Hookberries

We took the third lot of blackberries from inside Hook Road Arena, where there were not as many berries as I was expecting, possibly because we had missed the first wave. Possibly because the groundsmen had been doing some cutting back. But picking from about four places, we filled the main tub and the two picking tubs. 

BH has tray frozen the first half and is bagging them up as I type this. Second half to follow later today.

Just one of the various stretches of bushes. Plenty of bushes, even if supply of berries not brilliant.

By the time we left perhaps half a dozen dog walkers had arrived. One or two of which had what looked like fighting dogs, with big ugly heads and big mouths. I don't suppose it is only drug dealers who like to have them.

The entrance to the arena had been upgraded with galvanised iron kissing gates - and we were told all the other entrances had been similarly upgraded. At the time I wondered why on earth why, but now it occurs to me that it might be to stop under age youths from using the arena for motor cycles. Perhaps motor cyclists had taken to roaring around the place at night, making a lot of noise and tearing up a lot of grass. Although the grass on this occasion looked good.

Perhaps giant car boot sales having morphed into pigmy car book sales for the duration has helped too.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/pondberries.html. The second (small) lot.

Warrington

Warrington is a town - or perhaps a city - of 200,000 million people or so - sitting on top of both the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, roughly half way between Liverpool to the west and Manchester to the east. A borough with 22 wards, councillors and a borough council. I dare say there is a mayor with mayoral regalia. You can read all about it at reference 1.

And no doubt the council busies itself with parks, dustbins, street lighting, strategic plans and all the other good stuff that successive central governments have thought local government are up to.

So interested to read in the FT this morning that they have lent £151m (so far) to an investment company called Icon 3 Holdco, which is indirectly controlled by an entrepreneurial type called Matt Moulding. The core of the operation seems to be a company called THG, aka The Hut Group, to be found at reference 2. Which as far as one can tell in sixty seconds, is some kind of glossy, web-enabled marketing operation. They can turn your new lipstick - or whatever - into a money spinning phenomenon. There is also mention of places like Jersey. No doubt the Virgin Islands if one looked a bit harder. Various wheezes to make inspection, regulation and taxation difficult. Is there a whiff of something unpleasant about all this? I associate to another entrepreneurial type, now deceased, from the other side of the great divide, called John Poulson.

Now, on the one hand, I believe the central government has taken far too much power into its own hands (and into those of its cronies), power which would be better with local government. In particular, central government should not be micro-managing the banking arrangements of local government. They should be left to manage their own affairs.

On the other, given that council are funded on a annual cash basis from the public purse, not at all clear to me that they should be involved in lending money, let alone on this scale, to companies of this sort. I dare say Warrington needs to have some cash reserves so that it can deal with the unexpected - like floods and plagues - but I am not all sure that it should be using those reserves in this way. And Warrington is not the only council at this sort of thing. And some of which might be funded by the Public Works Loan Board, possibly now part of the Debt Management Office of reference 3.

Puzzled of Epsom.

References

Reference 1: https://www.warrington.gov.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.thg.com/.

Reference 3: https://pwlb.gov.uk/.

Wellingtonia 42

A drive-by capture on the A31 eastbound, just past the Ringwood branch of the In-Excess family of garden centres. Snap above lifted from Google, showing the distinctive crown looming up in front of us.

From closer up. The doubled up trunk may be due to a failure in Google's cunning splicing technology - something one does not come across very often.

Doubling up still present but not quite as marked. Which prompted me to wonder how exactly Google does it. So off to Bing who turns up reference 3 which says Street View images start out as high resolution video images. Some of the technology and some of the leg-work may come from the people at reference 4, Immersive Media. From where I get to reference 5 and the next snap.

I am clearly not the only one to have wondered about all this, as there is a huge amount of stuff out there about all this. I dare say even to the point of there being competitions to find the oddest mistake in the splicing programs. But to get to those programs is going to take more time than I ought to spend on this sort of thing, fascinating though it might be...

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/wellingtonia-41.html.

Reference 2: https://www.in-excess.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-tech-behind-googles-street-view/.

Reference 4: https://immersivemedia.net/.

Reference 5: https://www.trekview.org/blog/2019/history-of-google-street-view-cameras/.

Reference 6: https://friendsoflv50.org.uk/. The oldest, floating, wooden lightship in the UK. A serious bit of maritime heritage from up north. Apparently something that the Immersive people are really proud of. But it would take me a while to learn how to drive it. Maybe someone younger who knows all about computer games?

Group search key: wgc.

Pondberries

The second pick of blackberries, a very modest pick, came from the bushes around the back of Stamford Green Pond. Visited for the purposes of feeding the various birds there with rolled oats: pigeons, ducks, coots and moorhens, including some very young moorhens. There were some seagulls and geese about but they stayed out of the way.

The small tub had not been for oats, but for raisins to form part of a snack for Felicity. The half-eaten apple was another part.

Rewarded by the sight of a large rat as we got back onto the path running along the front of the pond. And so home to cook the blackberries, along with the half-eaten apple and another.

As it turned out, just about the right amount of sugar and water, sometime I often get wrong. But then, on this occasion I had two supervisors. Down in one.

The leaflet top right turned up just before we tucked into the blackberries, featuring the work of one Chi Chi Maté Langlah, BA(Hons), Fashion Promotion and Imaging, UCA Epsom. We wondered where Chi Chi came from and what her life course would turn out to be. Presumably not High Street photographer, the breed being more or less extinct.

A leaflet which was by way of a massive thank you to the residents of Epsom for making the students of UCA (and their spending money) so welcome.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/blackberries.html. The first lot.

Reference 2: https://www.uca.ac.uk/. A university with no fewer than five campuses. Apparently 'the guardian's top-ranked creative university', although the website does not clarify which guardian that was. Presumably not the sort that ladies are supposed to carry around with them in certain Moslem countries.

Reference 3: https://chichimatelanglah.wixsite.com/mysite/project-04. Possibly based in the Netherlands. Whatever else she learned here in Epsom, it appears to include generating a substantial web presence. The photograph above is one of hers, not sure if is also one of her.

Military secrets

Yesterday evening I happened to be looking at the West London Landranger Map from Ordnance Survey, Sheet 176, and my eye landed on Northwood, a little to the east of Rickmansworth, on the northwestern sector of the M25.

Mainly on account of a naval chap with whom I had once done some work, I remembered about the naval headquarters there. So where was it?

I was not particularly surprised not to find it as I thought that it was the custom to omit sensitive military installations, be they ever so large and visible on the ground. An important munitions dump near Edgehill coming to mind - sufficiently important that the local council ran paper fire drills - this from a local council employee taking a pipe in a public house nearby.

However, ever curious, I ask Bing and he comes up with reference 1. Complete with detailed instructions on how to get there; on foot, by car or whatever.

Thus armed, I trace the route in gmaps, Satellite view, and it is not long before I get to the place, just to the west of Oxhey Woods. All present, labelled and correct, although the Street View camera van was not allowed through the reasonably serious looking gate house.

I then go to the online version of Sheet 176, and find the place all present, labelled and correct there too. And given the capabilities of online maps, it would have been quite hard to grey it out or camouflage it in an inconspicuous way. I associate to greying out large lumps of employment at such places in my days with the late, Annual Census of Employment.

And while it is present in my deluxe edition of the London AZ, it is very discretely labelled, sufficiently discrete that you would have to know what it was and roughly where it was beforehand.

So not an unreasonable outcome. You are not going to hide such a place from the enemy professional, but no need to make it too easy for the disaffected amateur.

PS: we might not have much left to command these days (think aircraft carriers without aircraft), but we do at least have the command structure, the command infrastructure. Lots of bunkers, admirals, air marshals, generals, permanent secretaries and secretariats. All that sort of thing. Not least an imposing map room, where our fat leader can be press-opportunitied while poring over a map. From where I associate again to an incident in the Good Soldier Švejk, an incident involving a map, a colonel and a cat. Pages 436-7 of the Heinemann edition of 1973. Translated by Parrott, sold by Foyles, late of Charing Cross Road. Where today, I also noticed some mild anti-Semitism, more having sport with racial stereotypes than seriously abusive, more virulent forms of which were endemic in central Europe at the time of writing.

References

Reference 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/northwood-headquarters/northwood-headquarters.

Dignity in dying

I was pleased to see an piece in the FT today (reference 1) in support of allowing people with terminal complaints a bit more choice about exactly how and when they terminate. Something which one might think the party of free choice and non-interference by government in private affairs would go for, but it doesn't. Something which one might think our Parliament would get on with, but they don't - despite a massive majority for changing the law among the population at large. Despite the example of a number of other countries. Perhaps our arrangements for government might better be described as geriatric than as venerable.

Flash your plastic at reference 3 if you want a relatively painless way to help move things along.

PS: I recall reading once that the Mexicans dodge the issue. They don't allow assisted suicide, but they don't control the sale of barbiturates suitable for euthanising pets either - and which if properly administered are also suitable for humans. Perhaps the Church still has a big voice over there, despite scandals and falling rolls.

References

Reference 1: The time is ripe for citizens’ voices on assisted dying: British politicians are nervous about supporting reform but public panels could break the logjam - Robert Shrimsley and FT - 2021.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/01/more-irish-matters.html. My most recent notice of this subject.

Reference 3: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.

Porcorum

Our last stop in Dorset, after a brief inspection of Eggardon Hill, one of the ancient hill forts dotted around this part of Dorset, was Toller Porcorum. A place we have passed nearby many times but never, as far as I can remember, actually visited. BH taking possession outside the church snapped above.

The story might have been that the real Tollers started out in the East Midlands, where my part of the family went in for growing fruit to be sold in the nearby towns of Bedford, Huntington and Cambridge. In those days it was normal to run pigs under the fruit trees to keep the grass and weeds down and to hoover up fallen fruit, this last being no use for market. Housewives were fussy about appearances, even in those days. The fruit and pig businesses prospered, but being under separate management, their interests diverged. One thing led to another and the pig side of the family eventually departed, never to be seen again. We only learned later that they had set up as Toller Porcorum, in the west country, taking on the sort of fancy name that people liked in those parts. Gave them a sort of connection with Latin and the Church; gave them a bit of what they would call tone over the pond. While my paternal grandfather plied his trade in Hemingford Grey, just outside Huntington, living in a house now called 'Orchard House', while the orchard which was out back is now a small housing estate. On the northern corner of The Thorpe (a very old track or lane) and Langley Way (a very new, estate road).

The church uses pretty much the same brand of mousetrap that we use.

Indoor, craft duties for the wives, while their menfolk are out and about, dealing with the porcorum.

An old school bell had found its way into a corner of the church. Nice clear tone when I hit it with our back door key, a Chubb mortice lock key, much more suitable as a clapper than the ubiquitous but skinny Yale.

Presumably some  kind of a memorial, but easy to mistake from a distance as an ecclesiastical ashtray, for the convenience of gentlemen busting for a fag after the sermon. From where I associate to a garrison mass in 'The Good Soldier Švejk', probably in Prague, where the colonel lighting up during the proceedings was a signal for everyone else to light up too. With the result that clouds of smoke could be seen ascending through the dust laden beams of light coming in through the windows on high.

Back to the 'George' at Axminster for a spot of pub dining.

Started with mackerel, which came in a very small portion sitting on top of a sort of savoury salad. Given that there were mackerel boats less than ten miles away and that mackerel used to be a very cheap fish, we thought they were a bit mean with it. But actually it was all rather good, and probably quite enough for a starter.

Followed by roast beef, probably left over from lunch, but actually rather good. And a generous portion. My only mistake was forgetting to ask for gravy on the side, forgetting that places of this sort rather like to slosh the stuff on. Most of it down though, notwithstanding. With the result that I was too full for a dessert.

Washed down with a nice little 'Tooma River' Chardonney from the land of rabbits and convicts, aka the Warburn Estate. But it is a big operation and I dare say they do specials for the trade, so this particular bottle was not to be found at reference 5. Must have thought it OK though as, unusually, we ran to a second bottle. Some sideways looks as I removed the second half of the second bottle to the privacy of our bedroom upstairs, where the snap above was taken.

Note the A4, hard covered notebook, just visible bottom right. The sort of notebook favoured by client advisors during my time with CCTA in the mid 1980's. An organisation which has now vanished under many layers of reorganisation. Whose headquarters building on the north eastern corner of Vauxhall Bridge was demolished some years ago in favour of expensive flats.

The new flats are visible left in the snap above, much the same size as the office block had been. I used to keep my bicycle in a sort of basement broom cupboard, accessible from steps down from the right. But I am pleased they left Moore's 'Locking Piece', much more my sort of outdoor sculpture than the sort of stuff that usually gets put up in London.

In any event, a good meal.

References

Reference 1: https://www.geograph.ie/profile/3076. An aspirant.

Reference 2: http://www.tollerporcorum.org/. Life with the Tollers.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/claim-to-fame.html. The famous Toller. From the East Midlands branch.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/12/memory-lane.html. A visit to the East Midlands.

Reference 5: https://www.warburnestate.com.au/. 'Carmelo is Chief Winemaker at Warburn Estate and has spent over 20 years dedicated to producing wonderful wines. The estate is owned by the 3rd and 4th generations of the Sergi family - whose winemaking heritage was brought to the area from Italy in 1952'.

Reference 5: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/documents/25k-raster-legend.pdf. Sometimes needed when using the online product. I have just been reminded how much county boundaries wriggle when seen at 1:50,000. Even to the point of following the stepped boundaries of medieval strip fields.