Labels

Following the red grapefruit experience at Lyme Regis, noticed at reference 1, I have been taking red grapefruit. Worries about edoxaban derived from the warfarin I took before, appear to be unfounded, with the story at reference 2 being 'Apart from being careful with alcohol there are no foods or drinks you need to avoid while taking edoxaban'. On the other hand, they are quite sweet and quite wet, which pits them against a desire to cut down on sugar and a need to restrict water intake.

I take mine cut in half with a teaspoon, an ordinary teaspoon rather than the serrated teaspoon considered important when I was young. Maybe two halves to a session. While BH, before she stopped using grapefruit, used to peel hers like an orange, although nothing like as neatly as those turned up above.

Today, I was moved to wonder about the sticker bearing the number #4288, fruit numbers which I have wondered about before - but it took a little while to track this down to ten years ago using the #4105 code for a Cox's apple (a rather abused term these days). Attempts using search terms like fruit, label or sticker having failed. I got there in the end via reference 4 and then using the code for the Pink Lady apple.

Price look up codes appear to be looked after by the people at reference 5, although I have yet to work out exactly what role these codes have. No stickers on today's red grapefruits from Sainsbury's. No stickers on the fruit in the snap above, lifted from their website - which has served to remind me that while you might put stickers on grapefruits and apples, you are not going to bother with strawberries or cherries. Not least because you might have a problem with sticking.

Perhaps something to fill the gap left by the pause in trolley collecting.

Then, prompted by reading of Judi Dench sponsoring deserving young actors through drama school, I started to wonder how actors fared in the 19th century, when I don't suppose there was much in the way of drama schools, but there was a a great deal in the way of travelling repertory companies. Perhaps aspiring young actors and actresses just attached themselves to such a company and gradually moved up from entry level tea making, through noises off to the dizzy heights of actor in rep. Rather in the way of an old-style a craft apprenticeship.

I imagine that the numbers of actors now is hugely less than it was in the long-lost days of rep, with television and film not taking up anything like the slack. But we do have lots of theatre schools - even if some of them, like the one we have here in Epsom, are mainly about turning out dance fodder for musicals and cruise liners. An occupation from which one presume that most are ejected before they are thirty. But the young ones do brighten up the Epsom pavements on warm days!

I associate to the book about Constable noticed at reference 5, where I am sure there was talk of wannabee painters from humble backgrounds attaching themselves to established painters as studio dogsbodies, there to learn the trade. Wannabees from monied backgrounds had an easier time of it, as ever.

I close on a more optimistic note. I learned yesterday that Bidfood and Brakes have not quite sewn up the catering food supply business between them, coming across a lorry from Magma, an outfit which is clearly in that business too.

I learn from their website all about the new-to-me smash burgers, where the smashing is all to do with the way that they are cooked, rather than with the way that they are made.

PS: Wikipedia claims that the term 'dogsbody' has a Royal Naval dried pea origin. A story which is at least half confirmed by my OED, in that it or 'dog's body' was lower deck slang for pease pudding. But it does not confirm the extension to persons, which perhaps came later. On the other hand, taking the opportunity to check that 'toggle' was present (it was), a word I used in a recent game of Scrabble, I was pleased to find that 'toller' was also present, scoring several head words, mainly (but not exclusively) to do with tolls or taxes. Perhaps a couple of column inches.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-home-run.html.

Reference 2: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/edoxaban/common-questions-about-edoxaban/.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=4105.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_look-up_code.

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

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/constable.html.

Reference 7: https://www.magnafoodservice.co.uk/.