Sunday trivia

In no particular order.

First

Going back to sleep again early this morning, probably having been woken by it being both light and warm, I was struck by the sort of trash that passes through one's mind on the way down. Not significant or interesting - at least not in any obvious way, just trash. In this case, mainly in the form of words and phrases, I think aural rather than visual imagery - although it is hard to be sure about that, at least in my case, where the two are probably thoroughly mixed up.

There was also a fair bit of imagery of the printed word, words laid out in the complicated way of government reports or academic papers, rather than the usually straightforward layout of words in novels. Words which seem terribly clear in the initial image, but which cloud over when you try and focus on them.

From the trash, I associate to one of my rare experiences of medical morphine, which also filled my mind with trash, vivid but uninteresting, certainly not recreational. From the laboratory at reference 1, I associate to the biology classroom of my school days. To the solid, brown wood tops of the benches. The white sinks with their tall black taps let into them. Little racks of bottles of coloured liquids. But maybe I am getting muddled up with the chemistry classroom. In any event, I imagine this laboratory to be rather different. The source of the snap above.

Second

It being a chicken stuffing day - to be cooked outside the chicken, as is proper - there were some slightly stale white crusts for breakfast, which I took with cheese and onion. These crusts did very well, being slightly stale having given them a bit of crunch and texture, to balance that of the cheese and onion. I was reminded that brown bread is not much good for all kinds of things that white bread is good for: bacon sandwiches, fried egg sandwiches, meat sandwiches generally, cheese and tomato sandwiches, cheese and onion sandwiches. While brown bread is fine with banana and with cheese by itself, this last in bread and cheese format, rather than sandwiches. Or just by itself, or perhaps with a little butter.

For the avoidance of doubt, I mostly eat brown wholemeal bread, which I have come like like and which I can cook - unlike white bread, at which I do not do very well, despite best efforts.

Third

Reading about the latest US venture into meddling in the affairs of other countries, it struck me that their elderly, showman president probably gets a real bang out of being commander-in-chief. Which is ironic given that he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam war. Nothing wrong with that, but still ironic.

A memory which is confirmed at reference 2, although I don't think that is where I got it from in the first place.

To be clear, I do not suggest that such ventures are wrong. There are lots of bad things going on in the world and some of them might well be accessible to outside action. Just that it is hard to get that action right.

Fourth

I read in our free Comet of an accident involving a lady on a bicycle on a main road - Purley Way - in Croydon. An accident which does not appear to have been life threatening, but she was carried off to hospital. My point being that this resulted in the road being closed for five and a half hours.

OK, so there was an accident, but what value is added by five and a half hours worth of going over the scene with microscopes and goodness knows what else. Does it really matter that much whether the cyclist or the driver of the car (or whatever) made a mistake? Or both, given that accidents often take two. Do we really need this kind of witch hunt?

All seems to me to be of a piece with our unhealthy, collective obsession with poking around in things which might be better left alone. Only the thin end of the massive public inquiry wedge.

Fifth

Taking my breakfast orange - the fad for red grapefruit having died away for the present - I wondered about packaging and presentation.

When I buy cherries or strawberries from Waitrose or M&S, they come in a clear plastic boxes and I am told about the country of origin, the grower and the variety. Oranges however, which are not that much cheaper these days, not from Sainsbury's at least, come from large bins marked 'large', 'taste the difference' or 'price busters'. With quite a bit of unexpected variation between the various oranges which have been bought at the same time from the same tub.

What is different about oranges? Why don't they get the grower and variety treatment? Is it just the result of the much larger volume of sales?

PS: this one, after a substantial lunch, provoked inquiry. To find that neither Bing nor Google were offering much about the consumption of fruit for free. There were statistics about fruit grown in this country and there was Statista but I have not found them very satisfactory in the past and I have not looked today.

The 'Grocer' offered the snap above, which had me puzzling and which did not include cherries. Were strawberries really such a big deal? At which point it decided that I was not a subscriber and cut of access altogether.

Visiting reference 4, there might well be some good stuff, but blocked in the way of the snap above. Not yet moved to flash the plastic. And to think that as a humble employee at the Sainsbury's HQ, I might have free access to all manner of interesting stuff...

Pressing on down the Google hit list, I get to reference 5, from which I learn that we Brits do not do very well on the five-a-day measure. But that is not what I wanted to know. Maybe I will do better later on.

References

Reference 1: Consensus sequence Zen - Thomas D Schneider - 2002. From a laboratory of experimental and computational biology.

Reference 2: https://vietfactcheck.org/2020/09/15/did-trump-dodge-the-vietnam-war-draft/.

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

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

Reference 5: https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/app/uploads/campbell.pdf.