Trolley 955

A Saturday turn around town, taking the anti-clockwise Screwfix circuit, to show off the sights. Starting with an M&S medium small trolley outside the entrance to the station on Station Approach.

The blue car first noticed more than fifty trolleys ago at reference 2 was still there and inspection revealed that it was probably on a patch of land controlled by EDF, that is to say the electricity people, who had something in a box adjacent. Perhaps the patch was intended for the parking of one of their vans in case there was need for box action. Something which is going to happen from time to time.

Tempted by a large, good looking cauliflower in the market for £3.50, thinking to reprise the recipe at reference 3, to discover that I had no cash on me and that there was a queue. Declined. Large pineapple, similarly priced, also declined. Not helped by the business of pineapple being used as a meat tenderiser sticking in the mind.

On into Stones Road, where I noticed this flashy pink shrub. Google Images is fairly clear that it is a Weigela, perhaps the Weigela Florida. Weigelas get a substantial entry in Hortus Third, about two columns' worth. Including a dozen or so varieties of the Florida, said to be the most common sort. Originally from east Asia, particularly Japan. The number of petals and stamens - five of each - is confirmed.

Having missed the name in Wikipedia, Gemini tells me that 'The genus of flowering shrubs known as Weigela is named for Christian Ehrenfried Weigel (1748-1831), a German scientist and professor. He was a professor of botany, chemistry, and mineralogy at the University of Greifswald'. An easy one for him.

I seem to have failed to notice the acquisition of Hortus Third (reference 6), although it gets a couple of notices in November last year, so probably about then.

Sorry to find that the graffiti have started to appear on top of the public art decorating the Screwfix Passage. Hopefully the artist bothered to give the thing a coat of anti-graffiti varnish and it will wash off.

But Whitebeam all present and correct, if a little [absence of] water stressed. Lots of grounded leaves.

Later on we watched and enjoyed 'The Bookshop' of reference 1, paying Prime a modest sum to that end. A vehicle, inter alia, for Bill Nighy to play one of his older odd-bods. Not usually the sort of thing that I go for at all - and after the event it (and the rather up-market bookshop) all seemed terribly improbable, even if it was based on what has become the ever-so-precious Southwold.

PS 1: I can now report that the oddly white coconut reported at reference 9, after three weeks or so in the brick compost heap, has now turned a decent shade of brown. The brown of the coconut matting of school gymnasiums of old. The sort of stuff you might indeed make into matting.

PS 2: the piece at reference 10 caught my yesterday evening (Tuesday), including one of those fancy graphics that the FT is good at. A graphic dominated by China, India and the Soviet Union. The 1943 famine in Bengal is visible, as are those of the Civil War and the Second World War in the Soviet Union. But I had forgotten, if I had ever known, the scale of the famine in China at the time of the Great Leap Forward, perhaps just before the time of the Cultural Revolution and the Little Red Book. Perhaps these were two of its results? Embarrassing now to think how oblivious of all this I was at the time that I actually owned an English language version of the Book. Much more nicely produced than propaganda from the Soviet Union.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-952-953-and-954.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolley-891.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolley-932.html.

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

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

Reference 6: Hortus Third: A concise dictionary of plants cultivated in the United States and Canada - Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium - 1976. A unit of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York State. 1,290 pages of it. A substantial book from RPPL.

Reference 7: https://www.uni-greifswald.de/en/. Possibly founded in 1456. Gemini reminds me that this was a time of troubles in England, with Henry VI being indisposed. Possibly about the time that Eton and King's College Cambridge were founded.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bookshop_(film).

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-933-934-935-and-936.html.

Reference 10: Global famine deaths rise as leaders use food as a weapon: After decades of decline, the number of people dying from hunger is increasing as starvation spreads from Sudan to Gaza - David Pilling, Heba Saleh, Financial Times - 2025.

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