A second outing

Having bought myself a shopping trolley, as noticed at reference 1 over a week ago, I thought it was time for a second outing and that a visit to Ben's Butchery in Upper High Street ought to supply some stress testing.

And, as it happens, before I got to Ben's, I passed a shop selling all kinds of household goods, not to be found now in Street View, with two or three shopping trolleys out front, one of which looked near identical to the one that I had bought from a charity shop. So a bit late in the day, I have found a shop in Epsom which sells the things.

Picked up some beef plus some bones at Ben's. On this occasion, managing to get beef which had been neither trimmed nor chined. Furthermore, he had an entire side of beef hung up in his chiller cabinet, that is to say without the legs. I was told that they got in a whole half once a month or so. A whole half which did not come with a birth certificate in the way of the long gone butcher in Niton on the other island, but it did come with a bar coded ticket, a bit like a luggage label of old, and consulting your computer you could map the bar code onto all you could possibly want to know about the cow concerned.

And given that I had the trolley, down to Waitrose for a few more oddments, picking up a couple of books from Oxfam on the way. Waitrose satisfactory except for the absence of Guardians, this being about 16:00. They could do a TLS, but I decided against. Usually too literary for me and quite enough unread books on the study floor already.

One of the books was the 'Jean de Florette' stories from Marcel Pagnol, with Jean being known to us from some films on over one Christmas, what must be quite a few years ago now. Will either of us read the book - a slightly tired paperback with rather small print?

While the other book was a brand new copy of 'Swallows and Amazons' from Arthur Ransome, with these books being very popular when I was young, not that I ever really took to them myself. Handsomely got up by Vintage Classics, which I now know to be a brand from Penguin Books. Maybe we will find a taker for that one.

As I recall, a group of children having adventures, a formula which was used by a number of successful writers in the middle of the last century - not least C S Lewis and Enid Blyton. No idea if it still flies with the children of today.

Half of bread batch No.762, maybe a couple of hours out of the oven, visible left. The 246th batch which has been cooked in the Silverwood baking tins bought back in 2019, noticed at the time at reference 3. They have done very well indeed.

PS 1: the bones are being boiled up with some veg. for gravy as I type this. Maybe a bit of boiled meat to be nibbled off the bones later. Maybe an outing for the jug noticed at reference 6, which has quite possibly not yet been used in anger, despite having been bought some months ago.

PS 2: also as I type this, a fine, near-full moon rising to the northeast.

PS 3: somewhat later: I find that I passed on 'Swallows and Amazons' four years ago, as noticed at reference 6. Probably a much better copy today, which is fair enough given that I paid for it. No memory of any of the other books involved there, although I dare say I could get something back if I worked at it. 

References 

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/my-trolley.html.

Reference 2: https://bensbutchery.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/shopping.html.

Reference 4: https://www.penguin.co.uk/search-results?q=arthur+ransome&tab=books.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/trolleys-849-850-and-851.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/hafod.html.