Back to Hampton Court Palace a week or so ago, with the visit before that having been in mid-August, as noticed at reference 1.
Lots of car traffic on the road leading to the Palace. Was there some kind of festivity going on? I then, in (wannabee) business-like fashion, pull up my RingGo app to pay for parking at the railway station, to find that it refused payment on the grounds that it was indeed a festivity. Presumably some sort of deal that Southwestern Trains, RingGo and Historic Royal Palaces have cooked up. On the other hand, people clearly were buying tickets and the station lady denied knowledge of any festivity. We decided to take a chance, and so far we are none the worse for wear. I think, unusually, I might have been moved to appeal had a parking notice turned up.
Over the bridge, to find that there was a week-long Halloween festival. Resting actors dressing up in sheets for the children. And there were quite a lot of young families and some of the children were dressed up. One or two of them - girls - quite elaborately. BH thought that there might have been some recycling of princess dresses from some other festival.
The lawn which had been given over to meadow for the summer had been mown and was now all ready for the winter ice skating. Not quite what the meadow enthusiasts would recommend, I don't suppose.
The pots outside the Tiltyard cafeteria were still doing well in the mild weather, but maybe they get taken inside after dark.
Nasturtiums looking well in the Royal Cabbage Patch, with the patch as a whole looking to be in quite good shape. Lots of chard showing. They must still be pulling an adequate supply of volunteers. The sort of thing I might even have gone in for myself had I lived within a mile or so.
An interesting take on runner beans, which Google Images confidently identifies as the hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus), a tropical bean which has been around for thousands of years and while Wikipedia is not explicit, RHS is, and the bean can be grown in this country, although, unless there is a long hot summer, it is unlikely to produce a good crop. Killed off by our winters. See reference 3.
Lablab being the result of transliteration from the Arabic.
A show of autumn colour, complete with a convenient bench.
A showy bush which BH correctly identified as Lantana, a plant she remembers about on account of her rather liking an Australian film of that name, a film which we must have watched half a dozen times or more before our DVD machine was retired. But the DVD may have escaped the cull that followed and might be revived for a holiday, the sort of holiday cottages which we rent not being very smart TV. Lantana montividensis according to the ticket - and according to Google Images, who adds the common name 'trailing lantana'. While I read at reference 4 that the plants originally came from tropical Africa and the hot parts of the Americas - from where they spread to south Asia and Australasia.
The twin trunks of a coastal redwood in the wilderness.
Lots of mistletoe to be seen in the trees of the avenues.
While off snap to the right, we had two rival gangs of geese putting up a good display of neck-stretched-forward and hissing. But when the two gangs actually met it all seemed to pass off peacefully enough. Perhaps mating talk rather than fighting talk.
While the Wellingtonia in what used to be the apprentices' garden was not looking terribly well. Will this part of the grounds ever be reopened?
The long water. We did not see the fountain at the far end spring into life on this occasion. Perhaps it had been turned off for the winter. Perhaps the mistletoe will get into these avenues too.
But the late Duke of Edinburgh had been absolutely right. Better to clear fell the old avenues and start over, rather trying to preserve bits of the old.
A fine tractor, snapped in the forecourt.
While this tree, once host to some fine clumps of mistletoe and noticed at reference 5, appears to have succumbed, taking the parasite with it. This despite my reading that host and parasite could coexist happily for years, almost symbiosis rather than parasitic. Perhaps something else was going on here.
Onto our usual café for lunch, possibly called 'Five at the bridge' and certainly next to the Hampton Court Super Store.
My beef sandwich was entirely satisfactory, although it would have been improved by using proper beef, rather than this thin sliced stuff from one of the foodie wholesalers. Slicing which improves neither texture nor flavour - assuming that it ever had much of either in the first place. Most of the supermarkets do much the same thing with their ham and bacon. All very unsatisfactory.
I think that on the occasion noticed at reference 5, something more than a year ago, they were still doing real beef, or I would have commented then.
Back to the station and on to the trolleys of reference 2.
PS: the next morning: there is a piece in today's FT at reference 7 about the forthcoming Common's debate on a new bill for assisted dying, the first time they have had a debate on the subject for a decade, although the Lords got a look-in more recently. First time around, change was rejected by a big majority in the Commons, despite the country at large being in favour - at least as I recall. While now it seems reasonably clear that more than three quarters of the population think that assisted dying should be legalised, in some way or another. There should be choice in the matter of dying. While the Commons remains much more evenly divided, so still rather out of touch with the mood of the times. It puzzles me what is holding them back: why do we in the UK find this so difficult? This with a bill which appears to have been drawn rather narrowly - and involve lawyers - perhaps what the authors think might fly, not what they might, ideally, want. It is not as if many people are Christians with god or religious issues these days, MPs or otherwise. It is not as if large numbers are likely to be involved: a small number of thousands, if that, against a death rate of half a million a year. Maybe, for the first time in decades, I will turn out for a demonstration on 29th November, although I have not yet written to my shiny new LibDem MP, a lady who was once in the military police. Unfortunately, I did not think to raise the issue when she knocked on my door in the run up to the last election. I did write a couple of times to the previous MP, Chris Grayling, whose office efficiently fobbed me off with various platitudes. He was clearly against change and getting him to budge was going to be uphill work, well outside my pay range.
See reference 8 for more, from where the snap above is taken.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-court.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/trolley-746.html.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lablab.
Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantana.
Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/access-denied.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment