I thought I would take a look at Holne moor, opting for rollator and road rather than the gravel track which takes one out onto the moor proper. But it served well enough to remind me why one goes to places like Dartmoor. The near silence and the views are quite something.

I got a little past the top of the hill between Forstoke and Venford reservoir, far enough past to be able to see part of the reservoir, this being made easier by most of the surrounding trees having now been chopped down in the interests of biodiversity or something.

PS 1: Broadwood does not check out properly. A Thomas Broadwood was the second son of the the original John Broadwood and he did go into the family business early in the 19th century, best known to Bing & Google for having given a piano to Beethoven in 1817. A Thomas Broadwood was the commodore of the RTYC in the 1870s, so the dates are wrong. Then Google turned up reference 8, from which we learn that Broadwood the piano people made a piano (No.48433) for Broadwood the commodore for his yacht Minerva in around 1875, a piano which eventually found its way to Bonham's in 2010. Then at reference 9, we have another Thomas Broadwood, son of the first one, 1821-1881, with mentions of both Ryde and Torquay, the former at least smelling of Cowes. This may well be the yachting one. On the other hand, this morning, I can find nothing in the RLYC book about his being a good chap, despite being in trade. Maybe I conflated him with another good chap.

PS 2: I tried the long search key at reference 3 again this morning. Google finds no hits. While Bing is more generous, turning up a variety of odd stuff, including two hits on the blog. Clicking on either of them takes one to 2024 as a whole, rather than to the post in question, that is to say reference 3, but it is still odd that Bing does rather better on this one than Google. In the kind of searches that I make, it is usually the other way around. Maybe Bing is not so insistent on a search result being pointed at from lots of other places, that you are only visible if enough other people (excluding your friends and relations) are pointing at you.

PS 3: had another go at hemp agrimony this morning, using a cropped version of the first snap, a version which brought out the organisation of the leaves better. Google Images sticks with hemp agrimony. I got confused by finding in Bentham & Hooker that hemp agrimony in the Asteraceae family is not related to the agrimony genus in the Rosaceae family. Having got through that, and turning up the relevant Wikipedia entries, I decided that Google Images had got it right. The only fly in the ointment being the very weak toothing visible in just a few of the leaves. Reading the Bentham & Hooker entry suggests more teeth. My take-away being that, somehow, there is botanical knowledge lurking in Google's mountain of disorganised (unorganised?) data. And I am reminded that the old-fashioned approach of Bentham & Hooker, together with its careful, hand-drawn illustrations, provides good confirmation. Maybe not so much use in making the identification in the first place. And no further ahead with reference 3, which now appears to be something quite different.

PS 4: OED knows all about this muddle of agrimonies, without being very clear about how the muddle came about. But one common thread appears to be the medicinal uses of both. Another is Mithridates Eupator, the ruler of the kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia from 120 to 63 BC, and one of the Roman Republic's most formidable and determined opponents. According to OED, he also found time to take an interest in botanical matters, inter alia, seeding the present confusion.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/ramsey.html.

Reference 2: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1107381?section=official-list-entry.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/his-and-hers.html.

Reference 4: https://www.mcmichael.org.uk/history.htm.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/church-snaps.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/piano-1.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/shanklin.html.

Reference 8: https://www.bonhams.com/auction/18138/lot/22/the-minerva-piano-broadwood-no43833-circa-1875/.

Reference 9: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Broadwood-135.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holne.

Reference 11: http://www.dartmoor-crosses.org.uk/holne_churchyard.htm.

Reference 12: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_Eupator.

Action next week

I have been advised by a correspondent of a new-to-me type of crane that does not stand four square upon the ground. Rather, the bottom fifty feet or so of the tower is angled (to the left in the snap above), presumably to take it clear of the road over which the crane looms. Makes the recent crane over our Wetherspoon's look a bit cheesy. As noticed at reference 3.

The sign on the crane says British Land, which does not help, and I cannot see a sign for the hirer. Nor can I see anything like it at reference 2. Is it a special, cooked up by some fancy firm of consulting engineers?

Site visit next week clearly indicated.

In the meantime, I am grappling with Patrick White's 'The eye of the storm', last read around ten years ago if the archive is to be believed - for which see reference 6. Grappling anew because I was in a hotel room a few days ago with just a Kindle for company (as far as reading material went) and that is what I landed on.

Lots of good stuff in this book, particularly (so far) about the relations between private nurses and a difficult, terminal patient, even if it is a bit sweaty at times, sweaty after the way of Franzen, last noticed at reference 7. But then, the early 1970s were liberated times. Much more nudity in television drama than you get now. Can't remember about the usually unmentioned bodily functions, failures and accidents of old age.

That apart, there seem to be various flaws in the Kindle text and I frequently can't make sense of chunks of authorial text. Other chunks have to be read several times before I can parse them correctly, find my way to subject, object and verb. Or perhaps put them aside and come back to them afresh a bit later.

More serious, a lot of his observations about people are outside my range. The story told is usually plausible enough, but I can't judge how likely it is. Do people - even this or that invented person - behave like this in real life? Which seems to me to be a failing: a book should convince in that way. One should believe in the characters in it.

We shall see what the days ahead bring. I expect I shall persevere.

References

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

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

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/plums.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_the_Storm_(novel).

Reference 5: The eye of the storm - Patrick White - 1973. First editions available on eBay for around £90.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=Patrick+white+storm+eye.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/crossroads.html.

Rite of passage

Our first day back in Epsom saw another rite of passage, a procedure called an angiogram (heart flavoured), for which see reference 1. A procedure about which I had got a bit windy, but in the event they got me there and got me through it without much fuss at all, give or take a bit of back-friendly wriggling to get me from the procedure bed to the recovery bed afterwards. A credit to all concerned.

For most of the half day I was there, I was able to admire the view snapped above. Rollator by my right hand side, off-snap below. Quite apart from its help in getting me in and getting me out, it was handy that I had taken my own chair, as they were not provided and I did not want to be lying down for too long. My two tethers were plenty long enough to allow this modest amount of movement.

Refreshment in the form of sandwich, teas and biscuits. Pitched just about right.

Four buttons from obscure parts of the body were left over as souvenirs, two of which were snapped above, before I came across the other two. The buttons, together with my wristband, should provide excellent props for playing hospitals with the granddaughters, both of whom seem to be very keen on that sort of thing. Not into proper activities like building Duplo towers any more at all. Things were different a couple of years ago, as can be seen at reference 2.

A person-to-person handover to BH - they did not go quite so far as to ask her to sign a receipt - and home to mince, rice, carrots and more runner beans. Runner beans from Morocco from Sainsbury's - which tasted much more like real runner beans than those I had bought from the butcher in Manor Green Road and noticed at reference 3. 

Followed by bread pudding and a few plums. English plums from Waitrose, adequate rather than good.

All in all, a tiring but satisfactory day. A small scar in my right wrist, maybe 3mm long, to show for it.

PS 1: dazzled by previous procedures, I did not read the notes provided properly and got the idea that the small pipe pushed into one of one's arteries carried a small camera at its tip. This was quite wrong: the pipe carried dye not camera, and the image came from an X-ray machine outside. Presumably the dye disperses very quickly and needs to be dispensed very near the site to be imaged. This error probably contributed to aforementioned windiness. 

PS 2: much has been written about the brain needing to use prior expectations to inform its analysis of incoming data. Is that blur in the bushes a brightly coloured bird or a discarded sweet wrapper? One result of which being that the subjective image can flip, more or less instantly, from one to the other. In the present case, prior expectations blinded me to incoming data, despite it being clear enough on the page. At least with hindsight.

References

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

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/towers-of-duplo.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/fake-181.html.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/03/following-post-of-16th-february-i-can.html. A previous rite, complete with clerical error in the file name.

Uneasy

[Malcolm Macarthur leaving court during his trial for murder, Dublin, July 1983. Liam Mulcahy/Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection/Getty Images]

Reference 1 is a piece in the NYRB about the book at reference 2, this last a book built around a brutal and stupid double murder, in Dublin in 1982. The perpetrator having been born to a modest amount of money and a life of arty leisure - who then turned to crime when the money ran out. The perpetrator having appeared incognito in the novel of 1993 at reference 4, an incognito appearance from which he appears to have picked up a few tips. The present book supplements the public record with a series of interviews with  Macarthur, by then freed on parole and living in Dublin - having served getting on for 20 years in prison. In which connection, I remember once reading that one is unlikely to be of sound mind after 10.

Tóibín - but possibly not O'Connell - makes a link back to a double murder in 1882 by a group called the Invincibles, one of whom - Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris - goes on to have a small but presently relevant role in James Joyce's Ulysses. O'Connell's interest in all this sort of thing has a good pedigree! He also make a link to the jumping Jim of Conrad's 'Lord Jim'. Why exactly did he do it?

Much of the book seems to be about how murderers get on when they are released. The image they have of themselves and the images that we have of them. How those images are built. How the murderers relate to the people who know who they are and what they have done.

All of which makes me rather uneasy. I do not think we should be giving platforms to criminals, punished, reformed or otherwise. They should live quiet lives and seek peace in some more private way.

There is public interest in the sense that the public, in the round, like to read about all this sort of thing in the newspapers or - more likely these days - to watch all about it on television. But I am not so sure that there is public interest in the sense that we learn something useful about how to head off such murders, how to manage, contain and corral potential murderers, to get them onto a better path. And if there was, maybe it would be better confined to the relevant professions?

There is also the consideration that all this happened less than fifty years ago. What about the feelings of the families of the victims?

I remember being similarly uneasy when, quite some years ago now, the New Statesman published the occasional article about crime & punishment by a reformed criminal, once a fairly serious criminal. Probably old fashioned robbery or safe-breaking rather than drugs - but serious crime nonetheless, involving criminals quite apt to use serious violence on each other if not on others.

I shall read reference 1 again and reflect further. Maybe even graduate to John Banville, of whom I had not previously heard, but who is a big enough deal to be the subject of O'Connell's doctoral thesis (reference 6). Maybe, having downloaded it in seconds, I will start there.

PS: a quick peek at reference 6, reveals O'Connell to be a man who still believes in Freud. Good for him! The title was, with hindsight, a clue.

References

Reference 1: Haunted by Fiction: In Mark O’Connell’s A Thread of Violence, the murderer Malcolm Macarthur lurks in the gray area between life and literature - Colm Tóibín, New York Review of Books - 2024.

Reference 2: A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder - Mark O’Connell - 2023.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banville.

Reference 4: Ghosts - John Banville - 1993.

Reference 5: The Book of Evidence - John  Banville - 1989.

Reference 6: Narcissism in the fiction of John Banville - Mark O'Connell - 2010. Thesis, Trinity College, Dublin. 281 pages or 185Mb.

The home run

The home run started from the Royal Lion Hotel of Lyme Regis. Having eaten quite late the evening before, I was not up for the bacon or sausage sandwich that I usually take in such places and settled for some brown toast. But, rather to my surprise, half grapefruits were on offer, something which used to feature in childhood meals - yellow rather than the red here - hard put to say which meals now - but which I have not taken for years, in part at least, because grapefruit and warfarin did not mix very well. But I took one on this occasion, without the childhood castor sugar, and really enjoyed it, almost to the point of taking a second. Is this something I shall repeat at Epsom?

After mulling the matter over, with the indecision which seems to be part of everyday life these days, we decided for the A303 as the way home, on the grounds that, while it involved long stretches of sleep-inducing dual carriageway, it did not require any brain work. It was a route we both knew well. The plan was frequent stops, both to stave of sleep and to stave off the back pains which seem to come with sitting in a car seat for any length of time. I blame their sculpturing; one is held far too firmly in a fixed position and one's body is given no room for manoeuvre, for the wriggling about that seems to be needed to keep my back up and running.

So the first stop was Cartgate, a place which we have used many times over the years. A place for picnics, comfort breaks and café food. A place which I did not get around to noticing in these pages until around ten years ago, at reference 3, which must have been many, many years after we first came across the place.

Then there was a stretch of A303 which included a lot of large laybys, large enough for there to be a strip of grass or something between the road proper and the layby, an access lane and a parking lane - with hedge and countryside beyond. One could get out of one's car at such a place without worrying about lorries and such like hurtling towards one. We took one of these as our next stop.

I got out the rollator and did a few circuits of the layby, coming across the bit of country litter snapped above, on the broken ground between the parking lane and the substantial hedge. The rest of the animal was a few yard further along. But how had it got there? Road kill chucked into the hedge and disturbed by foxes? Could a fox take a small deer? No idea how long it had been there. Maybe if I watch 'Vera' for long enough I will get some idea, with she and her team seeming to go in for remains of this sort. One mile west of Mere according to a sign.

There were also sundry items of small litter, abandoned by careless motorists and one small pile of plastic bags containing what appeared to be mainly empty plastic bottles. What sort of a person would drive to a layby without disposal facilities to dump such stuff?

The recent rain had bought out some large slugs, one of which is snapped above, somewhere between two and three inches long.

While BH, contrary to her usual response to slugs in our garden at Epsom, found a more attractive one to play with. Very fine horns it had too.

Setting off again, we had a curious incident of dazzle, whereby we appeared to be facing a battery of maybe four searchlights somewhere on or near the central reservation. This turned out to be caused by a temporary road sign, I forget what shape or what it said, but I do remember it as yellow and black. Curious because one expects this sort of thing to be caused by some freak reflection of the light from the sun, tricky in this case as it was late morning and the A303 heads roughly ENE, so most of the time the sun would have been ahead of us, over to the right. Maybe the bit of A303 in question had swung around to the north, giving the sun more of a chance.

The last stop, as it turned out, was the Holiday Inn at Solstice Services at Amesbury, which we may not have been using for as long as Cartgate, but which we have been using for quite a while. Contrariwise, it appears to reach these pages some years earlier, at reference 4.

As it happened on this occasion, it was able to show me what a staghorn sumac should look like at this time of year, as snapped above. Which might have simplified the discussion exemplified at reference 5.

We also went beyond coffee and biscuits, going so far as to share a veggie pizza between us. The pizza was fine, well suited to the occasion. Good service. And I learned that I do not like to take my black coffee while I am eating. 

After which we got back in good order, without further incident, despite the awkward junction of the M3 and the M25, despite the novelty of the T-Roc hire car from Enterprise. The young man who took it in even went so far as to thank us for the good care which we had taken of it - by which he might have meant that plenty of hirers do not trouble to clean out the inside when they are through, as BH had done.

Bouncy enough after all this to stroll into town to check that Wetherspoon's had reopened, which it had. It looked busy enough on this Sunday afternoon on the terrace, but it was not a suitable time for a beverage (as will be explained at the proper place) so I did not get to inspect the shiny new interior.

PS 1: I noticed today that Faraday's (the old electricity board showroom) is having what looks like a major refurbishment too, despite my dim memory being that it was quite smart inside. Perhaps all the pubcos feel the need to jostle for the considerable student trade available from the Art College, the Dance College, NESCOT and no doubt elsewhere.

PS 2: and a late update from Cypress, TX. Shrimps are in. For po-boys I refer you to Tesco's at reference 6. Plenty of other stuff out there about them.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/wellingtonia-113.html.

Reference 2: https://cartgatelodgecafe.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/12/gyproc.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/04/hotel-inspections-continued.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/sumac-revisited.html.

Reference 6: https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/shrimp-po-boys.html. Don't much like the look of the Tesco's bun: not much good to start with and fresh out of a freezer by the look of it. But then, the factory bread in the US is said to be pretty bad too. Is that why bagels, flat breads, corn breads and so on are so popular? Maybe they are  made in smaller factories. Maybe they can better stand the treatment.

Wellingtonia 113

Captured heading north out of Crewkerne on the A356, just before its junctions with the A303, at the turn off for Stoke sub Hampden. A little to the west of the Ham Hill which gives us the famous Ham Stone, for which see references 2 and 3. An interesting and unusual place which we have visited in the past, but of which I cannot yet find any trace in the archive.

Being near the start of a long journey in a not very familiar vehicle, I did not feel like stopping for proper confirmation and evidence, but I thought this snap from Street View would do for now, pending our next visit to the area.

Marked by the orange spot left in the map above, lifted from reference 3. A map in which the label for the A356 has slipped onto the much larger A303.

PS 1: further investigations reveal that the hill was visited in 2011 and noticed at reference 4. Quite a long time ago now.

PS 2: along the way I got the idea that Eric Gill sculpture outside the church of St. Thomas at Hanwell, noticed at reference 5, was carved from Ham stone, with Gill observing in a letter to the architect (Maufe) that the large design with large detail was what was needed with this rather soft stone. But checking, I find that memory has got this quite wrong and the stone in question was Weldon stone. Perhaps this was a case of wishful thinking: the brain knew I was looking for connections, so obliged. Just the sort of thing that Gemini would do.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/wellingtonia-112.html.

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

Reference 3: https://www.somerset.gov.uk/locations/ham-hill-country-park/.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/08/andover.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/st-thomas-hanwell.html.

Reference 6: https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/stones_ahrb_2005/cfm/Public/details/RockDetails.cfm?RockCode=WELDON. Not particularly helpful here, but the best that I could do.

Group search key: wgc.

Home comforts

Despite more eating in cafés, restaurants and public houses, we do try to maintain some home comforts when we are on holiday. 

One part of this is that BH will usually bake a Dundee cake (Delia Smith style) to take with us. So holidays might bring out a tendency to snack, but it does not have to be the sugary confections offered on High Streets. Perhaps overtly sugary would be more accurate, given the there is plenty of sugar in a Dundee cake, but it is not in your face. It is not in the form of some kind of sticky icing plastered over the top. Another part is that she will usually boil up a bit of gammon which can be taken cold with salads. An easy way to provide for several meals, without recourse to ready meals.

My contributions are to the kitchen cupboard. So I make sure that we have adequate supplies of orange lentils (usually from Ontario or Turkey), saucisson sec (usually, of late, from Bastides) and hard yellow cheese (always Lincolnshire Poacher from Neal's Yard Dairy). To be fair, one can usually get orange lentils these days, with the veggies having got a foothold in most food outlets, but sausage and cheese is not so easy. So in Devon, white pudding yes, sausage no, at least not without beating our way to a proper supermarket, which we do not usually manage.

To which BH adds basics like potatoes, onions and carrots. We might have to scratch around a bit for proper green vegetables. And bread. Will we manage to keep out of the way of all that sour dough swilling about? Not just the veggie outlets these days.

So there is relief from the diet of Bidfood, supplier to so many of our food outlets.

Provided only that one has access to a kitchen. Which tends to rule out hotels. OK overnight, not so clever otherwise.

References

Reference 1: https://www.bidfood.co.uk/.