psmv5: 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.