Trolley 944

The first and only trolley of this day was captured by the bus stop outside Enterprise, at the town end of West Hill, the first time for a while. But the trolley itself was an entirely ordinary medium small (100l) trolley from the M&S food hall.

Heading up East Street, umbrella deployed against the sun, another large mobile crane had arrived at the Majestic site, now very clearly about to become yet another self-storage shed. We do seen to have lots of them scattered about the borough. People running businesses from their homes, but needing some kind of additional storage?

This one from yet another crane company, King Lifting, to be found at reference 2. Not as elaborate as the last one from Bronzeshield, noticed at reference 3. Perhaps the contractor has a relationship with two or three crane operators and just takes the one that happens to suit best on the day. A lump of grey steel, presumably the subject of the lift, is just about visible at the base of the crane.

A second trolley, just the country side of the Screwfix underpass, from Sainsbury's. It was not convenient to return it at this point, so tucked it behind a tree, where hopefully it would survive until the day following. Not here scored.

The Screwfix whitebeam. Clusters of green berries to be seen, about the size of haws. With ours already turning red.

Home to try the Victoria plums from Waitrose, once again grown by the Baxter of Kent of reference 3. Not bad, but not as good as the few I used to grow on my allotment or those that FIL grew in his garden. I think there must be something in being fresh off the tree, which supermarkets, notwithstanding all their climate control trickery, are hard put to match.

The next day was set to be hot, so out early on an anti-clockwise circuit to try and recover the trolley hidden away the day before. But to no avail; the trolley had gone, possibly gathered up by a Sainsbury's team member on his or her way in from the Longmead Estate.

But I did catch another very smart, new looking wagon from Thirsk, backing some steel into the Majestic site on East Street, where the crane was ready and waiting. Quite different in appearance from the last one, noticed without snap at reference 4, more than a month ago now.

This being a DIY day, I called in Ben the Butcher to pick up a bit of tenderloin - with the counter hand not knowing that tenderloin was always pork. However, while it might well be that it is usually pork, and asking for tenderloin has always resulted in pork in the past, he was right in that Wikipedia, when I checked this morning, allows beef tenderloin, indeed tenderloin from more or less any quadruped. The pork version is very reliably good, so must try the beef version some day.

On this day, plus some smoked haddock from Waitrose. A first, but it had suddenly occurred to me that this ought to work in the mix intended.

And so home to whack up a bit of pork soup with haddock; almost a chowder. Six ounces of pearl barley, some celery, some onion (finely chopped), then the tenderloin (coarsely chopped). All this taking something over an hour.

And I might say that the tenderloin chopped very well. The meat looked very good.

Near the end of the process, added the flaked smoked haddock and the (by now rather salty) water I had cooked it in. Removed a small number of short bones, probably from near the head end of the fillet.

Finished off with some hard chou pointu - rather than the soft sort available earlier in the season. Simmered for just a few minutes, maybe five.

Reference 5 just visible below left, a book which I have owned for many years, but have only just got around to taking a proper look at. Inter alia, a useful supplement to Eric Havelock on early writing in the eastern Mediterranean basin. From the time when the word was new and powerful. The time when the world was young (as Tolkien might have said) and when there was some conflation of signifier and signified. Wallis-Budge may have allowed the spiritualists rife after the First War more time than I think proper, but he did know a great deal about amulets and talismans. He had spent serious time with them.

The soup on the plate: it had worked out very well, complete with fish. I did around half, leaving enough to be topped up for the following day. Rounded out with stewed plums, foreign from Sainsbury's, as the fresh from Waitrose had vanished by then.

PS 1: later: I had been intrigued by the image on page 2 of reference 5, said to be of the Babylonian demon Humbaba, BM accession No.116737. The image was of a fairly crude sketch, with the present point of interest being that it was said to have been cut or drawn as a single line - the twistings of which represent the convolutions of the entrails, etc - which was not at all apparent from the sketch, so I looked it up, with the results snapped above and below. 

The image is not really the same, the head being the wrong shape and the forehead being all wrong, but No.116737 might possibly have been a clerical error for No.116624. Neither the British Museum, Bing nor Google knew anything about the right number and I have been unable to trace a copy of the relevant number of the Royal Asiatic Journal from which Wallis-Budge made his tracing. Nevertheless, it is clear from the snap above, that while it might not be one line, it is a minimum number of lines. Is their anything more to this than the conflation of the face with the continuous line of the intestines?

From where I associate to the balls of Aberdeen of reference 6.

PS 2: later still, the next stop was a Sidney Smith paper about the mask and its meaning in the Liverpool Annals, Vol.XI (page 107 f). The Internet Archive, to which I subscribe, could only manage Vol.IX, while the site above, the only one that I turned up with this particular volume, wanted foreign money, which I declined to cough up. But I can say, from what I saw of Vol.IX, that the University of Liverpool, at least in those days, ran to a very serious journal with what must, for the time, have been very serious illustrations.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-941-942-and-943.html.

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

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys.html. Clerical error resulting in file name error.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolley-905-906-and-907.html.

Reference 5: Amulets and Talismans - E A Wallis Budge - 1961 (USA).

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-carved-stone-balls-of-aberdeen.html.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Smith_(Assyriologist). Probably the Smith in question. Apparently a good friend of Agatha Christie and her second (archaeologist) husband.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._A._Wallis_Budge.

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