Trolley 814

Being a small M&S trolley from the Kokoro passage. A passage which has not been so rich in trolleys of late, so perhaps M&S is sending someone across to tidy up more often.

Returned to the food hall, then on around the Screwfix circuit, possibly taking in Middle Lane. Can't remember now, although it was only a couple of days ago.

Where the day before (22nd April) I had taken another snap of the supposed whitebeam bursting into leaf.

Inspected the ivy stems around the base. Not big enough to need a pruning saw, the smaller long handled pruner should suffice. Must get around to taking it round.

Inspected the leaves. Google Images sticks with common whitebeam as first choice, Aria edulis of reference 3. Also known as Sorbus aria. With Google offering as second choice the unlikely sounding rock whitebeam, Aria rupicola. I stick with common whitebeam and will look out for the confirming white flowers.

This day's (23rd April) snap. Maybe the difference between this and the previous snap is the different condition of the light, rather than a big change in the tree.

It being a Wednesday and a day when we were planning a modest evening excursion, a spot of lentil soup for lunch. New stock pot. 8oz red lentils, rinsed twice and open boiled for five minutes. Butter, garlic, a couple of onions and 100g of saucisson sec. Maybe 70 minutes lentil jar to table.

PS 1: to all of which I offer a bit of psycho babble.

First, going to sleep yesterday evening, I had a slightly odd experience, with this image of having spilled some sugar over something. I had this strongly felt need to clear the sugar up before moving on, this despite not being really asleep and I had to work quite hard to shake myself out of this illusion. I associate this morning to those ladies whose grip on reality is weakened to the extent that they talk about the goings on in their favourite soap as if they were real, as if they really mattered.

Second, a new to me use of the word 'dialectic' in the course of my continuing reading of reference 4, last mentioned at reference 5. In chapter 8 (page 68 in my copy), Havelock talks of needing to supplement the reductionist line of Freud who tries to explain everything in terms of the inner workings of the individual by taking account of the interaction between those individuals and society as a whole, this by taking account of society as an entity in its own right. An entity which has no physical existence in the way of an individual, but which is nevertheless useful as an explanatory device, as a modelling device. He calls this dialectical, which does more or less fit in with what I read at reference 6, if not so much with my prior understanding of the term - with dialectical materialism being a big thing when I was young - even though I was never very clear what it was, and certainly am not clear now.

Wikipedia offers the interesting thought that dialectic makes the truth more like something which emerges from a process, rather than something which just exists. Which fits in quite well with Havelock's interest in speech as an active process taking place between people, quite different to committing one's words to stasis on paper or in print. Stasis, but memorable stasis: words become a matter of record rather than the more flexible oral tradition. In which connection, Havelock (or perhaps Ong of reference 7) also points to how oral traditions can shift, can evolve to meet current needs, perhaps the current needs of the ruling classes (the people who paid the story tellers', the minstrels' wages) - and which were sometimes falsified by the careful records (of land ownership and land transactions) kept by the British in their colonies.

Maybe I will read reference 8 after breakfast.

PS 2: a late entrant, a fine goat from Pennywell, of reference 9, from a correspondent. Not as many megabytes on the originating telephone as on my Samsung.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/trolley-813.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/whitebeam.html.

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

Reference 4: The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present – Eric A Havelock – 1986.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/afterlives.html.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic.

Reference 7: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word – Walter J. Ong, S.J. – 1982.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism.

Reference 9: https://www.pennywellfarm.co.uk/.

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