Tall tree

Last week a trolley facilitated trip to the hospital for a blood test, so an opportunity to snap what appears to be a drainage pond at the bottom of St. Margaret Drive, off the Dorking Road, just on, as it happens, a visible join in the Street View world.

Tidied up, but still dry.

Inspecting the last snap, the tidying up appears to amount of some of the fluff having been lost from the tops of the reeds over the winter and the the grass having been cut quite recently.

Into the the hospital where the corner of the staff car park appeared to have acquired a not very substantial bicycle shed. At least, I remember parking my bicycle there when there was no designated bicycle space there at all.

I forgot to ask the people at the hospital when it had appeared - although I dare say they would not have had a clue.

Later on, a slightly more leisurely second visit to deliver a sample, which meant that I had time to snap the signs advertising further gas works outside the Amber showroom. Plus the blossom.

And, after delivery, on the way back to town, to snap the curious tall tree outside Woodcote Hall, now converted into flats. Was it a mutant Wellingtonia that I had managed to miss?

Clearly not a Wellingtonia. It did have the flat needles of a coastal redwood, a tree which grows very tall, but from the habit of this one I suspected yew, Taxus baccata. A suspicion confirmed this morning by Google Images and the webpage at reference 2.

The yew-like trunk.

I associate to the very tall yew trees that I had once came across in the woods on the country side of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. A bridge I only managed to cross by sticking to the middle and keeping my eyes front.

Except that checking in gmaps this morning, I failed to find the yew trees. There are some tall trees, but they are Scots pine - and there is a Wellingtonia in the grounds of a Burwalls House, slightly to the left of the snap above, neither of which is present in the earlier memories. Furthermore, there is traffic on the roadway, which I remember as pedestrians only - and pretty much empty.

The only other bridge in the vicinity is the Ashton Avenue Bridge of reference 4, which I don't think is right at all. Not least because I don't think it is high enough to have caused vertigo.

As I recall, I was on a records management course with two colleagues and various other snippets from that expedition are coming back to me. So maybe this memory will get sorted out later today.

On past an advertisement for a dramatization of 'Far from the Madding Crowd'. So Epsom Playhouse still does theatre, albeit in a novel reimagined for the theatre, whatever that might mean. From the people at reference 3, who look to be on a substantial tour, mostly of one-night stands, which suggests minimal if any set. A sufficiently organised outfit to have prepared a media pack, available online.

We are told of a cast of five. We wondered later who the fifth might be, after Bathsheba, Gabriel, the sergeant and the farmer. Maybe the sergeant's sweetheart?

Onto a busy Wetherspoons (this being a Friday afternoon), where I took a glass of red, and from there to Waitrose for some red grapefruit, plus some reinforcements on the red front.

A Fleurie which I think I have taken before. Although most of our Fleurie either comes from Costcutter or, if it comes from Waitrose, the brand at reference 5. A Fleurie which went down OK despite my failing to find any trace of it in the archive. With the search confusing 'œ' in the name not being sufficient excuse. Furthermore, no trace of this particular label at reference 6.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/fake-186.html.

Reference 2: https://www.first-nature.com/trees/taxus-baccata.php.

Reference 3: https://www.conn-artists.co.uk/.

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

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/stuffing.html.

Reference 6: https://www.duboeuf.com/fr/?v=82a9e4d26595.