Taxing matters

From time to time, I moan about all the people who spend so much time and effort avoiding paying tax. Sometimes offering the mitigation - for example at reference 1 - that it is very hard to frame taxes so that they are fair, simple and hard to avoid.

Less frequently, I comment on the old fashioned skill of spinning entertaining and inoffensive conversation out of nothing. A skill which cropped up, as it happens, at reference 2, yesterday afternoon, in connection with the manners of the aristocracy of the Ancien Régime. As contrasted with the proletarian or commercial manners of the new regime.

While this morning there is an amusing article in the FT (reference 3) about VAT on sandwiches (zero rated) which are not far removed from confectionery (20%) or cakes (it all depends) - to wit strawberry and cream sandwiches from Marks & Spencer. I shall have to see if I can spot one of these things on one of my visits to said store, in Epsom or elsewhere. 

Or is it all a fantasy, spun out of nothing at all?

PS 1: I imagine that these sandwiches only work on sliced factory white. Chunky brown not the thing at all. Rather like bacon sandwiches as far as that goes.

PS 2: a little later: BH tells me that she knows all about these things, having read about them in the 'Metro' a couple of weeks ago. She did tell me about them at the time, but I could not have been giving the matter the attention it deserved. She also reminded me of the importance of jam sandwiches in the childhood diet of the 1950s. Which for both of us meant home made jam, made with more fruit than sugar - rather than the stuff that you buy from supermarkets today. While jam sandwiches do not appear among the commercial offerings of today at all, this despite the amount of sugar swinging about otherwise.

PS 3: one of this morning's offerings from the Google advertisement server. Haven't heard from them for a bit. In fact, quick search does not turn them up in the archive at all - there is reference 7, but that is Stihl rather than Karcher. On the other hand, the name is familiar, so perhaps they were visible in the expedition noticed at reference 8?

PS 4: search of the archive was not improved by adding the accent back over the 'a' in Kärcher - with the point here being that some searches - including blog search - are accent sensitive.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-new-car-series-2-episode-1.html.

Reference 2: Les Adieux à la Reine - Chantal Thomas - 2002.

Reference 3: A stale, taxing take on M&S’s viral strawberry ‘sando’: VAT’s all, folks - Louis Ashworth, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/05/jogging-memory.html. Previous notice of Thomas.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/01/rien.html. And another.

Reference 6: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantal_Thomas. Not to be confused with the one with two s's at the end.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/autumn-heritage-day-1-session-1.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/ladderland.html.

Trolley 929

Another afternoon circuit, after the bread was finished. Batch No.753.

Trolley No.929 was captured in Station Approach, at the top of the Kokoro Passage. A medium small trolley from M&S.

Nothing at the sign of the cannabis on this occasion.

But there were some blackberries in the Screwfix Passage, contrary to expectations, albeit on the side which is now housing and was a secondary school.

Despite the strange weather and the lack of serious picking activity, picking for the freezer that is, my impression, since we came back from the Island, is that it is a much better crop this year than last. There must be something about it which suits blackberries.

The Screwfix whitebeam. More blackberries to the left.

Home to put away the bread mentioned above.

For some reason, perhaps the weather, perhaps the new yeast, the first rise was rather faster than usual. This did not alert me to the possibility of the same thing happening with the second rise, which was, in consequence rather longer than it should have been. Bread well risen, starting to bubble and it was quite likely that it would volcano and sink in a hot oven.

So I thought, not much to lose, so why not try putting it a cold oven, which would take about ten minutes to come to heat. And this worked OK. There were a few bubbles and the bread did sink a bit, but it did not volcano. It was also a rather paler brown than it has been of late, although the bottom tapped hollow enough.

And then this morning, when I started it, it not having been needed the evening before, it was very good. Maybe try this putting the risen dough in a cold oven again?

PS 1: on the way out, I had also checked up on the location of some fine blackberries snapped a couple of days previously. They were indeed from the side of the entrance to Epsom Autos. And the fronds were not bracken, as I had briefly thought from this snap. Bracken against sky is not impossible, but it would have been well off-piste.

PS 2: for once in a while, the trolley record is now up-to-date.

PS 3: a nice bit of marketing from the roof of the nearly new UBS building in Broadgate Circus. Quite near the Flying Horse of Sun Street, previously noticed. Although not yet visited, despite being a listed building from 1812. I dare say that is why it is still there, an old island in a mostly redeveloped area.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-926-927-and-928.html.

Group search keys: trolleysk, 20250730.

Trolleys 926, 927 and 928

This afternoon circuit started with the scar of a hole next to our new water meter. BH tells me it was drilled by men in a van from Surrey County Council who were concerned about voids and subsidence in and around our water meter. Concerns which are entirely reasonable given the long running leak in this meter, but how did the Council get involved? Surely it is a mater for Thames Water?

And why is the meter cover wet? Is the hole underneath flooded again?

The men said they were coming back to inject sand into the voids - that, at least, is the story which has reached me.

A quick look at my account, suggests no change regarding the large bill - but nothing untoward regarding usage. Still a bit on the high side and I need to get the gas people in to look at our taps. While the zero readings when the stopcock inside the house was turned off suggest that there is no leak between the meter and the house, which is good news.

I suppose I could phone up Surrey and ask them what they are up to, but I doubt whether I will find the energy and patience to sit on the phone for hours.

On the way into town, I noticed a line of posts across the front of Amber, previously noticed. Are they on the way to getting rid of their tatty orange ribbon of closure?

My first trolley was a medium trolley from M&S, captured in the Kokoro Passage. Returned to a stack containing a right jumble of trolleys, of three or four different sizes or shapes.

My second was a medium small.

My third, captured in the bit of rough ground which used to be the back of the indoor market, was, for a change, from Waitrose. I managed to get it out without damaging either the buddleia left or the car right. To return it to a nice tidy stack, much the same size as that at M&S. But the management at Waitrose had the wit to stick to just two sizes of trolley, making mess much less likely.

On exit from the Ashley Centre, water works outside Café1 opposite. Water works involving water men, this being quite late in the afternoon. Perhaps the proprietor was making a fuss about his water supply.

There had been something of a hiatus in DIY bread supply, so home to sample the second of two 800g white bloomers that I have bought from M&S recently. Not bad for supermarket bread and not sour dough either - but not up to the standard, for example, of the baker at the top of Warwick Road in Thornton Heath, never mind the one at the top of Crouch Hall Road in Crouch End.

I think the Warwick Road baker was on the left, although it is hard to be sure after more than fifty years. But no baker on either side now.

PS 1: over breakfast this morning, I was interested to read in Wednesday's Guardian about our viewing habits, in particular that on average we watched more than 4 hours a day television - a figure which I think includes telephone viewing. The report from which the piece was drawn is to be found at reference 3. A quick peek suggests a longer peek might be the thing, although it is a bit low on sources and methods by the standards of government statistics. Where does all this information come from? The people at YouGov? That said, some of the information about radio is derived from the people at reference 4, snapped above. I have yet to find a credit for either the snap or the model.

'Individuals (aged 4+) spent on average 4 hours 30 minutes per day watching video content at home in 2024, only one minute less than in 2023. The TV set remains central to video viewing in the home; in 2024 84% of in-home video viewing was through the TV set'

The quote above is taken from very near the beginning of reference 3. And it seems like an awful lot of time: I am retired and have all the time in the world (you might think), but I would not like to lose that large a slice of it to television. I wonder how much further into the 94 pages of report the writer for the Guardian managed?

PS 2: now booked HomeCare to come and look at our taps. A British Gas service. Booking is easy; a website which works.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolley-925.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/thames-water-more-progress.html.

Reference 3: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/research-and-data/multi-sector/media-nations/2025/media-nations-2025-uk-report.pdf?v=401287. 'Media Nations: UK 2025 - Ofcom - 2025'.

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

Group search keys: trolleysk, 20250729, twsk.

Trolley 925

A M&S trolley captured at the town end of the Kokoro Passage, on return from a trip to St. Helier, to be reported on in due course.

Rounded off this part of the trip by buying some strawberries, two packs of 600g each, variety 'Driscoll's Beatrice' from Robert Pascall of Kent, via M&S.

I ignored the advice about washing before use, as I don't think washing is very good for ripe strawberries, but I did remove the stalks - rather deep set and awkward to fish out - and sprinkle some sugar on them. Granulated as I did not think to look for the castor, which was probably somewhere. They were OK without sugar, and OK with sugar when fresh, but the sugar rapidly took the sparkle off them and they were not that great by the time we finished them in the course of the evening. All in all, not as good as the strawberries we had at the start of the season.

Pascall trades as Clock House Farm, to be found at reference 2. As far as strawberries go, they appear to concentrate on varieties from Driscoll's, for whom see references 3 and 4.

From reference 4. Clearly a company with a marketing budget. I notice also that the two berries lower left have voids where the strawberries of my childhood would have had white hulls, hulls which usually came out with the stalks.

PS: I learn from reference 5 that modern strawberries were invented in France from originals from North and South America, with more than half the world's crop coming from China. So not so odd that M&S are using strawberries from the US.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-923-and-924.html.

Reference 2: https://clockhousefarm.co.uk. 'With over 100 years of experience across the fruit growing industry, our strong team of passionate fruit growers strives to deliver the very best fruit to you. Best in terms of superior quality and unsurpassable taste'.

Reference 3: https://www.driscolls.eu/.

Reference 4: https://www.driscolls.com/. A Californian company, which looks to be regionally HQ'd in the Netherlands and which does have a presence in Kent. Almost certainly the inventors - or at the least the owners - of the variety in question.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry.

Group search key: trolleysk, 20250728.

Trolleys 923 and 924

This afternoon circuit started with the best blackberries yet, outside Epsom Autos on West Hill. Or, if you prefer, outside Crossfit or next to the Enterprise overflow car park. Maybe also near our wills, as TWM have some storage sheds there too.

Crossfit seem to be doing quite well, having not been there that long, with a lot more, mainly young, people in gym gear to be seen around West Hill these days. Confused by there being talk of Ascension Training at the bottom of reference 2, with a website which does not appear to exist. Probably not the real estate finance training company, but possibly the rather odd looking one at reference 3.

I picked up the first trolley at the Station Approach end of the Kokoro Passage, the top end.

Which rapidly became three. I was a bit unsure about wheeling three at once, not something I have done for a while, but in the event it was fine. Best to take it reasonably slowly when there are people about or when one is not on the flat. The walking stick turned out to be a handy gadget for holding the string together.

After which I headed off for East Street to pick up my second by the sign of the cannabis, complete with rat trap left, thus routing me back through town, rather than through the Screwfix Passage.

Taking in a pint of Abbot at Wetherspoon's on the way through. Just about twice the price of its IPA sibling - and as it happened, I would have been better off with the IPA. For some reason, perhaps the time of day - around 17:00 - the Abbot seemed a bit strong, not quite the taste I was looking for.

On the way home, I passed a house with four Fords parked on the front standing. Not usually the sort of thing that I would notice, but with car purchase in the air, much more sensitive to this sort of thing. I wonder if they get some special deal from the Ford people?

PS: I was interested to read this morning at reference 4 about what appears to be abuse of a legal device, a device which is reasonable enough in itself, in China. To wit, stopping people from leaving the country, some proportion of them not Chinese citizens, perhaps without telling them before they try so to do. Reasonable when you have every reason to believe that a villain will do a runner before his case comes to court - but unreasonable if just used as a wheeze for getting at people, perhaps for political reasons. Not in the same league as chucking people out of windows in Russia, although the numbers involved are probably much larger. I associate to the days of the trading entrepôts of the Renaissance era - both Christian and Muslim - which thrived because they had accessible and visible (commercial) law which applied to all.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-921-and-922.html.

Reference 2: https://www.crossfitepsom.co.uk/.

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

Reference 4: ‘Pervasive sense of fear’: China steps up exit bans as US tensions flare: Opaque restrictions risk damaging business confidence, experts and investors warn - Ryan McMorrow, Cheng Leng, Financial Times - 2025.

Group search key: trolleysk, 20250726.

Trolleys 921 and 922

The second circuit of the day started with a B&M trolley at the bottom the Kokoro Passage.

Closed followed by an M&S trolley no distance at all from the where the first had been. But different sorts of trolleys and different destinations, so scored as two.

A short circuit, taking Hook Road back to Manor Green Road, rather than East Street and the Screwfix underpass. Which meant that I picked up yet another leaking water meter. Thames Water do seem to be having a lot of trouble in our area.

And it very much looks as if this meter has been visited several times in the past. Can't get the metermen you know.

A few blackberries, but none that I could reach. With the new house behind being built (roughly speaking) on the footprint of the old. As previously noticed: finding which is left as an exercise for the reader.

But lots of blackberries outside one of the blocks of flats - some of them in reach - and some of them very good - with lots of happy young girls playing on the other side of the hedge. All very important stuff with lots of chats about this and that going on in the margins. All quite invisible though, so the hedge must have been thicker than it looked.

Must go back in a few days time. Picking for immediate consumption being OK.

A bit further on there were some damsons, mostly out of reach, but I did manage a hat full.

BH cooked them up at some point, and I have to say I was a little disappointed. It seems that they were very bitter and needed lots of sugar, which meant that - to me anyway - they tasted too much of sugar and not enough of plum. Maybe they were not ripe enough, despite the numbers falling and the dented one visible right in the snap above.

As Gemini would no doubt have said, wrong balance between sugars and acids. For which see the plum part of reference 2.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-919-and-920.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolleys-916-917-and-918.html.

Group search key: trolleysk, 20250725.

Carisbrooke

We did visit Carisbrook Castle this year, perhaps our fifth lifetime visit, despite our heritage membership having lapsed. But we took care not to lie about in the long grass on the banks outside, having been badly bitten by grass-living bugs of some sort on a previous occasion.

The car parking machine at the car park next to the castle was quite challenging, not helped by being in full sun. The better class of car parks give their machines - and the punters trying to use them - protection from the sun.

Having passed the car park challenge, we found an impressive shop in the ticket office.

Made it through the shop to find a different Shere Drop to that offered by Wetherspoon's.

The view from the first bench of the day. In the middle of the day, benches in the shade were at something of a premium. Senior banter about charging for them, in the way of deck chairs in the Royal Parks in the olden days.

A new-to-me trolley. Maybe convenient to get in and out of a car, maybe not so comfortable to sit in for a protracted period. Unfortunately, I did not get to chat to the occupant. Maybe more than £2,000 worth according to reference 7.

These trees below the ramparts looked healthy enough, despite being on top of a hill in the middle of a dry spell. A lady trusty explained that the hill in question took a good bit of rain, some of it in the form of serious downpours. Talk of mist rolling around the ramparts first thing some mornings. Maybe they catch the rain coming in from the southwest.

This on the way to take tea and scone from the cafeteria. A scone which turned out to be rather heavy, so either a bit stale or plucked from a freezer.

Teasels nearby looking well, with the plants and leaves making interesting patterns in the bright sunlight. One could see why Monica Poole liked cutting them.

Shortly after that we came across what looked rather like an elderly, bleached telegraph pole lying at the foot of the wall, with the notice snapped above.

I was puzzled about the royals involved - were they the Langtry ones - and by the rig of the yacht, which, with its gaff, did not look very Bermudan too me. Furthermore, the spinnaker boom looks deployed to me, rather than in use. Not quite the same thing. 

Time to investigate and intending to start with the royals rather than the yacht, I put 'prince of wales 1893' into Bing and up comes reference 8. Mind reader or what?

Where I find that the yacht was scuttled on death-bed instructions from George V, who had it from his son Edward VII, who was indeed the Langtry royal. And that the yacht started as a cutter, snapped above - where the topsail does not look like that in the previous snap, which much have incorporated some subsequent change.

More confusion at reference 9, where what appears to be the same image as that used by English Heritage is dated to the yacht's maiden run in 1893-1897. Should I email the heritage people for clarification?

Then I wondered today to what extent the yacht's considerable success as a racer was to do with the wealth of the owner.

Interesting history in modern times, with a replica built in Russia for a Norwegian and which wound up in Cowes. Where it seems they have stopped work on this replica and are thinking about a rather different one. Plenty of money still left in the big yacht coffers.

Took our picnic on a bench underneath a walnut tree, supplemented by commentary from a trusty.

In the margins, we learned that while wasps might be interested in bits of apple core, they are not interested in raisons. Presumably they need to be cooked, or at least soaked, to make them accessible.

Followed by a stroll around the formal garden, the preserve, I believe of Princess Beatrice, daughter to Queen Victoria, sometime castellan, where we came across the bush snapped above. Google Images suggests the black mulberry or reference 10, which looks plausible enough. Once again, a lot of the images turned up by Google Images were from Reddit, which I have just learned is social media for geeks, for people with hobbies or hobby horses. Maybe I should join in?

Onto the elaborate chapel. Did it cost as much as the roughly contemporary yacht?

There was not much in the way of joins in the masonry to be seen, so I started to take a closer look.

Zooming in on this column today, the only join I am confident about is the one running under the saintly feet. There must be one up too somewhere, but I can't find it. Perhaps a good quality join can be brushed over with a mixture of resin and stone dust making a more or less invisible join? Maybe with modern tools and machinery you could work with larger pieces than the medievals? Must take notes next time.

For me, the composition as a whole was rather let down by the altar piece, which I did not care for at all. From the same stable as the rather more elaborate, secular piece above the stage at the Wigmore Hall?

Onto the small museum where the were several fireplaces playing to reference 3. With the one above including built in seats, but not a mantlepiece.

Trying out the headgear in one of the rather pleasant seats built into the bow window to the left of the big fireplace. It seemed very heavy, not really the thing for a long hot day in the saddle at all. And what about the matching coat and trousers? Furthermore, while it might give some protection against penetrating weapons, it would not give so much protection against heavy blunt instruments, at least not when applied to the top of the head. Maybe that is why both Normans and Saxons in the Bayeux Tapestry (aka the Canterbury Embroidery) wore skull caps with iron trimmings. Cushioned interior?

I could just about work out how the clock part of the clock on display worked, but I completely failed on the chime part: I could not work that one out at all. Maybe if it chimed when I was there? Made by one John Moore of Clerkenwell in 1819. Who is to be found at reference 11.

A fireplace with neither seats nor mantlepiece.

And so to Ryde, its benches and its beach, followed by home and lentil stew. Having neither seen nor heard any grasshoppers during our visit to Carisbrooke, despite there being plenty of suitable grass.

PS: following the talk of oranges at reference 6, in the course of looking for the non-existent 'Carisbrooke one', I was interested to come across reference 5. It seem that island oranges were already disappointing in 2023.

References

Reference 1: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/carisbrooke-castle/.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carisbrooke_Castle.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/an-evening-digression.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/carisbrooke-two.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/oranges-good-and-bad.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/saints-thomas.html.

Reference 7: https://efoldi.com/. One of those websites which talks talking to you. It may take you a few clicks to work out how to turn it off.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Britannia_(Royal_Cutter_Yacht).

Reference 9: https://k1britannia.org/. 'The K1 Britannia project is bringing one of the most iconic classic sailing yachts of all time back to life as a force for good'. Clearly a place to put on our to-do list for our holiday for next year.

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

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moore_%26_Sons.

Guardian lite

I was a bit puzzled when I picked up what appeared to be a Guardian at M&S yesterday, with the usual front page being replaced by ladies' football. 

A bit cross when I got home to find that the first four or five pages were all ladies football, to be followed by several pages about dark deeds done by people mixed up with Edinburgh University in the 19th century - maybe more than a century and a half ago. For which see reference 2. Headline below.

A woke too far? Woke overreach? From where I associate to the overreach of the heritage people.

And then, a lot of the content which followed would not have disgraced the 'Metro', a freebie from which you do not expect better. Pay peanuts, get monkeys as they used to say.

While the snap at the top of this post is the start of Bing's offering on the clue 'ladies football today'. I think the 'today' bit was pasted in by Copilot and I did not notice in time to delete it. Pasting in which is sometimes helpful, sometimes irritating.

Moving on, I was interested to read about fancy derivatives called RTPFs (Range Target Profit Forwards) in the piece at reference 1. But, not much the wiser about what they actually were, I asked Bing, who was not very helpful. Google's Gemini was a lot better - although I would not pretend to know enough now to tell anyone else about them. That sort of thing is best left to the quants who made them up in the first place.

One wonders how much valuable energy is burned up on this kind of thing: a long way from making pork pies or brewing beer, products which are actually useful to the men and women in the street.

References

Reference 1: UBS orders bankers to scale back sale of complex currency products: Swiss bank has told advisers to stop pitching foreign exchange derivatives to many clients after losses - Mercedes Ruehl, Financial Times.

Reference 2: https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/race-review.

The tube

This being a record of a digression from reading the book at reference 1, a book owned for  while, but which I have only got around to reading much more recently.

I have long been confused about the part of the human brain between the spinal cord and the cerebrum, the cerebral mantle. There must be some continuity between them in a topological sense, but I had failed to picture how this might work. Reference 1 with its story about the emergence of core consciousness from the brain stem – rather than the brain proper – prompted me to do a bit of proper digging.

[Figure 1]

After some poking about elsewhere, I remembered about reference 2, which offered the useful picture above, snapped with my telephone, showing an ear on each side. The top of the brain stem (green) did indeed divide into two laterally, branching off into the two cerebral hemispheres. But was there something a bit more diagrammatic?

The occipital bone, supporting the base of the brain, visible in Figure 5 below, is not highlighted or labelled in any of the series of which this figure forms part. It is, however, present in some of them.

This led me to the two figures included below, versions of which pop up all over the place. These particular versions were taken from reference 3, the top of which is snapped above.

[Figure 2]

Where the brain stem is the red and yellow portions left; the brown, red and yellow portions right.

Vesicle, from the Latin for a small bladder, is a term used in various disciplines and is used here to describe the first divisions of the developing neural tube.

[Figure 3]

So what I was looking for was something between the picture from reference 2 and the diagrams from reference 3.

[Figure 4]

Maybe the people at reference 4 could help, the source of the snap above? The only catch there being that you have to pay. Not a great deal, and I dare say that if you are a professional it is well worth while, but for me a bit of rationing is appropriate.

And I have yet to find out what the white tube poking out above the pituitary gland (the cherry hanging off the top of the brain) is. Is it one of the cerebral arteries?

More important, I was reminded that diagrams of complex three-dimensional structures are tricky. Which bits do you cut away and which bits do you leave? Part of the answer seems to be to classify all the elements of the structure and then to turn things on and off. Technical drawing packages sometimes call this layering. So your structure might include the vascular network of veins and arteries, but you might choose to turn that layer off in your diagram.

I associate to the cut-away diagrams you get in picture books about battleships. Among a lot of stuff about fantasy battleships, Bing turns up this interesting diagram of what I think is the turbines of the real battleship Yamato. Generated from some technical drawing package?

A ship I notice from time to time, for example at reference 5. A relic of my childhood interest in ships.

[Figure 5]

At about this point, I came across reference 6, which I did not have to pay for and from which this well-labelled photograph is taken. Nose left. Not the whole story, but a good chunk of it.

The only figure in which part of the occipital bone is visible as an orange patch lower left: the large roughly cup-shaped bone which supports the base and back of the forebrain. The gap to the right being the hole, the foramen magnum, though which the brain stem joins the forebrain.

Peduncle is a term for stalk, here the three pairs of stalks joining the cerebellum to the brain stem, a term borrowed from botany.

[Figure 6]

I then started to wonder about the ventricles, the fourth and last one of which appears to lie between the brain stem proper and the cerebellum, which branches off it. This led to the diagram snapped above, which quite startled me by the size and extent of the two lateral ventricles at the top, echoing the lobes of the enclosing cerebral mantle.

Were the ventricles a relic of the interior of the embryonic neural tube?

Turning to Gemini, he explained that this was indeed the case, citing a useful page at reference 3 as his authority, the top of which is snapped above. A story which was corroborated later by something in Wikipedia.

A digression

At this point, I wandered off again, with the author of this text, Naomi Bahm, belonging to  the ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI). What was this?

ASCCC turns out to be the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, these last being the entry level division, as it were, of the California system of tertiary education. There are rather more than a hundred of them. ASCCC is to be found at reference 7, while the community colleges more generally are to be found at reference 10. One of these colleges is the Pasadena Community College, to be found at reference 11, a place which appears to offer a huge range of courses, a lot of them online or hybrid, cheaper and more convenient for many students. One of them is snapped above. While the college itself is snapped below: a bit grand by our standards, here in the UK.

While the open learning initiative is to be found at reference 8, which includes Libretexts, snapped above, and with another sample of the sort of thing produced at reference 9. I am neither psychologist nor educator, but it all looks pretty good to me – very much directed at making higher education more accessible – and I wonder now what our own NESCOT, here at Epsom, does in this way?

I associate to the material which used to be produced by the Open University, about which one does not hear so much these days.

Another diagram

[Figure 7]

This figure being my attempt to summarise all this – in Powerpoint, having dropped the idea of a free-hand sketch.

In which most of the tricky structures between the mid brain and the forebrain are omitted, structures like the hippocampus, the amygdala and the claustrum.

Including the gross lateralisation of the forebrain and the cerebellum, but omitting that of the rest of the system.

Omitting the cranial nerves, including the here the ancient olfactory and optic nerves and the important vagus nerve – this last providing, inter alia, information about the viscera to the brain stem. The cranial nerves enter the central system at various places from top to bottom of the brain stem.

Omitting the complicated internal structure of the brain stem, including in particular what used to be called the reticular activating system. The system which might be thought of as driving the forebrain.

Omitting the vascular system of arteries, capillaries and veins which, through the blood supply, fuels the whole system.

I guess that the computer package linked to Figure 4 allows you to switch this sort of thing on and off.

Glands are different in that they express various signalling chemicals, a quite different mechanism to the electrical signalling of the rest of it, the nerve tissues.

Conclusions

I am now much more comfortable with how the brain stem is joined to the cerebral mantle. With Gemini having given me a useful leg-up along the way.

It is impressive how the gross structure – the bulges – of the five-week-old embryo of Figure 2 is largely preserved in Figure 7.

And I associate this morning to the pipework of trees, sketched ten years ago at reference 12.

PS 1: while Bing, on the search key ‘pipework of trees’, turns up all kinds of stuff about the infestation of waste water pipes with the roots of trees. Lots of impressive pictures of this sort of thing at reference13, from where the snap above is taken.

PS 2: except that this link - which did look a bit odd in the first place - does not work in the way intended. For reasons which may all be mixed up with the 'Gladys Lejeune blog and 'storage.googleapis.com', whatever this last might be. Gladys appears to exist on Instagram and Facebook, but I have yet to track down her blog.

PS 3: Gemini is reasonably helpful - good on my supplementaries. It seems very probable that the problem is caused by the content of the 'xyz' website changing since Bing indexed it and the problem is possibly confounded by 'Gladys Lejeune' being some tricky content provider. A provider which I might say is infested with advertisements.

References

Reference 1: The brain and the inner world: an introduction to the neuroscience of subjective experiences - Mark Solms, Oliver Turnbull – 2002. 

Reference 2: The Brain Book – Rita Carter – 2009. A useful picture book from Dorling Kindersley.

Reference 3: https://socialsci.libretexts.org/. 

Reference 4: https://www.visiblebody.com. 

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/yamato.html. 

Reference 6: A Novel Human Brainstem Map Based on True-Color Sectioned Images - Yaqian You, Jin Seo Park – 2023. 

Reference 7: https://asccc.org/. ‘As the official voice of California community college faculty in academic and professional matters, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) is committed to equity, student learning and student success. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges acts to empower faculty to engage in local and statewide dialog and take action for continued improvement of teaching, learning, and faculty participation in governance’.

Reference 8: https://asccc-oeri.org/. ‘Welcome to the ASCCC OERI. Our mission is to expand the availability and adoption of high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER)’.

Reference 9: Psychology 172: Developmental Psychology – Lumen Learning, Neil Walker, Frederick Bobola, College of the Canyons – 2017. Available from reference 8 above.

Reference 10: https://www.cccco.edu/. ‘With 2.1 million students attending 116 colleges, our mission is to provide students with the knowledge and background necessary to compete in today’s economy’.

Reference 11: https://pasadena.edu/. ‘Pasadena City College provides the San Gabriel Valley with a high quality, innovative and dynamic learning environment that inspires student success. Each semester we offer academic programs that encompass degrees, transfer programs, and certificates, to 27,250+ students’.

Reference 12: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/09/botanic-problem-3.html. 

Reference 13: https://asktheman.xyz/.