Wednesday, 19 February 2025

Corruption or what?

We suppose that I live in a large and important country with a large civil service. It also has large armed services, but that is not relevant here. Civil servants who might work hard and well, but who do have nicely padded terms and conditions. Things like security of employment, defined benefit pension plans and sick pay. Maybe even prayer rooms and prayer time. Maybe even table football machines scattered around workplaces.

Suppose also there is a civil service department responsible for building and looking after the country's dolmens, structures like that snapped above from South Korea. For some reason I know not of, they are terribly important. The population at large is very attached to them.

But we then have a drive on waste in the public service and parachute in a businessman with large powers. He announces that the Department of Dolmens is just a bunch of wasters and sacks the lot, nicely padded terms and conditions notwithstanding.

A couple of days later, he works out - perhaps he knew all along - that we really did need the dolmens after all. Not a problem he says, sezzee. I just happen to own a company which does dolmens. And the people who work in it do not have nicely padded terms and conditions. They are lean and mean and will do a good job for a fraction of what it was costing. We will worry about the maintenance contract in slow time.

In many places this would count as a corrupt practise. The sort of thing that in parts of the world of the south, for example in South America, might get you impeached or thrown into jail.

PS 1: 'sezzee' being an allusion to the stories of Brer Rabbit, last noticed towards the end of reference 1. Maybe they are still alive and well in the southern states of the USA.

PS 2: in my old world of privatised government IT, maintenance was where the contractors made their money. Their build price was attractive and we did not pay enough attention to the change & maintenance contract which came with it and which, over time, was far more valuable. The contractors ran rings round us. They were much better at hustling and bustling than we were. I associate to the story of an eminent civil servant in the Treasury climbing up a ladder to put a star on the departmental Christmas tree, because even he baulked at the amount of money that the contractor with the building service contract was going to charge to do the job for him. It is not recorded whether he actually had to bring in his own ladder from his nicely padded suburban garden to do the job.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/after-windrush.html.

Tuesday, 18 February 2025

The interchange

A few days ago we were bright enough and the weather was bright enough for a visit to Wisley, the first since last August and noticed at reference 1 - although the Wisley Interchange did get a recent outing at reference 2. Bright enough that a flower pot on the patio shattered overnight - although to be fair not a proper plant pot, rather one of those plasticised versions of the terracotta flower pots of old. Plant now popped into a new pot, root ball undisturbed. We shall see how it gets on.

There was a lot going on at the junction, but it was hard to see anything while driving and trying to remember how to get into the right lane, that is to say a lane which was not queuing to get onto the M25. For some reason, the queue coming north up the A3 looked a lot longer than those on our side.

Found our way onto the new slip road to take us to Wisley, a new slip road which looked to have taken out a fair slice of countryside. No doubt some farmer - or perhaps some institutional investor in farm land - had done alright.

I took some snaps of the scene in the car park, in case we forget we were had left the car, easy enough in these sorts of places. Sector 'N' ought to be a good clue. Just got to remember the car park number?

Trolleys for the locomotionally diverse were not made by Wanzl, in the way of most supermarket trolleys.

Marsanz of Spain of reference 11. They look to be a substantial operation, so given that they have got to Wisley, odd that I have not come across them anywhere else. Perhaps won't now that my serious trolley hunting days seem to be over.

I chickened out of one of those grease-ball sausage rolls which are all the thing these days and settled for tea and rock cake. While I was waiting, I puzzled about the very long stretches of fake beam above. In the end, I could find the joins, the stuff did come in sensible lengths after all. But the joins were very neat and I thought that they must have used special sleeves glued inside to keep the joins nicely lined up.

Then there was the question of all the ladies quilted coats down to mid calf, while gents coats, like my duffel coat, barely reach my knees. Despite diligent search in men's departments. I associated to the much longer outdoor coats you see in old photographs, from the days when people dressed to be out , to be walking, in all weathers.

Getting into the gardens, there were plenty of snowdrops and BH explained that she had read that this name - one of a number once in common use - came from the German and that in early modern Germany they were also the name of a popular type of earring. The 'drop' bit of the name. Read all about them at reference 4. Icy herself is snapped above. Presumably her nom de plume.

Some of the flowers themselves.

Something green which was doing well and which I thought would be a good test for Google Image. Which I now find allows image qualifiers on my laptop, a feature which I thought had been confined to telephones. It seems to think that it is an evergreen fern of some sort, possibly Blechnum chilensee, the Chilean hard fern. Which looks about right, but I am not quite comfortable. The good news is that this fern is likely on sale in the Wisley plant shop.

Some camelias in flower to be seen.

I think a hellebore, of which there were quite a few to be seen. Google agrees, the only catch being that the best comparator it offers is in an RHS post on Facebook which I have not used for some years, for reasons of political correctness.

One of the various bamboos we came across, on our way to the big green house. Plus trolley, lower right. Wisley generally was trolley friendly.

Lots of interest, as ever, in the big green house. We started with the orchid display, left as you go in. Showy things and one could see why one might collect them. But would I give them the necessary time if we had a suitable conservatory or greenhouse? Never really been drawn to having such a thing, even back in the days of allotments - where I did not even go as far as a shed. Just a large compost heap, fenced in with pallets - which were not rodent proof. But then, given the allotment site and its proximity to common and green space, one was not going to get rid of them.

A fine specimen of a flower which we got to know in the days when we paid regular visits to the Canary Islands.

A plant I really like for some reason, although the really big ones have been thinned out. One now gets bigger ones, outdoors, at Ventnor Botanic Gardens, although there they are losing out to competition with some short, stout, palm trees.

A bit cold on exit, but we dived into the Glasshouse Kitchen, which seems to suit us well. Not usually crowded. Light meals. I took soup, pasta and a tin of something fizzy from Pellegrino. Probably lots of calories, but it set me up for the rest of the visit. BH went a bit lighter. Musak seemed a bit loud on this occasion, but I dare say the staff like it.

Some winter aconites. I think they will look better when they have spread and look a bit more wild and a bit less planted. They do them rather well at Hampton Court Palace, in the Wilderness.

Then a bit further on, these ones were a bit more like it. 

Pushed on to a quick visit to the pinetum to see how the redwoods were getting on.

A good sized Wellingtonia.

A coastal.

The weeping Atlas cedar is starting to be a bit more impressive, slow growing though it is. The heap back left is just a small hay stack, one of several resulting from the autumn grass cut. And we, at first, had thought something more horticultural.

Probably the same cedar as that snapped more than five years ago at reference 5.

Another coastal.

Another Wellingtonia, a juvenile.

The car park was thinning out by 15:00. Back to our car to notice that we have a missing hub cap. Not yet replaced at the time of writing, but we are cranking up to it. Pay through the nose at Ford or go to Halfords?

It looks from the archive as if the last occasion was something over four years ago, at which time we went to Ford and from thence to their Partsplus operation in the shed across the road from the then posh new Ford Centre. See reference 6. Which was also the occasion on which I acquired Bentham & Hooker from the Raynes Park Platform Library - two volumes from which I have had good value. The two blue volumes of the top row of the last snap.

We tweeted a kite as we were coming up to the M25/A3 interchange, flying north. Also two very serious looking white telescopic cranes, at rest. So not the ones featured at reference 2, although I dare say they would turn up if one drilled down.

Rather more daffodils on the exit roundabout at the Esher end than we had come across at Wisley. There will be even more in a week or so's time. A roundabout which includes the Esher Manor Care Home of reference 8, a place which appears to sport a grand piano, although I was unable to stop the video and try to identify it. A place which used to have a name involving sunlight or sunshine: we used to think that 'sunset' would be more appropriate, but perhaps the customers would not like that. Any more than they would like 'ender homes' as the other side of the 'starter homes' coin. As it were.

I associate to the people who used to make kitchen scales and all kinds of other weighing machines. Now, it seems Avery Berkel of reference 9, from where the snap above is taken. Presumably a Soho in the West Midlands, not the one in London - or New York for that matter - where the word is short for south of Houston, this last being a road which runs east-west across Manhattan island. 

A presume confirmed by reference 10, where I read that the place has a history.

And so home to the crab salad previously noticed at reference 7.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/back-to-library.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/surrey-affairs.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/fake-172.html.

Reference 4: https://www.icysedgwick.com/snowdrops-folklore/.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/wisley-themed.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/cheese-time-again.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/crabbed.html.

Reference 8: https://www.averyhealthcare.co.uk/care-homes/esher-manor/.

Reference 9: https://www.averyberkel.com/en/.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soho_Foundry.

Reference 11: https://marsanz.es/.

Monday, 17 February 2025

Confused of Epsom

[United has been at the forefront of a wave of consolidation in the rental market for construction and industrial equipment]

Woke up this morning to take a look at the FT, and a piece about construction rentals caught my eye as it was illustrated by a picture of a vehicle from Sunbelt Rentals, an outfit which seems to be getting steadily more visible here in the UK, here in Epsom even.

Taking a look, I find one piece saying that Sunbelt is owned by the Aperion Group (reference 3) and then a company called Ashtead (reference 2) which also claims to own it. Ashtead look to be a much better fit. But I suppose the Sunbelt brand could have an owner who chooses to franchise chunks of the operation out, probably geographical chunks, to others - thus confusing the ownership structure as seen by the man-in-the-street, that is to say me.

Ashtead is a publicly listed company with shares trading at around £50, while Aperion is the investment vehicle of one Christian Angermayer. I dare say it would be easy enough to find out something about him. In the meantime, his website is decorated with soft focus images of ancient artefacts from the Mediterranean region.

How United Rentals, Herc and H&E fit into this, if at all, also remains unknown. Other than that Herc was a spin-off from Hertz - a once prominent car rental operation, now not so prominent.

[Ex Reddit. Type 96A main battle tanks of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Ground Force]

Much more depressing, I read at reference 4 in Friday's Guardian (paper format), that while in the last 20 years or so Europe has increased its defence spending by 25%, for the US we have 66%, Russia near 300% and China near 600%. Which makes Europe look very weak compared with the three big powers, all three of which are behaving aggressively - and all those tanks are not just there for show - as we learned after the massive Russian build up on their long border with the Ukraine. This despite Europe being very rich. Rich pickings, maybe.

Maybe it would suit all three big powers for Europe to be weak. Their top table is quite crowded enough already.

Maybe we are going to have to put all those new hospitals and all those foreign holidays on hold for a bit. If the Russians can put up with pouring so much of their treasure into defence - aka war - I guess we are going to have to match them - and the United Nations is pretty much an irrelevance.

Or do we snatch at the latest communiqué from the Trump Tower? For which see reference 5.

Trusting to the Guardian and its reputation, I have not attempted to check the figures used by Wintour. Not have I attempted to check that the tanks are what they say they are - or even thought around how I might go about that.

Oddly, earlier, too lazy to walk downstairs and get my copy of the Guardian, I tried to find the article in question by search on my laptop, with neither open search with Bing nor search within the Guardian website turning it up. Maybe I do not subscribe enough to the Guardian to get an effective search function. In any event, I ended up walking downstairs.

References

Reference 1: Herc gatecrashes United Rental’s H&E takeover with $5.3bn bid: Rival bid for H&E follows wave of consolidation in heavy equipment rental industry in recent years - James Fontanella-Khan, Oliver Barnes, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 2: https://www.ashtead-group.com/.

Reference 3: https://apeiron-investments.com/.

Reference 4: A failure to Trump-proof: Europe only has itself to blame over its Ukraine humiliation - Patrick Wintour, Guardian - 2025.

Reference 5: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/defense-stocks-drop-after-trump-says-defense-spending-could-be-halved.html?msockid=0aacbea93f5561f91afeabb83eca60cd.

Jigsaw 20, Series 3, Report No.3

This snap from mid-morning on the ninth day. Progress has remained rather slow, and the last quadrant has only just been started. On the easy bits involving the scarf and hat which have both distinctive colour and texture and so are easy to pick out of the heap.

Still well short of the point where a piece picked at random, rejecting only pieces from stretches of background, can be placed more or less immediately.

Came away from this to a newsletter from the tree huggers at reference 2, complete with a map showing the location of their supporters. Some of which are surprising. Yet to work out the simple colour code.

But if you click on a heart you get part of an address. And if you then do something else - I know not what - you get taken in gmaps, where I was impressed by the nice tidy grid of minor roads to the north of Detroit.

Zoom in and it is not quite so tidy. But you still have the grid as a framework, which must make it a lot easier to find your way around than in the outskirts of our big cities. The advantage, I suppose, of starting with a clean sheet. Give or take a few First Americans.

[California redwoods on the Boy Scout Tree Trail in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Credit: Richard Mosse for The New York Times]

The Ancient Trees people are quite keen on Wellingtonias and their relatives the coastal redwoods, in which connection they pointed me to reference 3. With the snap above being from the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, in the far north of California, almost on the Oregon state line. The colouring looks a bit unnatural so presumably the photographer - or the Photoshopper - went in for some trickery.

I am reminded of my failure to make Muir Woods, outside San Francisco, when I had the chance.

I take consolation from the fact that there are now far more Wellingtonia growing in this country than there are in California, half a million to ten thousand or so as I recall. Albeit quite young ones, with a lot of them dating to the second half of the nineteenth century, so between one and two hundred years old now. Juveniles really.

PS 1: the Richard Mosse of references 6 and 7 probably took the redwood snap above. The one immediately above is from the Amazon. That said, reference 6 is not your average commercial photographer site.

PS 2: I find now that Mosse is not new to these pages, having appeared something more than a year ago, in a very similar context, at reference 8. Confused by Windows search with mosses, which is not unreasonable. Reference 9 was nearby, reminding me of the Aladdin heaters of our early married life. While now, not for the first time, I wonder what the outcome might have been had we let the Russians, then the Soviets, get on with trying to civilise Afghanistan, rather than arming the rebels. I don't suppose they would have made it through to the Makran Coast, but who knows? They might have become very influential in those parts.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/jigsaw-20-series-3-report-no2.html.

Reference 2: https://www.ancienttreearchive.org/.

Reference 3: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/magazine/redwoods-assisted-migration.html%20target=.

Reference 4: https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=413.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith. A chap from New York State who got a taste for the western wilderness. Killed while still a young man by Comanches rather than grizzly bears.

Reference 6: https://www.richardmosse.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mosse. A more or less expatriate Irishman. 

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/red-migrants.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/alladin.html.

Group search key: jigsawsk.

Sunday, 16 February 2025

The Road

[McCarthy wrote all of his fiction and correspondence with a single Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter between the early 1960s and 2009. At that time he replaced it with an identical model. Ex Wikipedia]

This being notice of my first serious attempt at Cormac McCarthy since I read his ‘Blood Meridian’, many years ago, possibly when it first appeared, since I seem to own a first edition. I think I dabbled with one of his more recent books but did not get on with it. Was I put off by its violence?

This copy of ‘The Road’, reference 1, a Christmas present, is a nicely produced paperback from Picador. About 300 short pages set in a rather large type with short lines and lots of spacing. A short introduction at the beginning and some advertisements at the end.

An end-of-the-world story, the sort of thing that they seem to like in the US, set in what seems like California, some years after some cataclysmic event – unspecified but maybe a huge earthquake, a volcano eruption or a meteor strike. Layers of ash and debris everywhere. All the plants and most non-human animals seem to be dead and the humans who are left are running out of food. The author does not go into very small animals, like amoebae and bacteria, but maybe some of them make it. The ones, that is, that don’t depend on plants.

A lot of the food which is to be found is in tins, which is fair enough. And a lot of that seems to be peaches.

I would imagine that this fondness for end-of-the-world stories is all mixed up with a fondness for roughing it in the wilderness, perhaps with few if any modern conveniences like knives and matches. Mixed up in turn with a fondness for the Old Testament – this being what got a lot of immigrants over from Europe in the first place.

Back with the book, a sense that this new world has become very selfish, pretty much every man left for himself, with little regard for others – and no regard for those outside the immediate group, if there is one. A modest amount of off-stage cannibalism. I wonder to what extent all this reflects the personality of the author, whom I suspect, possibly quite unfairly, of having been a rather unpleasant person. Maybe he did delicate water colours when not writing gruesome stories – in the way of Charles Bronson.

A man and his son on the road, the mother having died some time previously, heading south for the winter. Pulling their few battered possessions in a shopping trolley. Very few other people about – and one is very wary when one does come across someone else. A bit short on food, but they do have fire – and there is plenty of dead wood about for fuel. One might say that the book is mostly about the relationship between these two: how they get on when they are up against the wall, as it were.

At the end of the book, the man dies of some kind of lung complaint, the sort where you spit blood. So breaking his promise never to leave the boy. At which point he, the boy, comes across some decent people who take him on. So ending on a rather hopeless – but at least ambivalent – note.

The same spare, bleak prose that I remember from ‘Blood Meridian’. And the same scattering of curious words, some obscure, some possibly old. But a bleak prose which fits well with the bleak subject matter. Of life reduced to a minimum.

Again, one wonders what sort of a person would want to dwell on the bleak and gruesome in quite this way. I associated to Damien Hirst with his pills & corpses. But I dare say I shall read the book again before too long. BH probably not, at least that is my guess.

Oddities

I have mentioned odd vocabulary, which includes the rather anatomical ‘colliculus’. From where I associate to Simenon’s considerable interest in medical matters. 

McCarthy also knows that the edge of an obsidian blade might only be a few molecules across, something that I noticed as I have been reading about same recently.

We get a passage about how well made an old sextant was – suggesting that the author had a taste for the well made object. Did he collect luxury guns? He did hang on to the typewriter snapped above.

From something turned up by Google, I learn that McCarthy was keen on the rewilding of wolves. He was also keen on ‘Moby Dick’, a novel which is elemental in a different way to this one.

And that his service in the US Air Force came just after the Korean War, so it is not combat experience which fuels its bleak world view..

While in a rather gushing review of the novel by one John Banville at the front, we get ‘haecceity’ – the quality by which something becomes an individual. From the late Latin. Inkhorn word from the 17th century? – and ‘katabasis’ – a military retreat. An allusion to Xenophon. Inkhorn word from the 19th century? Both to be found in Websters and both new to me. Oddly, Wikipedia gives a quite different story for katabasis.

Thinking in pictures

Along the way, I turned up McCarthy’s unexpected essay spun out of the Kekulé Problem and the idea that humans probably still thought, at least subconsciously, more in pictures than in words. Words, after all, have not been around that long in evolutionary terms. This led to the post at reference 8. 

And I am still working around references 9, 10 and 11 – inter alia renewing an ancient acquaintance with projective geometry. It seems not only that McCarthy might have had a point, but that projective geometry – or at least its presentation - has moved on. And, by way of a bonus, there is also a connection to the essay on ‘Shakespeare and perspective’ mentioned at reference 12.

Gemini

I thought to check that my memory of Bronson painting was correct, and Bing was not having it. Only recognising the quite famous paintings of another Charles Bronson, a violent offender who spent many years as prisoner in the UK. Born as Michael Peterson in 1952.

Next stop Gemini, who agreed with Bing.

I then tried Google and turned up a couple of references to my Bronson being a hobby painter, including one in his obituary in the New York Times at reference 13.

Going back to Gemini with this news, he now agrees with me.

Apart from the fact that Gemini appears to have got it wrong on this occasion, he was not on his best form on this one, with various other lapses in performance.

References

Reference 1: The road – Cormac McCarthy – 2006.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/religious-freedom.html. A previous mention.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/snap-of-day.html. A stray find while looking for more McCarthy. I have a vague memory of his having cropped up rather more recently than reference 2, perhaps a review of one of his books which I decided that I did not need to read. Present but not helpful at https://psmv4.blogspot.com/, along with McCarthy & Stone.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy

Reference 5: Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West – Cormac McCarthy – 1985. 

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banville. An Irish writer of whom I had not previously heard. 

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

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/two-mccarthys.html

Reference 9: Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought – Peter Gärdenfors – 2000.

Reference 10: Axiomatic projective geometry – Goodstein, Primrose – 1953. 

Reference 11: Projective Geometry: From Foundations to Applications – Albrecht Beutelspacher, Ute Rosenbaum – 1998.

Reference 12: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/weaver-two.html

Reference 13: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/01/nyregion/charles-bronson-81-dies-muscular-movie-tough-guy.html.  

Saturday, 15 February 2025

Sonatas

Ten days ago to the Wigmore for some violin sonatas from Hana Chang (violin) and Jonathan Ware (piano). Mozart K306, Elgar Op.82 and more Elgar for the encore, Op.15 No.2. The Mozart was the draw for me, having been fond of his violon sonatas for perhaps 50 years now.

A gray start to the day. Settled for a rare outing for the Banana Republic tweed jacket, made in Hong Kong, but probably sourced from the Oxfam shop which is still at the top of Exeter's South Street, not far from the cathedral. Topped up with stick, duffel coat, etc.

Not being sure now whether you can call something tweed which does not come from Scotland, I looked it up and the answer seems to be that the name is usually used for coarsely woven, woollen fabrics from the periphery of the UK. And there is a link, albeit an erroneous link, to the river. But this jacket is certainly that sort of thing, whatever the proper name.

I have also learned that Banana Republic is now more a brand belonging to Gap, rather than an independent operation. See references 10 and 11. While tweed gets a mention, in connection with Selfridges at reference 12.

Slept on the way to Victoria, after which it was a long walk to the Victoria line platform, even longer than it might have been as I managed to misread the signs at one point. But I got there in the end.

Up to Margaret Street and into the cafe where I had, on a previous occasion, noticed at reference 1, been caught out by a burglar alarm. On this occasion a large black coffee, plus a cheese and salami toastie. I thought the stronger taste of salami did rather better in this context than the usual ham. And the coffee was strong stuff. All the better because you just walked in, said want you wanted, sat down - and in short order it arrived. Much less bother than Olle & Steen with their double queueing and baristas.

Street View not yet caught up.

Plus a selection of paintings of the slap on the paint variety. Not bad - and, as it happens, we are acquainted with an Epsom artist who specialises in this sort of thing, floral branch.

Serious surfacing action at the junction of Wigmore Street and Harley Street. Let's hope that all the good doctors roundabout were not to inconvenienced. For JMP, not to be confused with JMC, see companies house. The Internet address turned up by Bing. ' https://www.jmpsurfacing.co.uk/' does not seem to work - the second time such a thing has happened today. Did yesterday's BIOS update disturb the realm?

Into the hall, where a photographer appeared to be setting up cameras to take snaps of the action. I imagine he could remote control the snaps, but I don't think the camera did video and I don't think he could move the camera about remotely. Which must have made it all a bit hit and miss. Who knows.

The violinist looked very small and very young, and the pianist, while young, was not as young and not as small. And he was from Texas. To be found at reference 3. Kicking off, he gave me the impression that he did not like playing second fiddle (as it were), and did not give much space to Chang. Things got better as we moved through the programme, but for me the damage was done. But at least the Elgar pieces gave her more room for her to do her stuff.

Out to find Sunbelt rentals, yet again. Funny how I have been coming across them all over the place since first coming across them at the new Lidl headquarters building in Jubilee Way, during the plague.

No.98 bus from somewhere near John Lewis. To find that Pull & Bear are moving from the west of Oxford Circus to the east - which does not look anything like as tacky as it did twenty or thirty years ago - and that Microsoft have shut up shop. This last not being very surprising, as they did not seem to be doing a lot a business when I visited them. All the stuff on offer looked far too expensive and far too games orientated for me although they did offer a higher grade of sales staff. But were they on the real payroll or were they zero hours people?

Out at Tottenham Court Road to admire a lights installation by Samia Halaby. To my surprise I rather liked it. Impressed even; maybe even BH would have liked it. With one of the things that struck me being the sense of space you got from time to time. A bit like being in a large church. An installation which moved and which was broken into a number of scenes, one of which is snapped above. I don't remember about sound track, so that cannot have been intrusive if it was there at all. As it happens, a Palestinian domiciled in the US. See reference 4.

The same car was parked outside the Ivy as when we last passed by. It is the manager?

Two thirds of a loaf from Fabrique at the top of Earlham Street, first noticed at reference 5. No buns on this occasion.

A bit further down, a whole new concept in shopping baskets. But the Rules Committee was not having them as shopping trolleys.

Into Neal's Yard Dairy where a chap was buying cheese against a wine tasting he was running a bit later that day, and I was impressed by how little space £200 plus worth of cheese took up, But then, I realised that I was spending getting on for £50 on my Poacher, augmented on this occasion by a spot of Stilton, which I thought would go well with the sour dough loaf just purchased. As indeed it did.

Slightly worried by the rather small stocks of Poacher. Hopefully not a bad omen.

Onto the tube at Leicester Square, down to Waterloo and onto a train to Chessington, along with a blue dustbin. A blue version of the green dustbin that we have outside our back door. I never found out what it was doing there.

Stopped off at the HWH for a spot (or two) of their Valpollicella. Where I admired the stoppers they used for their opened wine bottles. The barmaid told me that they definitely helped opened wine last a bit longer and that they were to be had from Amazon, as indeed they were. Snapped above and used for the first time this afternoon. Further report in due course.

Back up the steps to the platform, I wondered about how serious an exercise it would be to jump up, ankles together. Or for the serious person, hopping up. Maybe I need to inquire about this sort of thing of the Crossfit people who live across the road from us. Or maybe the even more serious looking people who live underneath the arches at Grant Road? For whom see reference 6.

I continue to be intrigued by the mixture of soft and hard boundaries offered by the large posters on the platform at Earlsfield.

Thought about Richard II, a play I know better than the Tempest. The Bridge Theatre being an interesting place which we have visited once before. But, not sure about a stunning new rendering for the audience of today, we thought we would wait for some reviews. Wind up going anyway?

After which the patterning of the line of trees, sharp against the lowering sky, caught my eye.

Raynes Park platform library full of fat paperback, ladies fiction and thrillers. Nothing for me on this occasion. Has the man who did Drinks Business and Spirits Business moved on? But I do have a copy of Spirits Business, dated November last year, from which I share some trivia.

Not as much fun as Drinks Business, which is more wine orientated. Not a serious wine person, but even less of a serious spirits person. Tequila, no. Gin, no. Vodka, no. Rum occasionally. Can't tell Scotch from Bourbon. And while Spirits Business is big on gin, it does not seem to be into Armagnac or Calvados. 

Although while there might be no Calvados, there is date gin for the discerning customer from the Middle East.

And back with Scotch, there is the 'Chapter One: The first release' from Glenlivet. To which end, they have partnered with the renowned artist Red Hong Yi, known as ‘The Artist Who Paints Without A Brush’, to design the limited edition packaging. It is also Glenlivet's first venture into the use of red wine casks in the maturing process. How many flavour notes - to use a bit of master-of-wine-jargon - do they clock along the way?

All in all, not much for me.

Notwithstanding which, Reis Packaging of reference 7 are clearly the people to go to if you want a quality bottle for your offering.

[Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre. Credit: Raven B. Varona]

And RTDs seem to be the tin of the moment. Ready to drink confections, usually involving spirits and sugar. A couple of chaps called Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre are getting in on the act with something called 'Gin & Juice'. While Bing thinks that they are resistance temperature detectors. Google adds that they might be ailments or something to with boxing. But add the qualifier 'tin' and Google gets properly into gear, as snapped above.

The Lyaness bar in the Sea Containers Hotel gets three pins for something, whatever that might mean. Of reference 8. A place to visit when I am in London Bridge? Could they do me a tomato juice without Worcester Sauce - a juice I was reminded that I rather liked the other day.

Then towards the end, we get an advertisement for Spanish luxury gin, from the people at reference 9. While I had thought that gin was a London thing, particularly in the 18th century, before the regulators came online. But then I remembered that gin crops up in Švejk, so there must be a European angle, at least in translation. Whatever the case, just 7,000 bottles of this gin have been released from the 2024 pot, so get in line now.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/cross-dressing.html.

Reference 2: https://jmcsurfacing.co.uk/. Not too proud to do the drives of houses.

Reference 3: https://www.jonathanware.org/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samia_Halaby.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/log-fired-oven.html.

Reference 6: https://www.crossfit.com/.

Reference 7: https://reispackaging.com/. 'Over 70 years of experience in the standard wine market in Germany and three decades of excellence in luxury glass packaging'.

Reference 8: https://www.seacontainerslondon.com/eat-drink/lyaness/.

Reference 9: https://letribute.com/en-gb.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Republic.

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweed.

Reference 12: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/double-wigmore.html.

Reference 13: https://ravenbvarona.com/. A fancy website, but I failed to find the snap of Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre offered by Spirits Business.

Reference 14: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hong_Yi. Malaysia, Australia and Shanghai.

Friday, 14 February 2025

Celery fest

A few days ago, there being a bit of tired celery hanging about, we though to stew it for lunch, the first time for a while.

Loosely based on a recipe, on an idea, in a cook book from Marks & Spencer.

Started some onions in butter in the largest saucepan, the sauté pan which I would otherwise have used having been already taken. Added a couple of tomatoes, very coarsely chopped. Added the celery, cut into short lengths. Added a little water. Towards the end of the process, added some thinly sliced carrot, the idea being that it should be served very slightly undercooked. The whole process took about an hour.

Served with a few left over Brussels sprouts, brown rice and lamb steaks, these last from Sainsbury's.

All very good.

I had thought this was something that we had done on several occasions over the past year or so, but the only one I can turn up this morning is that at reference 1. I don't think the convert left overs to soup option came up on this occasion, although I don't suppose that we did the whole lot in one go. Perhaps I just took the balance warmed up at some point in the day following? Something warming for breakfast?

PS 1: interested to read after posting this of the controversy in France over replacing some of the windows in Notre Dame, following a competition to select design and artist. To be found at reference 2. Our own established church's record in these matters being rather uneven: I do not, for example, care for the Hockney window in Westminster Abbey at all. To be found at reference 4. Not keen on the Houshiary window in St. Martin in the Fields (snapped above, from the outside), although the subdued tone of that window is better suited to the place than the Hockney effort. And I learn this morning that it is rather more complicated than I had realised, so I must go back for another look. Not sure about the window in the Lady Chapel at Buckfast Abbey.

It is a good space in which to sit, but sometimes the window works, sometimes not. While the modern art at Ely, not stained glass as far as I recall, is a bit grim.

PS 2: it took the power of Google to bring reference 3 anywhere near the top of the search results. Bing did not oblige on this occasion.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/trolley-767.html.

Reference 2: Claire Tabouret designed Notre-Dame’s new stained-glass windows — now they are dividing France: The artist’s contentious commission has drawn heavy criticism but she’s not shying away from the heritage battle - Annabel Keenan, Financial Times - 2025.

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

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/central-hall.html.