Dog rose season

The dog rose season has arrived at Hook Road, although not quite as florid as it has been some years. Perhaps the recent rain has brought it on, with dog roses being big, fast growing plants which I dare say like plenty of water. Perhaps another couple of weeks will bring it on a bit more.

In any event, the two Baby Blue Christmas trees in our garden are certainly looking a bit happier after the rain, with plenty of new leaf shoots bursting forth. Spectacular even. Perhaps they really prefer a wetter climate than we can offer in our part of Epsom, very much in the rain shadow of the Downs to the south.

PS 1: the St. Ebba's water tower is just visible behind the rose. Being, I think, rather shorter than those of the other hospitals in the cluster, better suited to conversion into the arty apartment it now is. A place which started life as a 300 bedded epileptic colony for the LCC at the beginning of the 20th century.

PS 2: later: I read in today's FT that '... In a statement, the government insisted any extensions to the life of nuclear stations was “entirely a matter for the operator and the independent regulator based on safety considerations”. Privately, officials have sought to play down the warnings of rolling power cuts in Britain this winter, arguing they would only occur in the very worst-case scenario...'. Gross negligence on the part of our government, possibly brought on by blind faith in the mysterious workings of the energy market. Plus, it occurs to me that our energy generators, the likes of (the French) EDF, have got us over a barrel almost as much as President Putin. 'You give us lots of money and we will see what we can do'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/casual-dining-in-epsom.html. The showing in 2021.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/hook-road.html. The slightly earlier showing in 2020.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/baby-blue.html.

Wellingtonia 79

A fine specimen, captured in a front garden in Ashley Road, on the way up to the Downs. Must rather dominate the front garden concerned, but then, both sides of the road are lined with mature trees, so it would be odd to move there if you didn't like them.

Slightly awkward to photograph from the road, with there only being the one narrow pavement, on the tree side, and a fair amount of traffic, on this particular occasion.

The view back down the hill, towards Epsom, in Street View. Rough ground left, some of it given over to horses, mostly fancy houses right. Of various ages. A fair walk to the nearest shops or the railway station.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/wellingtonia-78.html.

Group search key: wgc.

Platinum paste

Where paste in this instance is the old word for a mixture of flour and water, as might be used to make pastry. Or in this case bread. Batch No.654.

Couldn't think of anything in the house made of platinum that I could scrape or rub a bit of dust off into the flour, or perhaps sprinkle on the loaves just before they went into the oven. So didn't bother to investigate whether the stuff is toxic.

Two quite good looking loaves, not perfect but without any large blisters. Got the second rise right on this occasion: like adding water to a cake mix in that as one approaches the right consistency, a few drops of water can make a surprising amount of difference. The drops of water in this case being minutes of second rise.

PS: quite good stocks of flour in hand: Alto white from Ponders End (reference 1) and wholemeal brown from Canada, via Waitrose. We are not told where the Alto white comes from, although I would guess a blended flour, possibly from more than one country. We shall see if prices have risen by the next time I am in the market.

References

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

A statistical minefield

From time to time, I hear people explaining how COVID doesn't really matter because nearly all the people who actually die of it are either very old or very ill anyway. Or both. Sometimes I am moved to respond statistically, that is to say that statisticians have got it all under control.

One approach is that of excess deaths, open to anywhere with a reasonable standard of death registration. Rather more sophisticated, and rather more contentious, is to work into the presentation of the data the quality of life and the life expectancy at age of death in an attempt to quantify the damage. There is an assumption here that loss, for example, of two years of life on dialysis or in severe depression counts for less than loss of twenty healthy and active years of life. A bit harsh, but not an unreasonable aid to the distribution of scarce health resources.

Then this morning, continuing my read of reference 2, I come across DALY, otherwise disability adjusted life years and it is clear from Wikipedia at reference 3 that lots of people have been working on how best to do this. We are offered the map and legend included above.

Which suggest that a lot more good life years are lost in sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan than in most other places. With Russia being about on a par with India.

But I an not satisfied with this: I want to see how the sums have been done, to see the source, said to be reference 1. Eventually I work my work through to reference 4, but the nearest to the map included in Wikipedia that I could find is the one included above, which does HALE rather than DALY. The same general idea, but not the same at all. The most one can say is that they both start with the same map of the world; the same projection.

Rather to my surprise, despite their huge spend on health, the US doesn't do very well, at least not on this showing.

And I have not run down a proper statistical description of either map. Perhaps I will have another go tomorrow.

References

Reference 1: WHO disease and injury country estimates - World Health Organization - 2009. 

Reference 2: A cure for darkness: the story of depression and how we treat it – Alex Riley – 2021. The prompt for this post.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year.

Reference 4: https://www.who.int/data/gho/map-gallery.

Cheese

The stock of cheese (Lincolnshire Poacher) running low, off to London again the day after the Vespers of the last post. I decided to have another crack at CS7, that is to say the cycle superhighway which runs from Southwark Bridge down to Colliers Wood. Home, inter alia, to a large Sainsbury's and the once interesting collection of shops at Merton Mills, at one time the factory end of the Liberty's empire. Shops including some fine, old-style second hand book shops. I probably still own books from them. See reference 4.

Sadly, the Bullingdons run out of puff at Clapham, so I am unlikely to get to explore the southern leg of this superhighway. Also known to me as the A24, the other sort of superhighway, the one eventually leading to Epsom.

Back with the cheese, the weather looked a bit mixed, so I elected to switch to the summer jacket, something practical from somewhere like Millets, rather than the winter jacket which is more of a fashion item. In the process, turning up a higher grade face mask in an obscure pocket, unused since last summer.

Train to London Bridge, walk across to Neal's Yard Dairy in Park Street to top up, then onto the Bullingdon stand opposite the still grand building which used to be the Hop Exchange, right in the (west facing) snap above. With the stand middle left lost in the fading light. The Street View camera crew must have been doing a bit of overtime.

I suppose this morning that the Hop Exchange, presumably once a central market for the buying and selling of that essential ingredient of beer, has gone the way of London's other central markets, swept away by the consolidation of thousands of smaller players into a very smaller number of very much larger players.

Pedalled off to Kennington where a group of lads were joy riding on their cycles all over the road. Generally showing off. Not being a nuisance, a danger to themselves or others, but one imagines it would not have taken much for it to have become such.

Picked up signs for the A24 and Dorking (no sign of Epsom yet) at the busy Clapham North, but at Clapham Common hung right onto the A3, more or less directly under the flight path down into Heathrow, which gave one a comforting confirmation about the direction in which one was headed.

Quite a lot of rather muscular looking joggers in and around the Common, rather more ladies than gentlemen.

Parked up in the splendidly named Lavender Sweep and made my way to Soif, a south London outpost of the late lamented Terroirs of William IV Street, that is to say more or less Trafalgar Square. See reference 5. Just about three quarters of an hour from the Hop Exchange, so a £2 penalty. Couldn't be bothered to break the trip for long enough - ten minutes or so - to avoid the penalty. Perhaps next time.

Not busy this Friday lunchtime, but a regular sprinkling of customers, including what looked like a wine tasting session for ladies going on at the back. Format very much a slightly scaled back version of the original Terroirs. And some of the decorative touches, for example the large picture top right in the snap above, might have been recovered from the wreck of same. But the art chunk of tree was a new touch, complete with substantial wire carrying straps.

I took bread and salami. The bread turned out to be home made, unlike the Terroirs bread which I learned had come from Paul's. Perfectly fresh and decent, but for the purpose of the day, I would have preferred white from Paul's. A baker whom I don't usually approve of, partly because he is expensive, partly because his bread is all to apt to smash fillings. But served thin sliced this last objection falls away.

The menu was very much like that of Terroirs, that is to say more wine bar with nibbles than restaurant, but it did include oysters, which I don't remember from William IV street and there was at least one taker. Plenty in Borough Market from earlier in the day.

Not wanting a whole bottle to myself, my choice was a limited, so I settled for a carafe, that is to say 500ml, of 'Bianco IGT Campania, Monte di Grazia, Campania Italy (Bianca Tenera, Ginestra & Pepella)'. Presumably the parenthesis is all about subtle aroma of upland dock, perfect with oysters (with or without Tabasco) and all that sort of thing. A good wine, with the slightly vinegary, cidery taste I have come to associate with the organic wines from the Terroirs/Guildford stable.

However, I now learn from the website (reference 7) that I am quite wrong about the upland dock. The parenthesis is all about the variety of grape.

Sadly, the Berneroy Calvados was off so I had to make do with DuPont hors d'age. The waiter tried to explain what this last meant but I didn't understand. Something else to be looked up. They also had a carboy - that is to say a five gallon glass flask - there is a smaller, empty one top left in the tree art snap above - more or less full of eau de vie. I did understand when the waiter explained that you got the stuff out by siphoning it through a plastic tube, with the result sometimes that one got an accidental mouthful. Most unfortunate.

Out to find a serious delivery operation just down the road. 

While a bit further on, Arding & Hobbs, the once famed store, once visited by the queen, was in the throes of a refurbishment.

Passed on the Falcon. Tried to give some money to Médecins Sans Frontières in the arcade leading into Clapham Junction Station, but found that they were only interested in setting up a direct debit, which I dare say they could have done on the spot. Which avoids the business of having staff on the street handling money, which I dare say can be a problem, but I would have thought would put off other people besides myself: I would have given them £20, perhaps more, but direct debit no.

A proper cycle on a train on the way home. Without gears but with panniers. Maybe thirty five years ago, I abandoned the without gears approach after a few years of it, concerned that my knees would not take the stick indefinitely. But not before I had managed the pull up Snake Pass out of Manchester, far enough to look down on Sheffield, just starting to light up in the early evening. On some important business or whatever, possibly from the days when ICL (now swallowed up by Fujitsu) had a facility that way.

Passed on the Half Way House, but stopped in at Raynes Park, where I picked up the two slim volumes snapped above. The book on the left was noticed at reference 8 and since then we have watched the film, which we found a bit dated - not surprising given that it is more than fifty years old - but quite cleverly done. While I have not got very far with the book on the right, a long poem about St. Paul written in the middle of the nineteenth century, with demand such that it ran to at least two editions. According to Wikipedia at reference 9, the author seems to have been a very odd bird. Furthermore: 'Myers' book [not this one] greatly impressed Aldous Huxley. In 1961, 'Human Personality' was re-published as an abridged version with Huxley's foreword, in which he remarked "an amazingly rich, profound and stimulating book"'. I knew Huxley was into some rather odd things, but I had not realised how odd. Perhaps just as well that what I had of his oeuvre was buried back in January.

PS 1: in the vicinity of the tree art above, my telephone and OneDrive between them, have taken to creating large and useless files with names like 'WP_20220520_14_11_58_Rich.nar', that is to say with a '.nar' tacked on the end. Useless in the sense that the Microsoft Photos application won't display them. And to judge from reference 6, a hangover from the days when Microsoft bought Nokia and rebranded some of their telephones as Lumia's. Maybe also a hangover of some sort of finger trouble on my part. 

PS 2: I learn from reference 10 that 'hors d'age' is just a fancy way of saying very old. Better than, say, ten years old.

PS 3: checking with OS this morning, I find that Snake Pass is indeed where I remembered it, the A57 connecting Manchester and Glossop to Sheffield. But not clear from the map whether one can see Sheffield from the top, down Woodlands Valley, but that is what I remember. I also remember Ladyblower Reservoir, off snap bottom right, but that was probably a quite separate occasion. Maybe I should ask OS to write a widget which shades in the field of view from any nominated point. How much computer power would it take to power such a widget? Thinking with my fingers, I would have thought that there would be quite a lot of work to do.

References

Reference 1: https://lincolnshirepoachercheese.com/. Home to the cheese, which I actually get from Neal's Yard Dairy.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/london-bridge.html. The first visit to CS7.

Reference 3: https://consultations.southwark.gov.uk/environment-leisure/cs7-improvements/. 'Cycle Superhighway 7 (CS7) on Southwark Bridge Road has been identified as a priority as it is a key transport route connecting Colliers Wood in the South West to Central London at Southwark Bridge. Since this route was constructed in 2010, cycleway standards have improved and we need to ensure CS7 meets this standard. To do this, we are working in collaboration with Transport for London, to make improvements along the CS7 route'.

Reference 4: https://www.mertonabbeymills.org.uk/history/.

Reference 5: https://www.soif.co/.

Reference 6: https://file.org/extension/nar.

Reference 7: http://montedigrazia.it/.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/ghostly-affairs.html.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_W._H._Myers.

Reference 10: https://www.cognac-expert.com/hors-d-age-cognac/.

Vespers

A fortnight ago now to Monteverdi's vespers at Westminster Abbey. Vespro della Beata Vergine for those in the know. I think the first time that I have heard anything by Monteverdi, with my copy of the vespers probably having gone to the music society at Leatherhead Institute, as explained at reference 2. Furthermore, our first evening outing since some time last year, since when evening outings have been more or less abandoned.

The first of the snaps above is taken from the BBC website and was of a rehearsal for a performance of the same piece in 2015. It gives a reasonable idea of where the musicians were, in front of Isaac Newton left and James Stanhope, the first earl, right. The second of the snaps above gives some idea of where we were sitting, although there had been some reorganisation of the seats since it was taken, more than a century ago. All very impressive visually.

The outing commenced with the 17:19 from Epsom Station. With a small party of very drunk young men leaving the train on its arrival at Epsom from Leatherhead or Dorking. One wondered where they had been all afternoon.

Then on the train we had a very loud and seemingly angry man, perhaps in his 30s, talking into his telephone for most of the journey. Foreign, perhaps central European or Middle Eastern, so lots of hand movements to go with his angry voice. We wondered whether he was suffering from some mental disorder. But we kept well out of the way, so we shall never know.

From the splendidly named Upper Taxi Road at Waterloo a 211 bus took us more or less to the door. With our being allowed in the front door for once, that is to say the west door.

I now know rather more about the organisation of this piece than I did, with it being the five psalms of the vespers service used on Marian feast days, interleaved with some motets and framed with an introductory versicle and a closing sequence of hymn, sonata and Magnificat. The text of this last, also known as the Song of Mary, is taken from the Gospel of Luke (1:46–55) where it is spoken (in Latin) by Mary upon the occasion of her Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth.

The motets involved a fair amount of solo work, some of it off stage. And while the two senior boys of the choir wore ceremonial ribbons around their necks, only one of them got to give us solos. Clearly some wrinkle of choir organisation which I am not privy to. While the gentlemen ushers had rather larger ribbons around their necks, complete with a rather elaborate medal. There were also some ecclesiastics with collars and so forth, including the lady ecclesiastic who opened the proceedings.

The programme explained that it was not clear whether the composer had intended for the whole thing to be given, as it was on this occasion, or whether he had supplied more of a basket of goodies from which the choir master could make a selection on the day. Whatever the case, it was all rather impressive, and I expect we shall go again should opportunity offer.

My mother would have enjoyed hearing the young choir boys singing about earthly delights (Pulchra es), rather as she used to enjoy hearing a choir boy in King's College Chapel in Cambridge, at Christmas, explaining about all the goings on in the Garden of Eden. While I enjoyed hearing a tenor singing about how he was black but comely (Nigra sum). Unexpected in a text from the 17th century.

We also noticed that, generally speaking, the adults held their scores, arms outstretched, by the two flies. I imagine that this helps the breathing -  but it must take a while to build the necessary strength in the forearms. While the boys held their scores, arms together, by their spines.

Somewhere along the way we learned that the municipal gardeners in Westminster allow a certain amount of ivy, albeit constrained and not allowed free expression. I dare say the tree can take it.

Got another No.211 to take us back to Waterloo. After which we had a long enough change at Earlsfield for me to pop down to the Half Way House for a spot of Martell. Not something I have had for a while, and this spot made me a touch queasy for some reason, although that passed well before we got back to Epsom.

For once in a while, drew a blank at the Raynes Park platform library.

Back home, I was seriously tempted by the offer of the Goldberg Variations the following evening at Smith Square, given by one Joanna McGregor, a prof. at the Royal Academy of Music, not least because I liked her programme notes. And there were seats available. But in the end I decided that two evenings out on the trot was pushing my luck. Will there be another occasion? Last time was near four years ago, in the evening, so not too hopeful.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespro_della_Beata_Vergine.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/goods-which-are-past-their-sell-by-date.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/hot-goldberg.html.

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

The big celebration

Our end of Epsom is getting ready for the Derby too, with bunting and plastic flowers having appeared around some of the shops opposite the important bit of public art called 'The Evocation of Speed'. Opposite Wetherspoon's too, who usually do a good trade on race days. Up to and including the odd top hat.

Furthermore, a new slots joint has popped up to replace the one that used to occupy the premises which were once the Wellington. This last being a house which carried on selling sandwiches and pies long after casual dining had moved in. Slots to be seen nearest the red light in the snap above.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/epsom-art.html. The other end.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/trolley-454.html. A snap of the speedy art, in one of its previous locations. Took a while to find it, being misnamed.