Kensington: Warming up

Before Christmas, off to Kensington for a spot of day care at the Royal Brompton. First thought was to get the District Line from Wimbledon, but investigation suggested that travelling via Victoria might be better so that is what we ended up doing.

I was surprised at the station to see an advertisement for jobs at AWE, the people that run a number of sites to do with our atomic weapons, including Aldermaston, a former airfield outside London, to which I marched with the CND occasionally, as an adolescent. In those days, I believed that if the UK - which still had pretensions to be a great power - withdrew from nuclear weapons, it might have made a difference. These days, the world at large is not that interested in what the UK gets up to, but we continue to spend plenty of money on nuclear weapons, not they are not really independent any more, as we depend on the US for various important components. And I have no idea whether the weapons that we do have would make much of a dent in Russian defences, should push come to shove. Maybe the money would be better spent on drones? Or upgrading our air defences, said to be in poor condition, about on a par with our schools and hospitals. On the other hand, I dare say the military side feeds the civil side, which I believe that we do need, certainly for the time being. So I suppose I still believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament, but am drifting towards being an agnostic.

Not clear whether CND still exists, with the website offered by Bing no longer working. And Gemini would probably count it as a political question and decline to answer!

But back in the sixties, there was no doubt that nuclear weapons was the Ministry of Defence and privatisation had not been invented. You might have seen discrete advertisements for scientists and engineers in the broadsheets, but I don't suppose you would have seen an advertisement at Epsom Station.

Made it to South Kensington without further incident and walked down to Sydney Street where we checked into our hotel, part of the Brownsword family of hotels, to be found at reference 3. Possibly two townhouses which had been very tastefully converted into a hotel. Our room was of modest dimensions, up on the third floor, overlooking the street, but cunningly and pleasantly designed. They had clearly spent some money on their décor consultant. And we were let in by a very pleasant young lady.

From there we strolled down to the Brompton, to orientate ourselves and confirm the arrangements for the following day, in particular what to do, if anything, about medication. Interested to find that Thames Water are as busy in the Royal Borough as they are here in Epsom, with a very impressive hole in the road just down the street from the hotel. I think it must have been what they call 'essential maintenance' rather than an emergency, as they were not working overnight.

From the hospital, we strolled back to the branch of Carluccio's by South Kensington tube station, a chain we once used to use reasonably regularly, but most recently at Cambridge about two years ago, as noticed at reference 4. I don't know whether it still is a chain, or whether the few branches still up and running are really independents - perhaps once enterprising local managers - who pay the administrators to use the brand.

This branch was pretty busy at 18:00 on a weekday, but they could fit us in. To find that the soup was much better than I was expecting, possibly oxtail. Beer in a bottle by Moretti. Followed by a sharing platter which did fine - I think we had taken lentil soup for lunch and did not need a big meal. Let down a bit by their bread, oily and salty to remind one that it was foreign, but otherwise undistinguished. That moan aside, the place was fine, and did what we wanted at the time.

And so back to the hotel to commence my fast. Only broken at 06:30 the following morning with the mouthful of water needed to take my pills.

PS 1: the day before had seen a haddock lunch, and a couple of days later we had a cod supper, as noticed at reference 5. But what happened at lunchtime on this day is not recorded.

PS 2: I think the branch of Carluccio's that was at Earlsfield is now a branch of Gail's. A chain which is presently nearing its peak?

PS 3: reference 6 is another book which I probably got from the Raynes Park platform library (sometimes RPPL in these pages) and which I have had good use out of. Two snippets this morning. First, you can make copper into a very hard alloy by adding a small amount of beryllium. Something the ancients never twigged onto - while Wikipedia is on the case at reference 7. Second, there is a huge, once important, vein of near pure copper on the southern banks of Lake Superior, just to the north of the Ottawa National Forest, probably not named for the capital of the next door country. See, for example, references 8 and 9. In the margins, I learn that mining is big in this area and to mine or not to mine is a very active question for the people that live there.

References

Reference 1: https://www.awe.co.uk/.

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

Reference 3: https://www.brownswordhotels.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/foreign-parts-continued.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/panned-fish.html.

Reference 6: An introduction to the mineral kingdom – Richard Pearl, J. F. Kirkaldy – 1956, 1966.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium_copper. 

Reference 8: https://www.geo.mtu.edu/KeweenawGeoheritage/BlackLavas/Copper_Mining.html. The source of the snap above. Also: '... The Mid-continent rift is the most important and notable location on Earth for native copper.  This is truly a cosmic oddity, because copper in nature is typically found as a sulfide.  Indeed Goldschmidt classified copper with a group of elements called “chalcophile”. So why does copper occur in the Midcontinent rift as native copper? This is a major puzzle...'.

Reference 9: https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2020/06/copper-mining-history-lake-superior-minnesota/.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Harbor,_Michigan.

A quiet day

A calming down day after all the festivities - and about all I managed in the morning was a Middle Lane anticlockwise, near enough 5km according to the Ordnance Survey route gadget.

Into the Ashley Centre to come across a trolley very like my own, not something that happens very often. Must be some previous model, with my own (left) still being this year's model if reference 1 is anything to go by.

Time to stock up on Waitrose essential red grapefruits, the craving for them not yet having completely faded, although it is not as strong as it was. Took some mildly discounted cherries while I was at it; 360g of Royal Hazel from South Africa. They looked a little tired, but they tasted well enough. Were they from the same shipment that furnished the cherries noticed at the end of reference 4?

About 10p each - given that I got around 40 of them for around £4.50.

The trick was to count them without touching, which I found I could do reasonably reliably by grouping into fives, then tens. Much easier for some reason than the pebble counting noticed at  reference 2.

A shorter circuit later in the day, kicking off with a fine crescent moon in the pale southern sky, together with what I believe (from reference 3) to be Venus above. Although there is a yet to be resolved complication with Saturn, which is supposed to be in the vicinity. Where was it? Try again tonight?

I dare say the telephone could be persuaded to do a better job, but I don't suppose that I shall get around to it.

PS: a bit more effort at the nifty reference 3 and I get there. Saturn a bit to the left of the moon and Venus - but not as bright. Clearly need to take the monocular out with me.

References

Reference 1: https://www.saljol.de/en/aluminum-rollator/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/counting-pebbles.html.

Reference 3: https://www.timeanddate.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/dover-patrol-one.html.

Dover Patrol Three

This being the third and last installment of odds and ends from Epsom over the festive season. The snap above being the southern entrance to the Screwfix underpass on the evening of Boxing Day.

A fine mutton (actually lamb) broth taken on the day after. Don't usually make very good gravies and soups with lamb, but on this occasion I was helped along by a furtive stick cube. Furtive in the sense that BH added it on the q.t. The use of greens for the vegetarian component was spot on: a strong enough flavour to balance that of the stock cube.

More Argentinian cherries from Waitrose, variety Bing. Once again, dear but good. According to Wikipedia, a variety named for a senior Manchurian Chinese agricultural worker in Oregon in 1875, well before Microsoft took the name up for its search engine. Presumably there is no-one left around from the originating orchard to complain.

The next I caught this van on my way to the underpass. The nearest I got to No.39 since the capture of No.38 back in January of last year (reference 4).

Despite the van being both a bit scruffy and not in central London, the driver told me that these were diplomatic plates. Carcheck declined to play, the first time for a while. Maybe diplomatic plates are excluded from common-or-garden lists of registration plates, the sort that you or I can get at.

A little further on, another hire trolley from Wanzl, with its distinctive white handle. Escaped from Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane. The handle of my trolley being visible lower right.

One of those things one passes probably many times before noticing them. In this case, one of a couple of large arrays of solar panels on the roofs of the school at Pound Lane. Perhaps all those Acting Deputy Executive Headteachers are good for something. Maybe I can turn up a picture of how the school used to look, assuming that it was all built in one go, before this century's extensive round of extensions?

Another being these two posts at the exit of Manor Green Road, advertising different aspects of the applicable parking regulations. Less than three metres apart, one each side of the sidewalk. I don't recall noticing either post before, but only one of them appears to be new.

The chicken dinner which stood in on New Year's Eve for the wrecked soup noticed at reference 1. The main business being butter, garlic, onion, left over rice, left over chicken and fresh mushrooms. A little left over stock. Not too impressed with the own brand noodles from Sainsbury's, which I found a bit bland, but they served well enough. I dare say the beans were from somewhere in Africa.

I should perhaps have added a little something for colour, perhaps peas or carrots.

It was quiet in Epsom on New Year's Day but I was pleased to come across these Karrimors, probably a good deal newer than my red ones, which are still going strong, but which must be fifty years old now. Furthermore, the attachment of the frame to the bicycle looks a bit ad-hoc, so I must take a look at mine, which I suspect I will find to be equally ad-hoc, if perhaps a little less conspicuously so.

Ashley Centre firmly shut, along with Waitrose and M&S. Wetherspoon's up and running though. A lot of the smaller shops in the High Street were open, although not Pearl the Chemist, on whom I rely for all my pills. Luckily, need did not arise on this day.

Sadly, it looks as if our print shop has gone down. A shop which had a lot of expensive looking equipment and which provided a good service on the rare occasions that I had occasion to use it. Maybe I have got used to reading stuff online and don't need the hard copy any more, at least not very often.

I thought that the creative type who made this image had perhaps had some fun with his technician, actually making this glass up for real. Possibly quicker than faking it up with Photoshop or whatever it is they use for such activities.

Sainsbury's alive and well. My first visit to the Middle Lane extension to the Screwfix circuit since my hip kicked in.

Snapped in Middle Lane. Seems a little early in the year to be genuine.

An environmental crime scene under investigation in the Screwfix passage. Perhaps the chaps at the council have been watching too many police dramas on telly.

A bit wet later in the day, so having got rather wet earlier, I decided to cut my second outing short. But this did mean that I took in this fine nest of trolleys on Station Approach. They really are missing me!

Ball pein hammer all ready to crack open the Christmas chocolate orange. A proper one from Terry's. As tradition requires. I managed it with just the one blow with the flat end. Damp patch the result of putting my wet woolly hat down in the wrong place. Tempest against the next day's outing. That is to say yesterday.

PS 1: it will be interesting to see what Sir Nicholas Clegg does now that he is leaving Facebook after six years, at the grand old age of 57. He talks as if supping with the devil was worth it - and I dare say it was interesting for a chap with his various talents. And I assume that his departure is all to do with having someone better aligned to the impending Trump in his chair. Facebook needs someone who can do convincing Trumpspeak. Or rather Trumpsqueak.

Rather to my surprise, he makes ten appearances in these pages, with the first being reference 2. Seemingly about the death of a forgotten enterprise to build a new bridge between the ruling classes and the ruled classes, that is to say the Great British public. Gemini, to his credit, seems to know all about it - although he declined to play when I asked about Clegg's involvement. Off-limits.

PS 2: our first frost for a bit, this snap being taken Friday morning.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/dover-patrol-two.html.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-freedom.html.

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

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/no38.html.

Reference 5: https://www.pearlchemistgroup.co.uk/pearl-chemist-epsom.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/festive-lacey.html.

Magic

Yesterday, I came across a children's book about unicorns by one Daisy Meadows, one of a series of same. A relative of the boxed set snapped above. But inside, I read that the copyright was owned by Working Partners Ltd, and that the book was published by Orchard Books, part of Hodder & Stoughton, part of Hachette. Roughly speaking, anyway. To be found at Carmelite House on the Victoria Embankment. Ida Mason and Conrad Mason get special mentions.

At which point, it occurred to me that Daisy Meadows was perhaps a collective, rather than a person.

At which point, Bing takes me to reference 2 from which I learn that this is indeed the case. Narinder Dhami is the most prominent, although she alternated for a while with Sue Mongredien and she may now have passed the principal's baton to Rachel Elliot. No doubt if I was a proper geek I could convert the table in Wikipedia into an Excel Worksheet and do all sorts of clever stuff. But I forbear.

I learn from reference 3 that Dhami was born in Wolverhampton and her big seller, presumably under her own name, was the novelisation of the film 'Bend it like Beckham'. Some ten years younger than I am, still writes, but now lives in Shropshire with her husband and her cats.

While search for both 'daisy meadows' and 'orchard books' at reference 3 draws blanks. As does Narinder Dhami. However, at reference 4, I do turn up some hits for 'orchard books', although not the right ones. Then, a few more clicks, and I find myself at reference 5.

And here I seem to have struck gold. Dhami exists! 

Working Partners Ltd is a bit more tricky, owned by the Coolabi Group Ltd, but does look to be alive and well in Kingsway - and I have not yet been sent off to the Cayman Islands - or anywhere like that.

From all of which I deduce that publishers, authors and copyrights can be as tricky as (beneficial) ownership is in some other companies.

Just got Ida and Conrad Mason to sort out now.

References

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

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

Reference 3: https://www.hodder.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.hachette.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://www.hachettechildrens.co.uk/.

Reference 6: https://coolabi.com/. Plenty of children's livestock to be seen here.