A busy day

A two circuit day, with the first event being what I imagine the floor being poured at the self storage place coming on in East Street, where Majestic used to be. And a long time before them Texas Homecare. A brand I had almost forgotten about when I consulted Bing this morning. See reference 1.

Not really visible in the snap above are the concrete blocks used to hold the posts holding the hoarding. The second site I have noticed in Epsom in the past few months where they found it easier to use concrete blocks to hold the posts, rather than sinking them into the ground, as was normal in the olden days.

The superstructure, coming on fast.

Passing the supposed tree of heaven in East Street, rather than examining the terminal buds, I thought to count the leaflets.

At first I thought it was going well, with there always being 13 pairs followed by a terminal bud or leaf. Odd-pinnate. 

Persisting though, this broke down and things got much more varied, with the one snapped above being mostly twelve pairs. But were they all the same on any one primary stem or sucker? Despite being more or less identical genetically speaking?

Perhaps I need to commission a sucker census project in some primary school.

While a heritage Ferrari, a 1981 Mondial - FCC 81X - was not making much speed at all. Although quite fast enough for me not to be able to snap it. The snap above was taken from reference 3, and my Ferrari was white rather than red.

It must be mild as the fungus last noticed at reference 2 was coming on well at the top of Stones Road. Not quite as shapely, but a lot bigger.

Time for another snap of the Screwfix whitebeam. Starting to visibly thin out now.

Back home to some tree ripened, neighbourly figs. Pretty much the same as the real thing, at least as far as we could tell. The only niggle being that my memory of dessert figs in Turkish restaurants was that they were green. Maybe memory playing tricks again. But then this morning, I think that you have green olives and black olives, so why not green figs and purple figs?

Over the hill in the afternoon to catch a 2015 McLaren Spider, N88 OLS. Not as handsome as the morning's Ferrari, but then, it was not heritage.

This was followed by a scattered procession of trotters coming over the hill from town. Was there some travelling family festivity, or were they just out for a spin? The Holmwood Chase trotting chapter?

And more.

And more.

And more. Is he texting or snapping? At least he is not driving at the same time. Plenty more but that is probably enough for here. All brings a bit of colour to the town.

After the crusher at Waterloo Road, noticed at reference 4, the augur, complete with attendant grout machine. Clearly getting through the surface rubble OK - or someone cleared it away before the off.

Passing down Court Rec I was picked up by two young ladies, perhaps as old as fifteen, one very forwardly dressed. They chatted for a few minutes, then passed on. No idea what was going on at all.

They were also taking an interest in another older gentleman, who turned out to be Italian, who knew all about Alio's grocery, late of Chase Road, killed off, he told me, by the likes of Sainsbury's muscling into the foreign grocery business.

He told me he came from a town between Milan and Turin, the centre of the Italian rice industry, now in danger of being killed off by global warming and the loss of spring melt waters from the glaciers to the west and north. Possibly the Vercelli of reference 5. He also seemed to know a lot more about Italian history than the average English older gentleman would know about English history. But maybe that is what comes of Italy only having been invented in the mid 19th century. And he knew as much about rice as some Irishmen know about potatoes. More to the stuff than you think. See reference 6.

Was he a refugee from the falling need for labour in the paddy fields? Part of some agricultural unemployment problem? Or was he left over from the second war?

He reminisced about the summer heat and the winter cold of his homeland - and the very thick mists. Not fogs he assured me. Not like the last pea-souper that I remember, from outside Wood Green tube station, one evening in the late 1970s. Clean mists, nothing to do with industrial or domestic pollution.

Action continued at the all weather football pitch. Action which had being going on for quite some time and was all much more complicated than one might have thought.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Homecare. A brand which wound up with 'The Range', a version of B&M, of present interest for their range of shopping trolleys, possibly in-store, unlike some other stores.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/wigmore-late.html.

Reference 3: https://momentcar.com/ferrari/1981/ferrari-mondial/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/crusher.html.

Reference 5: https://festivaldelriso.it/en/home-eng/. 'In the heart of Vercelli’s gentle plain, the Risò – the International Rice Festival – comes to life. It is a celebration of a symbol which has shaped landscapes, communities, and local identity. An event that relates rice as a heritage and a resource for the future'.

Reference 6: https://www.sustainableeurice.eu/european-rice/rice-production-in-italy/.

Group search key: botanicsk.