Chowder

I get around to the kedgeree, the ingredients for which were noticed back at reference 1. Served with some neighbourly squash.

According to OED, the Indian name of a dish made with rice, split pulses, onions, eggs, butter and condiments. From the Sanskrit, via Hindi. The Europeans, when they turned up, substituted fish for the pulses and onions.

The squash was baked, with a little oil and pepper. Not bad at all, but, curiously, the skin was thin and hard, rather like a plastic film, visible at the bottom of the right-hand lump above. Best removed before eating. It might have been better to remove it before cooking, but I'm not completely sure about that, as it does serve to keep the pieces in good shape.

The kedgeree was fine, albeit with the substitution of lightly smoked cod for properly smoked haddock making it a little bland. Stick with haddock when available.

Around half the fish that I had bought was not used, and that went to make a chowder the following day. A watery confection involving, in addition to the fish, potatoes and onions - with the water being initially strengthened by boiling up the potato peelings in it. Probably also some kind of green vegetable, possibly leeks, possibly some sort of cabbage. 

With the fish being augmented on this occasion by a little bacon. The fish was cooked by steaming it in the lidded sauté pan on top of a bed of onions, then flaking it in-situ, the whole lot being added to the potatoes and so forth just before eating. It did rather well.

But before the kedgeree, I had been out to check up on the trolley situation in town - no longer recorded here - and on the whitebeam in the Screwfix passage.

This one with a ripening berry or two.

Google Images still goes for whitebeam, making it a Sorbus, while Wikipedia says that the Sorbus genus has been pulled in and includes just those trees with pinnate leaves, roughly the rowans and mountain ashes, and that the whitebeams are now to be found at reference 3. Maybe the library of labelled images on which Google Images was trained is a little out of date. Not a matter that I propose to look into this morning.

While in the afternoon, I went past the mosque (perhaps properly the Epsom Islamic Centre) in Hook Road, where the new paving, rather bleak when dry, was looking rather good when wet, with the water bringing the stone out nicely. The snap above gives something of it.

A couple of days later, I happened to notice the notice on the hoarding around the site which is to become flats, at the corner of West Hill and Station Approach, noticed from time to time, presently inactive again after the previous building was demolished. So it is now getting on for a year since the builder took possession of the site and we do not yet have any construction, as opposed to destruction.

But pushing on to the creationists of East Street, we did have what appeared to be a van from UCL of Gower Street (in London), outside. What was it doing there? I did not like to ask the driver, who might have thought I was being a bit nosey.

Carcheck tells me that it is a black Mercedes-Benz Viano CDI blue efficiency Ambiente, which is fair enough, with Bing knowing all about such things at reference 4, but, sadly, does not tell me who it belongs to. Need better credentials than mine to get that.

Whitebeam again, this time the usual full-frontal shot from the south west.

While the last puzzle of the day was this low brick wall, on the left after one has passed the Ford Centre in Blenheim Road, heading towards the roundabout. I have long puzzled about why they bothered with the damp course, visible two courses up, which only appeared to serve to weaken it, making it vulnerable to being pushed about by parking cars.

I thought Gemini did rather well on this one. The first part of his reply is snapped above and he concluded with '... In summary, the DPC is there not to save the brick itself, but to preserve the aesthetic integrity and long-term appearance of the wall, particularly the capping, and to ensure compliance with established building standards'. Note his usual bit of warm-up flattery at the top.

PS 1: the Financial Times has been getting into insurance again with the pieces at reference 5 and 6. The numbers involved in these cyber attacks look pretty big to me, which leaves me wondering how many insurance companies are big enough take them on. All that seems to be certain is that there are a lot of these attacks about. And I remember being told twenty years ago by a security type that our (the Home Office at that time) defences were being probed all the time - many times a day - by bad people on fishing expeditions. Is it all down to young male nerds in attics? 

In any event, I would be all for throwing the book at the ones we catch at it. Bang 'em up. They might well have mental health issues, but we can't have them out there, in the wide world, doing that kind of damage to property; we just can't afford it.

PS 2: I close with a savoury from reference 7, which I continue to look into from time to time. Regarding the Hungarian nationalism of the late 18th century, Anderson writes: '... Its first political expression was the Latin-speaking Magyar nobility's hostile reaction in the 1780s to Emperor Joseph II's decision to replace Latin by German as the prime language of imperial administration...'. A decision which, it seems, was rescinded by his successor. All of which eventually resulted in the invention of the Dual Monarchy in 1867. Which, if memory serves and according to Švejk, left the Czechs feeling a bit left out. No opportunity missed for a brawl between the men of the Hungarian and Czech regiments. Brawls which were considered very proper by their officers, at least on the QT.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/09/more-breaking-news.html.

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

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aria_edulis.

Reference 4: https://www.parkers.co.uk/mercedes-benz/viano/estate-2004/22-cdi-ambiente-(2010)-5d/specs/.

Reference 5: Jaguar Land Rover to bear full cost of cyber attack due to lack of insurance cover: Government considers offering support to suppliers including state purchase of car parts - Lee Harris, Kana Inagaki, Jim Pickard, Financial Time - 2025.

Reference 6: The grimdark future of credit risk models: It’s a model and it’s looking good; you want regulatory approval, that’s understood - Daniel Davies, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 7: Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism - Benedict Anderson - 1983, 2016.

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