Crusher

This day more or less started with a short visit to B&M, a well-stocked place, as already obliquely noticed at reference 4. Lots more stuff than Wilko managed as it was running down.

For the avoidance of doubt, I was probably returning one of their trolleys, rather than shopping.

By the end of September, the demolition of the small block tacked onto the small parade of shops at Waterloo Road had more or less finished. I had been surprised that for this small job, they had thought it worth bringing in a crusher for the rubble - some of which may have gone to fill up a cellar. I guess that is what you get for getting a proper demolition contractor in, rather than some local builder who does demolition on the side. But perhaps that was in the days when you demolished small building like this by hand, stripping out all the wood and then doing the walls by standing on them and swinging the mattock.

The view from the other side. McCarthy & Stone visible behind. Full up, if reference 1 is to be believed.

A stray bicycle at the entrance to Court Recreation Ground.

Last time I looked at them, they had a designated area, which I remember as being central London plus the borough of Kingston. But that seems to have changed, and I have not found anything about area at reference 2, having to resort to Bing to get the snap above. These bikes do seem to be creeping nearer to Epsom. There is also a mechanism for fining you if you park badly, but I have not found out how exactly that works.

The first time I came across one of their bikes out of area was noticed three years ago at reference 3 - when they were called humanforest.

Along the way, I came across this sturdy bag, clean and decent but abandoned. Just the thing for taking into the Wigmore Hall and suchlike places. It has, as it happens, already seen one trip into town.

Home to the second showing for the 16oz brew of lentils noticed recently.

Washed down with apples from a little way up north, served with cloves. Unusually entire, which is hard to achieve with the cooking apples you get from Sainsbury's, probably some kind of (bright green) Bramley, if achievable at all.

PS: as it happens, a crusher has quite a big place in the Maigret story I am rereading at the moment, reference 5, in an effort to try and puzzle out what was going on. Having read the story two or three times over the years and having watched the Rupert Davies version ('The Golden Fleece') twice, I was still having trouble with it.

The crusher - concasseur - is by the side of the canal - or perhaps the Seine - where the barge tycoon has his house, on top of the job, as it were, one of several crushers that he owns. For crushing rock - perhaps chalk - that he has had brought down from his quarries up-river. According to Littré a machine for grinding up animal feed, but for Larousse and Simenon, a noisy machine for grinding up rock.

And talking of animals, there is some talk of the some of the barges being horse drawn, with such horses featuring in at least one of the earlier Maigret stories. The days when tow paths were just that.

Incidentally, the last of the first cycle of Maigret stories, with him taking early retirement a few days after the end of this one. But he comes back to life after a bit of a pause of getting on for ten years, but Simenon does not really get into gear with Maigret again until the late 1940s. It may have irritated him to have to keep pumping out these pot-boilers when he had his sights on higher things, like the Nobel Prize. Still, needs must.

Could horses have pulled the barge in the snap? Along the level, granted, but it still looks pretty big to me. On the other hand, you stabled the horses in the middle of the barge, so it must have been fairly big; not one of our narrow boats at all. To think that we used to have a canal boat buff at TB and he could probably have told me all about such things.

References

Reference 1: https://www.mccarthyandstone.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.forest.me/. I think I liked it better when one knew what the suffices meant, rather than being a vehicle for a bit of marketing.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/sundays-snaps.html.

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

Reference 5: L'Écluse No.1 - Georges Simenon - 1933. Story 2, Volume V of the collected Maigret. Rencontre.