Morden Hall Park

Morden Hall Park is a National Trust operation near Morden and a place which BH has been angling to visit for a while. So a recent visit to the nuclear medicine department at St. Helier hospital, being a split-shift business, was an ideal opportunity to tick this one off.

For some reason, while planning this outing, we wanted to find out who had preceded Morrisons in Sutton High Street, a place I have visited occasionally in the past. Was it Tesco's? Bing was not much help, beyond telling me that Morrisons was presently closed for refurbishment. Google did rather better, telling me that Tesco's had closed their High Street store back in 2000 or so, attracting adverse comment both for the loss of the facility and for the way that the 100 or more staff had been treated. There was, at the time, some talk of ASDA. So we don't yet know whether Morrisons succeeded Tesco's, and if so, whether they rebuilt, refurbished or what. Perhaps if I grubbed around in the Sutton planning database I could find something, but I can't see that happening.

We elected for train to Carshalton, then bus (No.157) to the hospital, which provided a reminder of what a grand building Carshalton Station had once been. Inter alia, lots of chimneys to make good use of all that company coal.

We arrived a little early to find a car boot sale going strong across the road from the hospital, handy for those stuck there at a loose end on a Wednesday morning.

But we, the first part of our hospital business done, took tea and bun in the volunteer run café and then proceeded by No.157 bus to Morden Hall, except that we did not manage to get off until we got to Morden. Not a big disaster as it was only a short walk back the park. We got in through the main entrance, bottom middle in the map above, just below and to the left of the car park.

Greeted by this grand entrance to what was once the stable yard. They have one similar at Polesden Lacey and a rather grander one at Wimpole Hall. Perhaps they were de rigueur in the 19th century for rich people wanting to pass themselves off as county people.

While this place is now some kind of alternative school, whatever that might mean. Probably mixed up with what was the snuff mill, although straight ahead looks more residential than commercial.

Not enough time to look around properly, but what little we did see made a further visit look like a good idea. Maybe with more time, we would turn up a Wellingtonia. It is the sort of place which might run to one.

Fencing ancient and modern. One comes across the stuff in front out in the country (or on the Isle of Wight) from time to time, dating from the days when iron was cheap.

We also came across some fish in one of the canals. Or perhaps mill streams. Or leats?

Back to the hospital to finish our business, with BH being deposited in this cheerful corner with the rollator. On my back inside some large machine for half an hour or so, not terribly comfortable, with no clues being offered as to the passing of time. To help the passing of which, I tried visualising numbers, as described at reference 1. Not terribly successful then, or later, when I have tried again from time to time.

In the margins, I learned about hot and cold toilets. The former for those who had had the special dye injected, the latter for everyone else. A refinement they did not seem to bother with outside the nuclear department.

Afterwards, to the other café to take, in my case, tea and humus sandwich, this last being a first. Not bad, if not great. Better on warm flat bread in the way of proper restaurants. BH took a BLT, which was made with ham rather than bacon. Subsequently, no less an authority than the Great British Chefs confirmed my theory that the 'B' stood for bacon and that bacon was not a US synonym for ham. Noting in passing that I first came across the term BLT in a US scene in one of Len Deighton's Harry Palmer thrillers, many years ago now, when I was young enough to enjoy reading such stuff. Younger readers may care to consult reference 3.

Out to the bus stop where we had the choice of No.157 to Carshalton, or No.2 to Epsom. We elected for the latter, which turned out to be a long and bumpy ride, if not without interest, taking us through parts of town which we did not know. We also found that Rose Hill, roughly the site of the hospital, must be something of an eminence, as from the right place on the No.2 bus route you can see both down onto the towers of the City and, in the other direction, across the downland of Surrey.

We passed the Wellingtonia outside St. Paul's church of Howell Hill, now teamed up with St. Barnabas of our own Temple Road. Things have moved on since they felt the need and had the money to build St. Paul's back in the 1960's, more than half a century ago now. We spotted the Wellingtonia previously scored at reference 4, to where, to be fair, it took me a good few seconds to run them down, to come up with the right search key.

Separate shopping when we got back to Epsom. I ordered some meat from Ben the Butcher and then visited Waitrose where I took a cheese loaf - which turned out to be very like a cheese scone in loaf format - some Spanish ripen-yourself-plums and some water, of which I was then in need. Slightly irritated that I had either to buy fancy water or six half litre bottles of cheap water. I settled for the latter, to find that cheap bottles were very thin, so thin that it was easy to get water all over oneself when opening them. Taken with some of the cheese loaf on a bench in the market square.

Then back home, I felt the need of lentils. 8oz of lentils to three pints of water. Carrot, onion and saucisson, maybe 100g of this last. Butter for the onions. Took me about an hour start to finish.

I suspect that BH ended up stewing the plums. Too foreign to be eating raw.

PS 1: amused to read in yesterday's (Monday's) Guardian that the Australians are still flogging the Roger Hollis business. They must still be cross that we lied to them about it back in the days of Mrs. Thatcher: this Five Eyes business only went so far. Last touched on in these pages, quite recently, at reference 5. Which led me to wonder how much damage a Director General of MI5 could actually do if he was also working for the Russians. MI5 is a bureaucracy where most action is collective and a bad apple would have to be very careful in what he did or he would soon be caught. And there is no need for a Director General to actually know many secrets of real operational importance, say secrets about the guidance of drone missiles. Perhaps we ought to operate an exchange programme, whereby they have our chap and we have theirs. A good way of increasing the level of trust between us.

PS 2: in the margins of this post I was reminded of reference 6 and got as far as Amazon. But I decided, in the end, that £25 and 500 or more pages was too much for me, even if it was described as compulsively readable (which I thought improbable). I have got plenty enough to read as it is - interesting take on a disastrous muddle that this book might well be. Originally brought to my attention by a review in the NYRB.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/galtons-numbers.html.

Reference 2: https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/ultimate-blt-sandwich-recipe.

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

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/wellingtonia-66.html.

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

Reference 6: The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq - Steve Coll - 2024.