Trolleys 937 and 938

A late start to the day as I needed to be in for the visit of the British Gas - aka HomeCare - plumber to attend to our dripping taps. People with whom we have been for years and who should not be confused with HomeServe. Bing seems to think that I ought to be comparing their offerings but I doubt whether I shall bother, with the service provided by HomeCare being pretty good. And they were, as I recall, first off this particular block of providing plumbing and electrical services without one needing to shop around for someone small and local, a someone who was apt not to be that careful about responding to telephone calls or turning up. Maybe his wife was out shopping.

In event, the barrels (with their washers) of all the relevant taps were replaced efficiently enough, although I wonder now whether I should not have asked them to clean the seatings while they were at it. Our water is very hard and stuff does build up inside fittings and pipework.

The late morning trolley was recovered from underneath Hudson House, a medium small trolley from the M&S food hall. From where I went across to Waitrose to see what they could do in the way of cherries, to find that English plums had come in. I took a kilo, that is to say two packets.

From there down East Street to find a large mobile crane up to something at what was the Majestic site. From a new-to-me company called Bronzeshield, to be found at reference 4.

And I now know that Bronzeshield is also very nearly the name of the privately run women's prison on the site of what was the Ashford Detention Centre, next door to the concrete yard where I briefly worked when I left school. A concrete yard where industrial relations were rather old fashioned - in favour of the employer that is - and where they made some or all of the concrete segments used to line the Victoria tube line tunnels. According to Wikipedia, it costs about as much to stay in Bronzefield as in a provincial care home, which is, I suppose, fair enough. But rather more than in one run by the Prisons Service.

The crane might have been the mobile tower crane specified at reference 6, one of two on offer, a Spierings SK1265-AT6. A pity I did not take the trouble to take a closer look as there is no model number to be seen on the snap I did take.

But there was the new-to-me feature of what looks to be a lift for the operator. No more climbing up to the cab in the morning. And according to what I can make of reference 6, the crane can be operated from the ground or from the cab above. Lots more pictures at reference 7, although I failed to find out anything more about the cab.

The crane was gone by the time I next went past, a couple of days later, and I never did get to find out what the lift was. A lift that would, presumably, have been difficult to accomplish otherwise.

Has the construction of the new flats at the top of Kiln Lane, started after a long wait, paused for a new delivery of money? Something that seems to happen to a lot of Epsom's construction projects.

Some of the plums, not fully ripe but entirely edible. The yellow flesh came away from the stone very cleanly, a feature I like. An odd plum in that it looked and felt from the outside a lot less ripe than it turned out to be. Variety Reeves, grown in Kent, by Baxter. Who is to be found at reference 8, from where I associate to the pretty websites knocked out by people who grow wine in mainland Europe.

They don't seem to admit to this particular plum, which can however be found at reference 9 - where it looks a lot more purple than it looks above. Another fruit invented in British Columbia.

The second trolley of the day, No.938, duplicated the first.

PS 1: I remember the concrete yard as being called Moody's. Bing does not turn up anything relevant, but he does offer the Moody's concrete in Ontario, to be found at reference 10. Google does not do that, but does get the idea that this might be an old company, offering various vaguely relevant directories. Gemini does much better, turning up Kinnear Moody Concrete Ltd and reference 11 - which brings back lots of memories of building sites and yards at that time, that is to say the late 1960s. On a supplementary, he also mentions their yard on Feltham Road, very near where I think I had lodgings at the time. Probably only there for the duration of the construction of the Victoria Line and there is now a small industrial estate on what was probably the site. The only fly in the ointment is that the prison is about a mile to the west, not as near as I had thought. Plus some doubt about whether it is 'Moodie' or 'Moody'. But I don't think that this disturbs the identification.

While the National Archives made the offer snapped above.

PS 2: a little later: I was interested to read about the sort of person that POTUS hires then fires as the commissioner of the IRS. He may well have been a fine auctioneer and a fine showman (like POTUS and I dare say like Reagan before them), but does that qualify you to run a large and complicated organisation - the aims and methods of which he did not appear to agree with at all? Is the job of commissioner roughly the same as that of our chairman of the board of the Inland Revenue? Maybe he had a good first lieutenant to look after all the nuts and bolts, all the boring day do day stuff about keeping the show on the road. Keeping the revenue rolling in. See references 12 and 13. In action at reference 14.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-933-934-935-and-936.html.

Reference 2: https://www.britishgas.co.uk/. HomeCare.

Reference 3: https://www.homeserve.co.uk/.

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

Reference 5: https://www.bronzeshield.com/.

Reference 6: https://www.bronzeshield.com/shares/crane_27.pdf.

Reference 7: https://www.spieringscranes.com/en/e-lift-cranes/sk1265-at6-elift/.

Reference 8: https://westerhill.com/the-farm/.

Reference 9: https://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?varid=8277. 'The University of Reading is responsible for the curation and maintenance of the National Fruit Collection in collaboration with the Fruit Advisory Services Team (FAST), who are based at Brogdale Farm. Public access is organised by Brogdale Collections, who provide guided tours and run various events throughout the year'. Maybe we should try to visit.

Reference 10: https://wdmoodyconcrete.com/.

Reference 11: https://www.tunnelsandtunnelling.com/features/tunnelling-50-years-ago/.

Reference 12: Donald Trump fires IRS chief after less than two months in the job: US taxation body has lost a quarter of its staff since president began second term - James Politi, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 13: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Long.

Reference 14: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rep-billy-long-drowns-out-laura-loomer-during-hearing-with-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey/.

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