Gemini, pigs and acorns

This being a record of a digression kicked off by the stray query (snapped above) arising at the end of reference A1, aka B1. I thought that Gemini’s claim that foraging pigs could spit out the husks of the acorns that they were eating – partly because they were fibrous and indigestible, partly because they were full of tannins – was something that it should be possible to check, with the references he had provided as a starting point.

With such checking being an important part of building confidence in the information supplied by Google’s AI product Gemini.

A matter I had thought might keep me busy for the rest of the day. In the event, what with mission creep and one thing and another, more like a month.

The bottom line is that Gemini got this one right, albeit resting on a source I did not care to rest on.

There have been off-post digressions as well as in-post digressions. These are listed below. On the blog they are marked with the group search key ‘acornsk’. 

Complete with some of Microsoft’s sometimes irritating blue underlines. Pushing us into some homogenous, mid-Atlantic version of English.

I started off with the pigs of the New Forest, eventually getting to what I think was Gemini’s source, reference B13, well written and nicely illustrated, with the relevant bit being snapped above. The Elaine Gill mentioned looks to be a respectable writer about horses. But this large website as a whole had no pedigree, an absence which was matter for reference A6.

I was not satisfied.

Then came the digressions, and after that I returned to the business of pannage, particularly as it is practised in the Iberian Dehesa (of reference B3) now, where it is a serious business, which the snap above and reference B14 suggest might be some hundreds of thousands of animals, rather than the hundreds of the New Forest.

Then came teeth, jaws and mastication, on which there was as a surprisingly large literature, some of it, for example, going deeply into the details, the dynamics of jaw movements.

I then I hit the bull’s eye at reference B11 and then reference B12 – actually paying for this last on the grounds that it was the finishing touch to the present endeavour – into which I had put a lot of time and effort. Reference 2009c in the long list from reference B11 above. A lot of this material is in English, but when you dig deeper, or further back in time, there is a lot more Spanish – which I do not do. But lots of provenance – much better in that regard than the material I have turned up on the New Forest pigs. But then, Iberian pigs is a much bigger business than New Forest pigs, with these last being more a curiosity than a business.

Reference B12 describes an experiment to measure the amount of waste involved in the husking of acorns by Iberian pigs, with the waste rates derived then feeding into calculations of the rate of conversion of acorn kernel into meat. The sort of calculations that livestock scientists are keen on.

While reference B11 claims that these Iberian pigs are the only pigs that can do this. Perhaps I should put them in touch with the New Forest people.

Weights of the parts of the experimental acorns are summarised in the snap above. To be compared with the 5g/acorn from a different – but unknown species of oak – that I recorded here at Epsom.

I am now satisfied that some pigs at least are capable of husking acorns before they eat them.

Oddly, there does not seem to be a clear relationship between the taste of the acorn – roughly correlating with the amount of tannin – and the amount of waste. On the other hand, there seems to be a stronger relationship between the taste of the acorn and the selection of trees under which to graze. Matters which I have not gone into.

Nor have I gone into the regression offered.

But I have read about commercial pressures which are gradually eating into traditional pig finishing (not rearing) in the Dehesa. Traditional might produce good ham and sausage, but it is also expensive compared to intensive finishing. Spanish consumers – like English consumers – are sensitive to price and there are clearly limits to what they will pay for a quality product: something packaged up to look like the quality product will often do.

Major digressions

Pannage, past and present: particularly the New Forest, Sardinia and the Iberian peninsular

The diet of pigs generally; extensive and – much more often – otherwise

Ruminants (for example, sheep, goats and cows) and non-ruminants (for example, pigs and horses)

Nuts: acorns, beech nuts, sweet chestnuts, horse chestnuts – and so on

Tannins: what they are and what they do; content and variation 

Plant protection more generally

The place of oaks more generally

These are covered, in turn, in what follows.

Pannage

Pannage of pigs – more or less free-range foraging in open woodlands, often for both acorns and grass, perhaps also for roots – has been going on for a long time – with there being some evidence of it in Homer, say around 700BCE. It was well established in Kent at the time of the Norman Conquest and it still goes on in the New Forest, where it is just a relic of what went on in the Middle Ages. I have also read about wild pigs in Sardinia and domestic pigs in the southwest of the Iberian peninsula – the Dehesa of reference B3 – with Iberian pork being both highly valued and carefully protected, rather in the way of AOC wine in France.

You get pigs more or less all over the non-Muslim part of the world, and I dare say there is plenty of pannage outside of western Europe which I have not connected to. The snap above is taken from UN’s FAO.

Pannage appears to be a supplement, a way of finishing off pigs for slaughter, rather than a whole life activity. At reference B8 and elsewhere there is talk of the better flavour of acorn finished pork. But it is an expensive way to finish pigs compared, for example, to fattening them up in large sheds using feed from a factory. Or even compared with the pig sties of old. 

Pigs were run in forests of the Kentish Weald from Roman times through to the eighteenth century and the Jutish forest was the subject of the book at reference B7. Part of this was landowners charging pig farmers for the use of their woodland pastures. And kings taxing the landowners for owning the pastures, with records of same to be found in the Domesday Book. However, the pigs were gradually pushed out by the adoption of more intensive, more productive ways of farming – but they have left their mark in settlement patterns and in many place names. Subjects about which the author of this book clearly knew a great deal – but he was possibly not that interested in the pigs themselves.

Pigs are run in the New Forest now, but one wonders if this is not more about maintaining the New Forest as a holiday destination than about pigs. For example, one of the reasons for running pigs is the need to manage down the numbers of acorns left lying about so as to reduce the risk of grass-starved but charismatic ponies eating too many of them.

Pannage past and present in the UK and Europe more generally is the subject of reference B8, the author of which has now moved onto poultry at Premier Nutrition: ‘Alex joined Premier Nutrition in December 2024, following a significant career in research and driving scientific direction in animal nutrition. Her extensive knowledge in emulsifiers, phytase and other feed additives that help to optimise diet formulations and production efficiencies whilst minimising environmental impact will help to support poultry customers’.

The diet of pigs generally

Pigs are omnivores and one of the reasons for their success is their ability to cope with a wide range of foods.

Until the fairly recent past, many country people here in the UK kept the odd pig for Christmas, feeding them mainly on scraps from the kitchen. A practise which, when extended to restaurants, cafeterias and canteens, gave us the term ‘pig swill’, followed by the derogatory ‘swill’, with its suggestion that pigs will eat anything. A practise which I think has been largely killed off by hygiene regulations – tainted, undercooked pork having once been the source of a variety of unpleasant parasites.

Earlier still, lots of people kept pigs in towns, presumably mainly feeding them on various kinds of left-overs, but this did cause problems (touched at the end of reference A7) and eventually they were squeezed out. To the point now where the vast majority of pigs are reared intensively in large sheds.

I then read that in western Canada, pigs are raised mainly on the products and by-products – for example, barley, wheat, canola meal (a by-product of rape seed oil extraction) and peas – of the large arable farms there. But pigs (as non-ruminants) are not keen on feeds with a high fibre content, such as whole oats.

There are lots of pigs and it is not surprising that there are lots of big companies offering pig feeds, which might either be delivered in bags or pumped into bins and silos. Reference 16 looks to be a typical website – but is not very forthcoming about what these feeds are made of – beyond the feed including stuff for animal health and behaviour, as well as for nutrition. Reference 17 is rather more informative, but has taken the trouble to copy protect that information. Not proof against the snipping tool though, so some snippets follow.

First selection.

Second selection. So mainly grain of various sorts, but also fish, meat, beans and dairy. Plus what are coyly called ‘non-nutritive additives’.

There are also providers catering to the organic farmer, but I have not looked into those.

While in Sardinia, a team analysed the contents of the stomachs of near 100 wild boars, hunted down during the acorn season, with some description of same to be found at reference A7. Its seems that while these boars were majoring on acorns, they were taking a variety of other stuff, animal and vegetable, including a lot of berries and a fair amount of sheep. I have read of pigs being opportunistic feeders and that certainly seemed to fit here.

Ruminants

Ruminants are large herbivores with multiple stomachs, notably deer, cows, sheep and goats. Also giraffes. But not horses or pigs. Or humans.

The first stomach, the rumen, is a large chamber in which food is fermented by bacterial action. Part way through this process the food – the cud – is taken back into the mouth and chewed again to stimulate further fermentation.

Fermentation includes breaking down the cellulose which is a major constituent of grass – important forage for many ruminants, in particular cows and sheep. Non-ruminants such as horses can deal with grass, but they are not so good at it – to the point where dogs, deer, rabbits, and foxes will eat their faeces – at some risk of also ingesting toxic micro-organisms of one sort or another. 

The tannins in acorns disturb this fermentation, disturbance which might have good or bad effects on the animal concerned, depending.

The diet of Iberian pigs at pannage is mainly acorns plus grass with reference B11 telling us that: ‘… This means a daily intake of 1251 to 1469 acorns or 7.13 to 8.37 kg of whole acorn and 2 to 2.7 kg of grass, during 6.1 to 7.1 foraging hours…’.

Nuts

An achene is a small, dry, single-seeded, indehiscent fruit, meaning the fruit – the ripe ovary of a flowering plant – does not open to release its seed. Many of them have wings, in which case the ensemble is called a samara.

Nuts are large, dry, single-seeded, indehiscent fruits with hard shells. There are lots of them and many of them are eaten by humans. A lot of them by small vertebrates and some of them by other large omnivores and herbivores. Not many of these last eat nuts much at all. Some of these nuts are toxic in whole or in part

The incomplete and very selective table above gives something of the idea.

As far as I can make out, the only nuts eaten in any quantity by extensively reared pigs are acorns. Acorns are toxic if consumed raw in large enough quantities and are regularly responsible for the deaths of  small numbers of free-grazing horses and cows.

Their name suggests that pignuts, which are nut-like while not actually being nuts at all, are eaten by foraging pigs and Caliban mentions them in Act II, Scene II of the ‘Tempest’, but I have not come across them in the present context, which is odd. Perhaps there are not enough of them about.

I associate to a childhood habit of cracking hazel nut shells with my teeth, a practise of which my dentist father strongly disapproved, concerned that I would break teeth. And I remember him explaining, in another context, that it was surprisingly easy to split teeth, rather in the way of a fresh log with an axe. Presumably teeth do break and omnivorous animals like pigs need to have a care.

Horse chestnuts are member of the small genus Aesculus, the plants and seeds of all of which are moderately toxic. There is a suggestion that Jōmon people of Japan used to eat horse chestnuts after attempting to leach out the toxins. That squirrels collect them but do not necessarily eat them and that deer, for some reason, can eat them without ill-effect. Matters on which the AI supplements to search can mislead and which I have failed to bottom out.

Chemical readers might care to look over reference 2. Too much for me.

Tannins

Tannins are to be found in lots of plants and have been used in tanning leather for a long time. They are defined chemically by their ability to bind to proteins and are of present interest because they are to be found in acorns and they interact with the digestive systems of pigs. Tannins in acorns are regularly responsible for the deaths of foraging horses and cows, although the numbers involved are quite small. Contrariwise, tannins also have medicinal uses and they are sometimes added to animal feeds. Much work has been done on them.

Abbreviations and words that crop up in the world of tannins include HT, CT, gall (for which see reference A2), tea, astringent (for which last two see among the minor digressions below), polyphenol and antioxidant. These last are very much to the fore in the places like Holland & Barrett. And some people see life as an ultimately losing battle between the forces of the oxidants and the forces of the antioxidants. In which connection, I was unable to source a free copy of reference B4, beyond the abstract below.

Autoxidation limits the longevity of essentially all hydrocarbons and materials made therefrom – including us. The radical chain reaction responsible often leads to complex mixtures of hydroperoxides, alkyl peroxides, alcohols, carbonyls and carboxylic acids, which change the physical properties of the material – be it a lubricating oil or biological membrane. Autoxidation is inhibited by additives such as radical-trapping antioxidants, which intervene directly in the chain reaction. Herein we review the most salient features of autoxidation and its inhibition, emphasizing concepts and mechanistic considerations important in understanding this chemistry across the wide range of contexts in which it is relevant.

Hydrolysable tannins (HT) are hydrolysed by weak acids or weak bases to produce carbohydrate and phenolic acids. With hydrochloric or sulfuric acids to produce gallic or ellagic acids. Condensed tannins (CT) are polymers formed by the condensation of flavans. They do not contain sugar residues. These are the two kinds of tannins which are important here.

Tannins are part of a complex, dynamic world and the tannin content of parts of plants varies a good deal: from species to species, from part to part, from plant to plant. According to position on the plant, the time of year and the time of day.

Roughly speaking, cows seem to be most vulnerable to tannin poisoning. Horses in-between and pigs least vulnerable.

It seems likely that one of the main functions of tannins in plants is to deter – or at least manage – predation by herbivores. The catch being that some of these last get a taste for them.

Reference B15 is an accessible source of further information. Starting off with the corrective snapped above. Mueller-Harvey goes on to explain that despite its bad reputation, there are plenty of good things about tannins and they can be useful as part of a regular feed. But a lot depends on the animal-plant pair concerned and the dose.

Plant protection

Most of what follows is taken from reference 5, produced under the auspices of what was the Overseas Development Administration (ODA). About herbivores (like cows) and omnivores (like pigs and ourselves) rather than anything smaller – where there is, nevertheless, plenty of action.

Plants need to protect themselves – particularly, their buds, leaves, young shoots, fruits and seeds – against attack by herbivores and others, while at the same time facilitating the interactions with same which support their reproduction and proliferation. Given that plants cannot move about much, they make more use of chemical defences than animals.

That said, plants can make predation more difficult by being out of reach, by having thorns and by being tough or otherwise indigestible.

Chemical defences range from mild toxins to fast acting poisons. Predators have some reciprocal defence in that many of these taste unpleasant, typically bitter. Some of these follow.

Phenols, including the tannins.

Toxic amino acids, including mimosine and canavanine. Mimosine, for example, interferes with cell division and can cause problems with livestock, particularly if plants like Mimosa pudica or Leucaena leucocephala (see below) are consumed in large quantities.

Cyanogenic glycosides, in particular hydrogen cyanide (HCN). HCN works by inhibition of cellular respiration and the anoxia that follows. The primary targets of cyanide toxicity in humans and animals are the cardiovascular, respiratory, and central nervous systems. The body, that is to say the liver, can deal with quite large amounts of HCN and to be fatal a large shot of it is needed. I read that 200 mg/m3 is likely fatal after 10 min, and 300 mg/m3 is immediately fatal, where I take the levels to be per cubic metre of the ambient air. This fatal level is maybe 10 times higher than that was sometimes found in the vicinity of cassava factories in Nigeria – cassava being a much consumed source of cyanide.

Alkaloids, among which we have quinine, strychnine, atropine, caffeine, nicotine and cocaine.

The wider role of oaks

What follows is taken from reference 6, another booklet produced under the auspices of the ODA.

What was newest to me in this was the importance of tree forage in dry places where the ground fodder – for example grasses – may be thin or absent.

I would only add that, as of 1993, this author wondered about the role of fungal contamination of acorns in their toxicity. Contamination which would, presumably be largely eliminated by washing and  husking prior to grinding them into animal feed n factories.

Minor digressions

This being a note of various things that cropped up, things which caught my attention, but which were not necessarily very relevant to the matter in hand. In no particular order.

Peanut skins in feed. In the US at least, they get through enough processed peanuts for it to be worthwhile to use the nutrient-rich skins in animal feeds.

Machines for husking acorns. Acorns are sometimes used in animal feeds, for which purpose they are husked and ground. There are plenty of machines on offer to do the husking.

Sawdust in feed. Coarse sawdust is sometimes used in animal feeds.

Rooting. Pigs like to root around in the ground with their tough and muscular snouts, tusks if available, looking for roots, small animals and other stuff that they can eat. Depending on what else the land in question is used for, this can be a nuisance and in the New Forest pigs have to have nose rings fitted which slow this down. Reference 8 talks of nose-ringing too

Browsing in apple orchards. I think pigs were, perhaps are, run in apple orchards where there are fallers which are not fit for sale – but which the pigs will hoover up.

The workings of toxalbumin. Toxins manufactured by many plants which interfere with the basic cell metabolism of browsers. One molecule is enough to kill a cell, so you don’t need much of the stuff to do serious organ damage – or perhaps kill – providing they can break through the various barriers on the way to those organs from the alimentary tract. A saving grace being that they cannot multiply in the way of microbes.

Leucaena leucocephala. A small, fast growing tree, widely used around hot parts of the world as a fodder crop. One of the advantage of trees being their greater tolerance of water stress than the much smaller, herbaceous fodder crops. All the thing in the 1970s and 1980s.

Giraffes and knob trees. The (ruminant) giraffes of the Kruger National Park eat a lot of leaves and twigs from the knob tree, Acacia nigrescens, browse which contains plenty of tannins. I learn that tannin content can vary a good deal, even on an individual tree. For example, buds and young leaves contain more tannins than old leaves. Content can double between day and night. There is also a tricky interaction between browsing activity by giraffes and tannin content.

Psyllids. An ancient and rather primitive family of bugs, many of which specialise in eating (the sap of) one particular plant, mostly dicots, some of which are vectors for important crop pathogens. A serious pest for Leucaena leucocephala farmers in some parts of the world.

Holly oaks aka holm oaks. Large evergreen oaks, native to the Mediterranean region, important in the world of the pannage pig, for example in Sardinia and in the southwest of the Iberian peninsular. There is a very large one in Windsor Great Park.  . 

Classification of oaks. Quercus in a genus of between 400 and 500 species, in two sub-genii, Cerris and Quercus. The former contains three sections of which ilex is one, the latter five sections. The section ilex contains around 40 species – including the holm oak, Quercus ilex. There is something of a divide between Old World oaks and New World oaks, which survives into the current classification scheme. In addition to the four to five hundred species there are three to four hundred synonyms, relics of past taxonomic endeavours.

Tea contains plenty of tannin, as well as caffeine. Sometimes it makes me sleepy in the afternoon, rather than giving me a boost, as it does first thing in the morning. Maybe this is something to do with the tannins in the tea doing something in the afternoon – after a possibly substantial midday meal – which they do not do before breakfast.

Astringent, an old word originally meaning the ability to draw together soft organic tissues. Astringents used internally to reduce discharge of blood serum and mucous secretions, which can come from a sore throat, haemorrhages, diarrhoea, and peptic ulcers. Used externally to dry up various kinds of sores. Tannins are well known for their astringent qualities, with OED mentioning the root of the sea lavender in this connection, now known to be a good source of tannin. A word used more often in a figurative sense nowadays.

Quebracho. A common name used in south America for a number of trees distinguished by their very hard woods, with the name meaning ‘axe breaker’. An example of a old common name spanning a number of new botanical divisions. Arises in this context as tannins can be extracted from the heartwood of red quebracho (Schinopsis lorentzii) and white quebracho (Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco). 

The pig cycle. At the time I was a student, something called the pig cycle featured in the teaching of economics. It was offered as an example of the way that perfect markets generate perfect sine curves. One of many hazards that the pig farmer had to contend with. See also cobweb theorem. See also commodities markets.

Conclusions

Gemini’s observation that pigs spit out the husks of acorns when eating them, was true to the extent that Dehesa pigs do this and New Forest pigs likely do this. I think he based the observation on a nature website which looks OK but which is short on provenance. The Spanish material, however, is much better in that regard.

It is also the case that he came up with this observation in seconds and it took me hours, if not days, to check it, even allowing for the various digressions. So, on the face of it, a considerable saving in labour.

But difficulties remain. One learns the fact ‘pigs can spit out the husks of acorns when eating them’, without necessarily having any background in either pigs or acorns. Knowing, for example, that while some pigs might eat acorns some of the time, most pigs do not eat them at all. It might be rather as if one knew that Dakar was the capital of Senegal without having a clue about either place - beyond knowing that they are places. Whether or not this matters depends on the use to which you intend to put this fact, the weight that you are going to put onto it.

This fact would be unlikely to be quite so isolated if you had learned it in the old-fashioned way. Which might, at least once upon a time, have involved going to visit some pigs or talking with a few pig keepers. Bearing in mind that this ‘old-fashioned way’ may never actually have existed, at least for most people, as before the advent of the Internet, very few people would have been able to find out about such a thing at all.

Then there is a degree of circularity in the foregoing in the sense that in my quest to validate something from Gemini – the husking of acorns by pigs – I have made extensive use of Bing, his Copilot assistant, Google, his AI assistant and of Gemini itself. But short of systematic and directed failure of these products, which seems very improbable, I do not think this disturbs the mainly positive conclusion.

I have been very struck by the importance of provenance in all this. Where has the information dug up by Google or Bing come from? Who wrote and where do they come from? Who is vouching for the quality of their work? With some of this being conspicuously absent from some of the superficially helpful information about pannage and pigs on offer.

I dare say plenty of academics and others worry about the erosion of the old system of stuffy academic journals with standards and peer review by the Internet. Problems which the likes of Google have been grappling with since they moved away from simply scoring a webpage for the purposes of search by its content, from taking it at face value. For myself, just the sort of thing that I think it worth paying the Financial Times for. Let’s hope that they are not abusing my trust.

I dare say also that this is a bigger problem in fields like cooking and countryside which attract plenty of amateurs – like myself.

Work in progress.

References B

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/long-grove.html. The start point of the present excursion, in the middle of October. The start of what was intended to be a day trip to check up on Gemini.

Reference 2: Phenolics and polyphenolics in foods, beverages and spices: Antioxidant activity and health effects – A review – Fereidoon Shahidi , Priyatharini Ambigaipalan – 2021. 

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

Reference 4: Autoxidation vs. Antioxidants – the fight for forever – Helberg, Julian; Pratt, Derek A – 2021.

Reference 5: The use of trees by Livestock 4: Anti-nutritive factors – R T Paterson, Natural Resources Institute – 1993. 

Reference 6: The use of trees by livestock 5: Quercus - Paterson R T, Natural Resources Institute - 1993. 

Reference 7: The Jutish forest : a study of the Weald of Kent from 450 to 1380 A.D. - Witney, K. P - 1976.

Reference 8: Such as pigs eat: the rise and fall of the pannage pig in the UK – Alexandra L Wealleans – 2014. 

Reference 9: not used.

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/ham-sandwiches.html. Probably the Iberian pork in question.

Reference 11: Consumption of Acorns by Finishing Iberian Pigs and Their Function in the Conservation of the Dehesa Agroecosystem – Vicente Rodríguez-Estévez, Manuel Sánchez-Rodríguez, Cristina Arce, Antón R. García, José M. Perea and A. Gustavo Gómez-Castro – 2012. 

Reference 12: Intrinsic factors of acorns that influence the efficiency of their consumption by Iberian pigs – Rodríguez-Estévez, A. García, A.G. Gómez-Castro – 2009. 

Reference 13: https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/blog/post/pigging-out-in-the-forest-the-common-of-mast-in-britain. 

Reference 14: https://dehesa-extremadura.com/en/la-dehesa/. More about the commercial side of things.

Reference 15: Unravelling the conundrum of tannins in animal nutrition and health – Irene Mueller-Harvey – 2007. 

Reference 16: https://www.forfarmers.co.uk/pig. 

Reference 17: https://www.pelletizermill.com/blog/pig-feed-formulation-and-ingredients/. 

Insular eating

[Gammon from M&S Epsom, greens and potatoes from Tesco's Ryde. All good. But the strawberries from Tesco's were not quite as good as those taken previously from M&S]

As was our custom, BH had prepared a piece of gammon and a light fruit cake at home to get us started on holiday. And, as it turned out, we did a fair bit of cooking at the cottage: nothing very exotic, just beef stew, beef mince, various concoctions involving lentils. As snapped above and below. There were also picnics.

[Beef from Tesco's. Gravy made out of the stew by draining off the liquor towards the end of the process, working it up with some flour and then adding it back in. Cherries to follow fine, as was Tesco's finest 2020 Barolo]

[Pork lardons. A relatively new discovery]

[Smoked bacon lardons. Another relatively new discovery. But we had more or less run out of greens by this point. Down to leftovers, plus some white at the back]

[Greens back online. Plus some infant corn, presumably air freighted from India. Container carriage, despite the remarks about oranges in the previous post seems a bit unlikely. Ask Gemini? Taken with a 2022 Riesling from Trimbach. Imported by Enotria Winecellars of 23 Cumberland Avenue, London NW10 7RX. Their large and modern sheds are revealed by Street View, sheds which, as is revealed by drinksbusiness (of RPPL fame) were bought earlier this year by the commercial arm of Majestic. See reference 7]

Then a couple of meals at the Bugle, an establishment which has served well in the past but which, somehow, seemed a little flat this year. The first of them had been designated as the meal at which we would celebrate the capture of trolley No.900, but that rather fell by the wayside and the moment passed. Hopefully we will do better if and when I make it to No.1000.

A teetotal lunch at the Da Vinci of Newport. Much better.

The starter worked better than might appear from this snap. Apple juice left rather than something more interesting.

Paella with lots of mussels for him, naked mussels for her. A good feed for both of us.

Winding up with a fancy sorbet. BH's portion being the supplementaries. All very satisfactory - and I dare say we would have been back, had getting there without the car had been a realistic option. There was a bus, but it would have been slow and not very convenient.

A couple of noodle lunches at the two branches of Hong Kong Express, one at Newport and the other at Ryde. More or less the same order on the two occasions, although we thought we detected some slight differences of emphasis. The mixed meat noodles (Singapore style) of Ryde snapped above, with chicken & sweetcorn soup taken before and pineapple fritters after. I liked the soup better than the fritters - which were not in the same league as the toffee'd apple we had had once in Chinatown in London. Thin crinkled strips rather than lumps, served hot as a sort of open plan nest: neither Bing nor Google offer anything like it this afternoon.

And while I am in picky mode, I might also say that the Singapore style noodles were not as exotic as those I used to get, say fifty years ago, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There, as I recall, the mixed meat included flakes of liver, about the size of a potato crisp.

A more substantial lunch at the Yarbridge Inn. Our one and only venture into crab salad. BH was slightly miffed that I did rather better on the crab front than she did - but she got my lemon by way of consolation. Mixed bread before OK, although probably not long out of the freezer. Plus a pint of an island bitter called 'Beachcomber' plus some 'Coast to Coast' Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

A light lunch, built around a bit of seabass at the Beach Shack of Sandown.

Bacon and egg baps at the café in Puckpool Park. I was convinced that these had been prepared for delivery by warming them up in a microwave, as is the custom in many London cafés, even quite fancy ones - whereas in the past they had been freshly cooked. BH was not so sure about this at all.

And last but not least, the big breakfast at Yaverland, noticed at the end of reference 7. Perhaps even more important, the occasional rock cake, best of breed on the island. And I have no idea where one might get them in London.

And while I think of it, I might complain about not being able to get the currant buns of old; a fluffy white bread bun, livened up with a few currants, a bit of sugar and flavouring. About the size, if not the shape, of the rock cake above. Everything in Tesco's and Morrisons was a lot more complicated and involved a lot more sugar.

References

Reference 1: https://thebugleinnbrading.co.uk/.

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

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

Reference 4: https://www.theyarbridgeinn.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://beachshackbar.co.uk/.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/yaverland-one.html.

Reference 7: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/04/majestics-bold-bet-on-the-on-trade-inside-the-enotria-coe-acquisition/.

Hard hat

Back on the bike again, this time for a run from London Bridge to Vauxhall.

Two noisy conversations near me on the train. From the first, I learned that Pull & Bear are foreign. Checking today, I find that this is indeed the case: a member of the Inditex family from Spain, along with Zara. See reference 2. People who once had a striking multi-screen shark display in their Oxford Street window, but I cannot put my hand on it just presently. Second, there was an extended conversation about train fares and senior railcards. It struck me that this was serving much the same function as grooming each other (for fleas) does among the larger apes. Nothing to do with trains really.

Having remarked on how the Lime people seemed to have cleaned their act up recently, this minor infestation of the Bullingdon stand at London Bridge. 

A different colour code for dustbins in Elliott's Row (known to gmaps for some reason as Lily Mews) than we have in Epsom: I think blue is for commercial with us. Something else to get to grips with should we move back to the big town. Something else for Starmer and his team to tidy up: devolving power to local authorities is all very well, but we do need a bit of order and discipline.

Had to pass on this Tesco's trolley, with the absence of a bicycle lock being sufficient excuse. And there would be the business of finding the nearest Tesco's, which might not be very near at all.

A strange turret, just after I branched right down the A3204 by mistake, rather than carrying on down the A3. Worth the detour. The turret looks to be some remnant of what was perhaps the Renfrew Road Workhouse, perhaps the Lambeth Infirmary adjacent, in its day a large, 650 bed hospital. Dugard Way, round the corner, is still home to the Mary Sheridan Centre for Child Health and the South East London Sickle Cell & Thalassaemia Centre.

Also in Dugard Way, a listed building of some sort? The same sort of vintage as the building I visited in West Croydon recently? Google Images says the Jamyang Buddhist Centre, which it is indeed what it says on the plate by the door, visible on zoom. Clearly a second visit is needed.

A gas holder, perhaps another listed building, being repurposed. See reference 4.

All in all, a lot of interesting old building and a lot of mature street trees.

Got screamed at by a young man in a large Jaguar, possibly a man of colour, because I got into a muddle about how to turn into South Lambeth Road at Stockwell. In mitigation I would say that all the new arrangements for cycles at junctions can be a bit confusing if you have not been through the junction in question in the recent past. Compounded in this case, by the turning I was expecting having been pedestrianised. 

But I just about made it to the stand for the Canton Arms, very nearly full. Just outside of which I came across a handsome black girl looking very fetching in her tight, scarlet and white gym gear.

A light and airy front bar, with most of the not very many customers preferring to sit outside. I took a pint of Harvey's Sussex Best, quite a lot dearer than the pint I had taken a couple of days previously at Borough. But it was good beer, if not quite as good as the Five Points I had taken there.

An old style older bar maid, a muscle bound younger bar man. Some people - clearly from the 'gentry' of 'gentrification' making careful bookings to dine in the evening.

Still not convenient to stock up on water melon.

And so onto the Estrela, where I took the liver of the day. Not as good as the liver on toast I had had there once, and slightly infested with their curious gravy, but not bad. Solid, substantial fare - perhaps more suitable for a working rather than a retired man. The chips, visible top right, were not cooked as per instructions: a failure to observe the rule that the customer is always right.

Taken with red, for a change. Big Internet footprint, suggesting amongst other things that the markup was only of the order of two, unusually low for wine in a restaurant. See references 5 and 6.

Passion fruit dessert missing, so I tried the strawberry version. Good, but not as good as the passion fruit.

Wound up with a spot of the local brandy. Small bananas a gift for later - which turned out to have a curiously apple flavour. Rather good.

Strolled down to Vauxhall Station where I engaged with a very cheerful police constable about her hat, something like that snapped above. It turned out that, despite appearances, it was a hard hat, with a hard shell, rather in the way of a riding hat of old. Hard enough both to protect and to act as an offensive weapon, should need arise - which, I was told, it did occasionally. She did not like it much and would much rather have had the sort of cap worn by the firearms units. She was also a credit to the force, so it was a pity that I did not think to take her number so that I could write to her station and tell them so.

Picked up some books about data from RPPL. Didn't recognise much from the one about data analysis, despite my thinking that that was something I knew something about. Further reading indicated.

Picked up a couple of trolleys at Epsom, as noticed at reference 7, then took a further spot of red on the Wetherspoon's terrace. Upon which there was a sharp shower, catching out a good number of young ladies in a state of some undress for the evening to come.

I wondered whether it was Epsom Salts coming up through the chalk which was slowing down the two trees right next to Wetherspoon's. Certainly a lot less vigorous than the others. There seem to be three varieties in the market place altogether.

Diminutive cigarettes which reminded me of my students days, on a ration of half an ounce a day.

And so rather later home than I had intended.

PS 1: depressing to read at reference 1, of the great interest taken by the arms industry in the set-to between India and Pakistan. We don't seem to be learning much.

PS 2: later: the sharks have now been run down. The search key 'shark oxford' eventually did the trick. Hadn't thought that it was all of eleven years ago.

References

Reference 1: China’s J-10 ‘Dragon’ shows teeth in India-Pakistan combat debut: Skirmish is first test of Beijing’s military hardware against advanced western technology - Mehul Srivastava, Charles Clover, Humza Jilani, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 2: https://www.inditex.com/itxcomweb/gb/en/home.

Reference 3: https://jamyang.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/better-fairer-lambeth/projects/oval-gas-works.

Reference 5: https://www.fea.pt/.

Reference 6: https://www.cartuxa.pt/categoria-produto/vinhos/cartuxa/.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/trolleys-822-and-823.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/05/takacs-quartet.html.

Memory games

Prompted by the remarks about 'Shetland' at reference 1, I have been poking around a little to see what I remember from the distant past. This (Saturday) morning, I thought I would take a look at the record from ten years ago to see how much of that I remembered, actually lighting on eleven years ago, it being a little early.

'Flowers' was a short post, an early indication of what became a rather stronger interest in the matter of what controls how many petals a flower has.

'Albert' was another short post, the product of my having come to learn about 'Fat Alberts' in the course of my time with C&W at Swindon in the course of my time with the Home Office, in the early years of the present century. I remember the Fat Alberts, but have no idea what prompted this particular post.

'Another puzzle' was about a couple of odd books from an outfit called 'Nabu', an outfit which still exists at Abebooks, from which I learn that it is really 'Nabu Public Domain Reprints', probably nothing to do with the people at reference 2. I think I still own the books in question, but Nabu had vanished from the memory banks.

'A visit to Disney World' is a report of something dream-like. Re-reading has not prompted any memories, although it is recognisably the sort of thing that I might have written.

'Mothering Sunday 1' is a report of an interesting storm felled tree at Polseden Lacey. A report which has not prompted any memories.

'Mothering Sunday 2' is the larger report of that day out, which took in both a book fair at the Dorking Halls and Polesden Lacey. A report which prompted no memories of the day out - but I did remember about the book about Evelyn Cheston. A curious book, which I correctly remembered as having red covers and which I was able to put my hand on quite quickly: curious enough to have survived the various culls in the intervening years. The sort of thing that, these days, if it were produced at all, would be published as website rather than as a book. Presumably Mr Cheston had to pay Faber & Faber to publish rather than the other way around. Presumably he had money. Or perhaps his wife's money.

Surprised to find this morning that Google knows all about Mrs Cheston. Would he have done eleven years ago? Did I bother to look?

I also learned from reference 3 about the Royal Female School of Art and a connection to Axminster, in Devon.

Left from the Tate website, right from the book. Maybe a fellow artist would get more of the sense of the original from the collotype than I did.

But the big take-away is how much more we packed into this day out than we would now. 

'How awful' is a short post about pay-day lenders, presumably topical at the time.

'The day of the bullingdon' is a report of a day out in London, involving a lot of Bullingdons. Again, I packed a lot more into this day out than I would now. And while I remember nothing of this particular day out, I do remember the café in Duncannon Street and I do remember being fascinated by the white head gear of the lady snapped at the top of the post.

The café is still there - although I think that they may have invested in a new blind - and I still use it occasionally, most recently a little more than a year ago, as noticed at reference 5.

And 'Messrs. B & P' is a report of a rather large concert given by Pollini, the favourite pianist of my late brother. A much larger concert than I would attempt now - and I was a bit concerned about that ten years ago, a concern which turned out to be misplaced. I remember nothing of the concert, apart from thinking that Pollini used a Fazioli rather than a Fabbrini - but reference 7 knows better. I wonder now how much it cost him to carry his piano around with him on tour: it must have taken quite a chunk out of his fee.

Conclusions

Memories of events of ten years ago pretty much non-existent, despite these prompts. But there is some memory left of the things in those events.

PS: some time later: a curiosity: I have just learned that 'train oil' usually means whale or seal oil. From an old German or Dutch word. Nothing to do with proper trains at all. Maybe also the original cod liver oil - cod not being an oily fish in the way of herring or mackerel.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-new-trek.html.

Reference 2: https://www.nabu.org/.

Reference 3: https://modjourn.org/. The work of a couple of universities in the US.

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

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/pie-and-wain.html.

Reference 6: https://www.fazioli.com/en/.

Reference 7: https://www.classical-scene.com/2010/04/28/thoughts-on-hearing-maurizio-pollinis-hamburg-steinway-fabbrini-in-concert/.

Reference 8: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/04/. The home of the posts in question.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collotype.

Touring

Last week to London to see the sights, starting with Centrepoint and the public house formerly known as the Tottenham.

A bright morning, warm rather than hot at 10:30 which was good. The solicitors' van was parked on Station Approach again; one day there will be a driver and I will be able to ask him his business there. No trolleys, not that there was enough time for diversions of that sort. Some fancy dress, I thought perhaps Ascot. Lots more fancy dress at Waterloo and it very clearly was Ascot. The slightly later idea of passing the day wandering the houses between the station and the racecourse did not find favour, the delights of fancy dress and the possession of one day Travelcards notwithstanding.

It being a route I had not done for a while, it took me a while to find my way from the top of Drury Lane (orange dot right) to Earnshaw Street (red thumbtack left) - but I got there in the end and was pleased to find a slot on the Bullingdon stand there.

From where I was able to admire one end of Denmark Street, the centre of the popular music scene in the 1950s and still showing some signs of musical life. The building on the corner was no doubt a proper public house at the time - with drunks and warm beer - except that the corner with the turret on top looks a bit grand. Surely not a Lyon's Corner House? Maybe the whole block is some kind of heritage zone now?

The block about which there was a huge amount of fuss when it was built, I think in the 1970s. Mainly because the developer preferred to hold it empty rather than let it on what he regarded as bad terms. As a piece of architecture, I think that it has stood the test of time well.

But there is always a 'round the back' even at the best kept blocks.

A briefing meeting at the Flying Horse, aka the Tottenham, the heritage pub noticed at reference 1. There was an infestation of high chairs, but there were still some low chairs at the back, from where we were able to take in the exotic interior. It was decided that London Bridge was the way forward, with the Elizabeth Line (see reference 2) and Ascot options being discarded.

And so to London Bridge via Bank. Not quite the Elizabeth Line, but plenty of walking involved as befits the modern tube experience. Including, as I recall, a long travelator, one of those contraptions which save you the bother of walking down a long passage. Thinking with my fingers, I imagine that such a thing speeds up rush hour transit of such a passage in a useful way.

A visit to Guys and its handsome chapel, complete with one person in quiet prayer and another in more florid prayer, in front of the altar. I was reminded of reading in the Ramsey book noticed at reference 3, that there are a lot more Anglicans in far flung places these days than there are in the mother ship. We took a light lunch in one of the cafeterias around the place, this one perhaps called the Shed. Staffed up by a couple of young psychology students, presumably choosing to stay in town and make a bit of money rather than legging it for the long vac. Perhaps they did bars in the evenings.

Lunch took the form of a couple of toasties. A more high-calorie snack than I am used to, but it did the business. Supplemented with a plastic cup for 15p (water free) to get my pills down with - quite forgetting that I was already carrying a bottle of water. Cup paid for by card as the cafeteria was a cash-free operation. The transaction charge on the credit card must have exceeded the nominal charge, but I suppose it will bear down on use of disposable cups by regulars. There was also a microwave so that you could heat up your own ready meal, an option one or two people were taking.

A look around the market, where we took in the well stocked display at Ginger Pig. All kinds of stuff which is quite hard to get these days. Including liver and lights and all that sort of thing.

I fell for some broad beans, 2kg at £5 a kilo. There were some good looking cherries at around £10-£12 a kilo, but I declined, having already both declined both BH's offer of a folding shopping bag and decided against bringing the rucksack deployed on a recent visit.

We found where one could buy paella for £10 a pop, getting quite a decent portion, but nowhere to sit. In any event, we no longer needed lunch and we were certainly not going to stroll around with the stuff in the way of the many holiday makers.

Next stop a taxi to Bartholomew the Great. The driver not seeming to know where it was, managed to drop us nearer the nearby Bartholomew the Less. We peeked in but did not take a proper look, keeping our powder dry for the real thing, which was as impressive as ever, fancy Kray funeral notwithstanding. Took in the couple of pianos already noticed at references 4 and 5.

The organ, more or less in what used to be the crossing.

Looking the other way.

Some heritage pipework. We were told that the church attracted regular congregations of several hundred, including a healthy sprinkling of young families. Not just Anglo-Catholics travelling in from far and wide to take in the bells and smells.

And so to the nearby Hand & Shears, the pub which saw my bar tending exploits as a student. In those days famous for its Directors' Bitter from Courage, but still a good looking establishment with a good atmosphere. In much better shape than when I visited some years ago, in the margins of something data protection flavoured, all the thing at the time, the thing that means the surgery won't talk to me about BH's missing prescriptions and which gives stroppy young clerks in estate agents all the excuse they need to be obstructive. Progress of a sort I suppose.

I took my first bitter for a while and very nice it was too. Quite a nostalgia fest. Gives the illusion of a real pint in the snap above, but actually it was a half pint. Maybe I will start allowing myself a pint or so a week, fluid intake restrictions permitting. Another nostalgia fest in the form of the beans, visible right. We remembered back to the days when I used to grow lots of them, pinching out the leads (with the blackflies) on the morning of the Derby.

I made the mistake of taking a No.17 bus back to London Bridge, which seemed to take forever. But at least trains to Epsom were up and running when I got there.

Home to a quick dish of beans, served in a bacon & onion flavoured white sauce. Very good they were too - with a kilo of beans yielding just about 200g of beans. Say three portions to the 2kg - so not a cheap vegetable, despite their being very easy to grow - this last probably being a good part of why I used to be so keen on growing them. While Jude the Obscure used the stalks to fire his oven. Good, as I recall, for a flash fire. Not much good for the long haul.

Having shown the way, BH did very well the next day with the balance of the beans. A slightly thinner sauce, which I think was an improvement. There was probably some green salad.

PS 1: the beans were quite young which meant that we need not need to go in for two tier cooking, with the maturer beans getting rather more time. While BH does not get nostalgic about the gluts of overripe broad beans she has had to deal with over the years. To the extent of peeling them and making them into a bean paste.

PS 2: Lübeck would no doubt be an interesting visit, but a bit of a stretch to ride there on this advertisement, which arrived this morning. Even supposing that they let  me in. I had to look up what cGMP might be. Nothing to do with the Greater Manchester Police, possibly something to do with the Good Manufacturing Practise of reference 7. Important and complicated stuff, a lot of it from Europe, stuff which Farage and his kind want to go DIY on. But my money is on cyclic guanosine monophosphate, all mixed up with ion channels and neurotransmission generally.

PS 3: while over my second cup of tea I learned from the April 2023 number of 'Drinks Business', about Latour getting out of the en primeur market back in 2012. Which I from reference 8 to be a sort of futures market for fancy wine. You buy the stuff on the basis of what it tastes like in the barrel, years before it is blended, bottled and released for sale. All very speculative, but offers the wine manufacturer some money up-front. Money in the hand, rather than money which might be years down the track. And the wine might, in the end, turn out badly and either not be saleable or not fetch a very good price. A bit like the potato futures market I learned about, many years ago now, at a very wet agricultural show somewhere near Norwich. I remember that even further back, I bought my one and only bottle of Château Latour from an old-style wine merchant's shop just off Soho Square, probably on the eastern side of Greek Street, but long gone. An experience, but not one which was repeated. While the snap above, lifted from the depths of reference 10, offers a wine shop at No.3, about the right place, but I think that the Gay Hussar was there at the time in question too. More digging needed. Impressed that someone has gone to the bother of cataloguing the history of the street in this way.

References

Reference 1: https://www1.camra.org.uk/pubs/flying-horse-london-128749.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/ealing.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/ramsey.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/piano-87.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/piano-86.html.

Reference 6: https://thehandandshears.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_manufacturing_practice.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_primeur.

Reference 9: https://www.chateau-latour.com/en. A rather pretentious website.

Reference 10: https://www.alondonmiscellany.com/post/greek-street-then-and-now.