Trolley 755

Mystery shoots coming up in the back lawn. Google Images turned up various fungi which looked like this, but without names. Not that I have given it much to go on. If they ripen into something with a bit more structure, I dare say it will do better.

While this one, a house plant supplied by a correspondent, looked easy enough, with its very distinctive leaves. Which proved to be the case, the prayer plant (Maranta leuconeura) from Brazil. Lots of varieties, widely grown as a house plant. Rather striking flower included at reference 2.

Botany dealt with, I can back to trolleys, with this assembly captured in the council car park between Station Approach and the High Street. The two trolleys were clearly from M&S, but I was not sure about the baskets, one dented, which had blue plastic covers to the handles. Tesco blue, but there is no Tesco anywhere to hand, so I took the whole lot back to M&S, to find that their baskets now have black plastic covered handles - I had been expecting green - and that there were a few blues in the stack. Perhaps that was the last iteration. 

I had thought that I had better put the dented basket aside for someone to dispose of or otherwise deal with, but an older gentleman, clearly not bothered by the dent, had it away before I got around to it.

On the way back from M&S, I took a snap of the now finished refreshed front garden at the Marquis, with giant new awning visible at the back. I dare say the idea is that the garden is now sufficiently enclosed and sufficiently heated to make it a viable smoking area during the winter to come. I was told that the builders left Tuesday past and that the grand reopening was on the Thursday. Which is as may be, but I have yet to pay my inaugural visit to inspect the new interior paintwork. Will it be up to the high standard set by Wetherspoon's across the road? 

While up on the Meadway roundabout, I noticed that the long dead small tree is now loose, might fall and ought to be removed. The sort of thing that I would do myself if I lived on the roundabout.

Given the hole in the top - which may be unnatural rather than natural - I would think that between five and ten years ought to be enough to rot the roots enough for the stump to be rocked off its foundations and lifted out. Although, my memory says that it is rather longer than that, since before I retired, which is more than fifteen years ago now. Not much evidence in the archive, just references 6 and 7 which are relatively recent and so not much help as to the actual date of decease. But that said, given the fungi snapped there, perhaps a fungus person could help?

I imagine that the tree had been moribund then dead for some years before they actually chopped it down to the stump.

PS 1: in the margins of this post, I happened to put my hand on the little book about Whitbread's, which had found its way into one of the piles of books in the study and which had been noticed at reference 3. Idly turning the pages, I came across an early nineteenth century Whitbread being instrumental in the rebuilding of Drury Lane theatre after it had been destroyed by fire - at a time when it had not been long built. A political & brewing Whitbread who went on to commit suicide in 1815, with part of that act being the fall of Napoleon, whom he greatly admired - hopefully for his civil reforms rather than for his continual and bloody battles. By the looks of it on the Internet, a large and handsome theatre, which I do not remember visiting, although I have cycled up Drury Lane many times. The catch there being that the theatre's front door is in Catherine Street rather than Drury Lane next door. Clearly a place to be inspected at some point.

Will I be tempted back to the theatre? Sigourney Weaver as Prospero? Tom Hiddleston as Benedick and Hayley Atwell as Beatrice Sadly I have not previously heard of these two.

PS 2: when you click on an image in the foregoing and get into image  mode, the little 'X' top right to get you out again appears to have gone missing, at least on my laptop. But it is there, just invisible.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/trolleys-753-and-754.html.

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

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/raynes-park.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Royal,_Drury_Lane.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Whitbread_(1764%E2%80%931815).

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/11/cheese.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/trolley-436.html.

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