Trolley 611

Trolley 611 was captured in the Kokoro passage, two trolleys from a group of four, two large and two small.  Two large trolleys removed from the group for the purposes of the snap.

Curiously, although I took the long way back to the M&S food hall, past Wetherspoon's, I did not notice that the handle of one of them was bent, only noticing when it came to choosing the best snap for this post.

This in the margins of a visit to the site of the public house which used to be called the White Horse, more recently the Lava Lounge. I suppose they were punting for trade from the nearby art college (aka the creationists), rather the the hospital; the days of health workers boozing and smoking in public places being long gone. I remember visiting the place just once, I forget why, as Dorking Road was off my beat at the time, and being lectured by a man of middling years, possibly a former soldier, who lectured me on the difference between 1 Para and 2 Para. As I recall it, 2 Para was the business, while 1 Para was not.

It looks like quite an old building, but no amount of zoom turns the date of establishment top right into something I can read. Oddly, the letters are more legible than the numbers. Perhaps if one had a key one could work it out. In the meantime, gmaps reveals the date to be 1717. Back in the days when Epsom was a spa town and the Epsom Derby was a half century short of invention.

Perhaps it could go back to being some kind of a recreational or eating facility for said health workers? Or out-patients wanting a snack before they caught their bus home?

While across the road we had the pond, which I supposed to exist for some Thames Water flavoured reason to take the run-off from the newish housing above. By St. Margaret Drive, probably once part of the garden of the convent which is now a public house combined with a Premier Inn. A place where we once had a rather unpleasant meal involving smoked haddock and cheese, both foods which I like when taken separately.

The present point being that while there were plenty of rushes, I could see no water, despite all the rain we have been having recently. So maybe it does just function as an overflow area to hold the excess and to give the drains a chance to cope. Chalk just below so it should not be a big problem.

And so back to Epsom Town where I captured these trolleys and got my hair cut. To learn all about the shaving contest run by the British Barbers Association and the rather elaborate belt given as first prize, snapped above. The association is run out of Gravesend in Kent, and it is not clear whether the competitions are still up and running. But the shop seems to be, a shop which appears to be into creams and lotions rather than cut-throats. 

In which connection, the barber explained that modern cut-throats are fakes, and are actually safety razors with disposable blades got up to look like cut-throats. Too much sterilisation, health and safety around the real thing. Plus it is hard to source proper leather strops.

There is, seems, a demand for shaves just now. Something that was common enough when I was very young, and has, I now know, waned and waxed since then.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/trolley-610.html.

Reference 2: https://britishbarbers.com/.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Thirsty again

A little before Christmas, back to Soif on Battersea Rise for a spot of Christmas cheer. Rather to my surprise, the last visit turns out to have been last May (reference 2): I would have guessed six months later than that. There must be so many other places worthy of our attention.

On the way, we wondered whether one of the bungalows on Meadway was going to be reborn as a house, the fate of a number of bungalows on the estate, but Downs Side now seem to have retreated. A false alarm.

Then a senior moment regarding the price of tickets to Clapham Junction relative to a Travelcard. It turned out I was comparing the price of two tickets to the price of one Travelcard. But it took me maybe a minute to get there.

Called in the Turkish convenience store outside the Grant Road exit from Clapham Junction. Flat bread, figs from Greece, and Turkish delight. As it turned out, the bread was good, if a little past its first freshness. The figs looked good, but were not quite as dry as I like them. But BH was well pleased with her Turkish delight. And it cost a lot less than you can pay for it too.

A fine Christmas tree outside Wetherspoons. And they had not seen the need to give it an ugly skirt, like the one in the market place in Epsom.

A little early for lunch, so we carried on up the rise, past the splendidly named Lavender Sweep where I park Bullingdons from time to time, on to what we thought might be an interesting modern church. Despite appearances, it was no such thing, at best a church hall, now colonised by a child minding operation.

Still a little early for lunch, so we then tried 'The Merchant of Battersea' next door to 'Soif' - BH having been tempted in by my offer of mulled wine. The door was open, so we went in, sat down at the bar and examined the challenge card while we waited to be attended to. The challenge card appearing to be a form of loyalty card, with nine spots to be stamped. But no-one appeared and we decided that the place was not really open and the door had been left unlocked by mistake; just the kitchen staff prepping for later. And I now see from reference 3 that the place does not open until 16:00 on a Wednesday, so we would have had a while to wait. In any case, it had the look of a joint for young people who liked lots of noise.

And so into Soif, where it was clear that the booking system (OpenTable) had been a bit overdoing it with its talk of two hour slots at this busy season. There was a substantial Christmas party at the back, but there was only a couple of other tables besides ourselves at the front. Two very young waiters, quite possibly students on their Christmas break, looked after by an older waiter who might have been French.

We opted for bread while we waited for our chicken-of-the-day to be roasted in the cupboard on the little terrace out front. Bread which was mixed, adequate and filling - but still not as good as the bread from Paul's which they used to serve in their William IV Street restaurant in town.

We started on the wine while we were waiting, as good as we have come to expect from this company. A 2017 Mâcon-Chaintré from Maison Valette. Not Domaine Valette?

One supposes one of the smaller producers favoured by Les Caves de Pyrene, no website but possibly operating out of the yard snapped above. Plenty of the wine available on the Internet, even if there is no website and no Street View visible signage. 

Next time I must remember to take the real thing, taking care not to get stopped with it in my pocket and drink taken, which might lead to trouble, even when folded away.

The chicken came dismembered, which I had not been expecting. Plus chips with plenty of salt. Plus salad with plenty of dressing. Having not thought to ask them to dispense with both, or at least have it on the side. The gravy with the chicken was innocuous enough, and the chicken itself rather good. There would have been enough for three of us, but we managed just the same. After which we were far too full for solid dessert; far too full for one of their fine apple tarts.

We wondered what happened to the carcases. Did they bother turning them into soup, or were they just chucked? I don't suppose the pigs get a look in these days, with the ten year old piece from the Guardian at reference 4, suggesting that pig swill succumbed to a succession of animal health hazards. My money is on it not having made it back.

When we tired of discussing whether the tree trunk was fake (BH) or real (your truly), we were entertained by smoking visits to the terrace. Male and female, vape and fag. There might even have been the odd cigar.

And then there was a loud gentleman behind me braying at the two young ladies he had brought out for lunch. He was into property and I thought that the young ladies earned their lunch - not just by dressing appropriately for the occasion. BH was not so sure.

On the way back, I picked up a Guardian and BH picked up some Christmas tree lights. Which in the event were disqualified from deployment because of their fast flicker.

Onto the platform at Clapham Junction where, despite the low cloud, I scored two easy twos with the prospect of plenty more if the Horsham train had not come in.

And so home. It was surprising how good plain cold water tasted later that evening. Must be the restricted fluid diet.

References

Reference 1: https://www.soif.co/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/thirsty.html.

Reference 3: https://www.themerchantbattersea.com/.

Reference 4: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/14/food-waste-fed-to-pigs.

Reference 5: Meat: A Benign Extravagance - Simon Fairlie (Author), Maddy Harland (Editor) - 2010. Mentioned by the piece in the Guardian above. One can pay a lot for this book, but at £6.09 including postage, second hand from the World of Books, I thought I would see how well it has worn in the years since it was written. Possibly by a pal of George Monbiot.

A waking thought

One of my refrains is the need to educate the public about public finances. The need to promote the understanding that public services are not free goods and need to be paid for out of taxation. That if you want a decent health service, you have to pay a decent amount of tax, at European, rather than at US levels. In which connection, Bing, as well as Bard like chat, turns up reference 1 below, from which I have lifted the snap above - in which the UK appears twice, low for now, high for soon. The US appearing once, even lower. Nevertheless, the UK is presently in the lower half of the chart, lower than I had thought, along with the US, perhaps reflecting 13 years of Tory rule.

The IFS is, to my mind, a respectable operation, and one can trust the chart. On the other hand, the numbers at reference 2 look rather different, perhaps because they seem to be about direct taxes on income rather than tax in general as a proportion of the total. A reminder that comparisons of this sort are difficult.

But waking up this morning, I was reminded of a different take on this. Generally speaking, people do not like paying tax. Some people go to considerable lengths to avoid contributing in this way. Against this background, the (UK) Treasury tends to manage government spending as a matter of sharing out a tax pot of fixed size. When we need a new battleship, it does not say 'we had better raise income tax by a couple of pennies in the pound to pay for it', it says 'what can we cut, what can we do without, in order to free up some money for the battleship'.

There is some flexibility in that the Treasury can borrow money against the security of future tax revenue. So we can have the battleship on the never-never as we used to say when I was young, money trees not having been invented at that time.

There is still more flexibility in that the Treasury keeps some money aside, not allocated up-front, which can be used to cover unexpected expenditures. Perhaps the shells we are sending to the Ukraine are paid for in this way.

But in the round, the Treasury balances the books, keeps expenditure within the limits set by the tax rates of the day. Changing those rates is a serious matter requiring serious political input. Not to be undertaken lightly.

PS: the money tree sometimes takes the form of expecting there to be growth. When the economy grows, the tax take grows with it, without needing to fiddle with the tax rates, without anybody getting hurt. Which would be more helpful if the UK was better at growth. And then there is another refrain of mine, to the effect that we need to wean ourselves off growth. Growth is destroying the planet. Time for breakfast.

References

Reference 1: https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax-revenues-compare-internationally.

Reference 2: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/27/tax-britons-pay-europe-australia-us.

Housing shortage

Thirty years ago, small boys made sprawling houses for pigs out of wooden blocks and Lego of two sizes. Houses which could be endlessly recycled. Whereas now, small girls make rather smarter houses for small people with pointy hats.

PS: Google Images not fooled, taking me more or less straight to reference 1, with just a short stopover at McAfee for some reason. Lots of lurid warnings. Windows Defender claims all is well, but not in the clear yet.

References

Reference 1: https://www.avenue-mandarine.com/.

Jigsaw time

It being the New Year, it is jigsaw time again. Which, in the course of completing the bottom row, gave rise to the following.

All these bottom pieces were pretty much alike, permutations of prongs and holes aside, which meant that it was easy enough to make a mistake. Which I did.

This despite looking along the row from low down, to get the help of the slanting light from the front window, when I was not sure. Presumably the same help as you get when trying to read an inscription on an old grave stone from the side. Or the old glyphs on a Mayan temple.

The symptom of the mistake was that a distinctive mark on one of the pieces did not match up with another mark in the body of the jigsaw above, as suggested by the picture on the box. Maybe a piece width out of place, probably not two pieces width - although it was hard to be sure given that the connection of the bottom with this part of the body was a little sketchy.

Now, in general terms, if one wants to perturb a row slightly, say where the red dot is above, I can remove a left combo of one or two pieces from the right and insert it at the join above the red dot. Or in the case of the green dot above, I can remove a right combo from the left and insert it at the join above the green dot. In the case of a one piece combo, I get a shift of part of the row by one position, in the case of a two piece combo, by two positions.

Now in the present case, the piece in the wrong position was to the right and needed to be moved one position to the right. The row only contained one one piece combo and this was to the left. So the answer was probably to swap the one piece combo on the left with a matching two piece combo to the right of the piece which was wrong. Which massively reduced the number of possibilities to check and I now have a bottom row which I think is right.

So the question for today is, do you need to be able to articulate the problem in this sort of way in order to be able to solve the problem in reasonably short order?

First, we will have the people who do not like jigsaws and who are not much good at them. So they won't do much articulating.

Then you get the articulators who do.

But I believe that there are plenty of jigsaw buffs in the middle who can just gaze at the puzzle and come up with the right answer in a small number of tries, without resorting to long-winded, systematic trial and error of all the permutations. And, without going in for conscious articulation. Bearing in mind that it is entirely possible that the brain does that under the covers.

PS: I learn in the margins that while I can scale all the members of an object selection in Powerpoint by size, it does not necessarily do quite what you want. The (sometimes irritating & intrusive) cleverness of Bing only gets you so far. But to be fair to Bing, it did bring up the right section of Powerpoint help fast enough.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/jigsaw-17-series-3.html.

Group search key: jigsawsk.

Trolley 610

The first trolley of the new year was captured this morning in the Kokoro passage. Given that Sainsbury's was open, I had assumed that M&S would be, but in the event, it and the rest of the Ashley Centre were shut and I had to leave the trolleys in the covered corner by the front door, along with another which was already there.

Epsom pretty quiet this morning, with little more than the cafés and coffee bars open. The nearly new Gail's looked busy enough.

Sainsbury's open but pretty quiet too, and for the first time for a long time it was quicker to walk diagonally across the car park than walk the two sides.

Across the footbridge, the gas depot was pretty full of interesting vehicles. The council tip shut. First line recovery open and while they could do vehicles No.29, No.30 and No.31, there was no No.38 nor anything near. Just a few high numbered sports. And two heavy recovery trailers, at least one of which was from Germany.

While from the footbridge I noticed this new-to-me mast. First thought fairground, second thought something microwave, not very far away, slightly west of south. But this evening, I have failed to locate it on gmaps. Will try harder next time I am on the footbridge. Maybe go so far as to take a compass.

Getting nearer home, I was prompted to think about the way that we sometimes make a habit of doing things which we like to moan about. Perhaps a regular chore which sometimes we quite enjoy, but which sometimes seems tiresome or tedious. But in the round, we would miss it if it were not there. Notwithstanding, it is also something to moan about. Which gave rise to the thought that life is all rather complicated when need to erect lightning conductors, as it were, so soak up anger (or whatever). Scapegoats. Then the thought that this is not so far from getting young people to go in for seriously physical sport at about the same time as they are starting to think about the opposite sex. I associate to an episode in Švejk when the bored soldiers, en route to some messy battlefield, are only too glad to have someone to have a go at, someone to vent their spleen on. A having a go at which can sometimes get out of hand. I also associate to stories of pairs of old ladies in villages of old who were more or less kept alive by their mutual animosity. And when one went, the other was not long following.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/trolley-609.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Fake 171

Some higher grade fake snow on the railings outside a restaurant at the junction of Mount Street and South Audley Street. Hard to the touch, which left us puzzling about how it was shaped and installed.

Appropriately, a 'traditional public house' can be seen opposite. A listed Victorian building which, according to their website at reference 2, has been lovingly and lavishly restored, and features a ceiling curated by no less an eminence than the late Dame Phyllida Barlow of Newcastle. And if I get there early enough for breakfast, I can have something called a Stepney Kipper. While for a more realistic - realistic from the point of view of time that is - lunch, I can have a confection involving raw Cornish tuna. Maybe sourced from the stall in Borough Market where they had one on display the other week.

While I had thought the main reason for having public houses in Mayfair was to give the servants somewhere to go on their afternoons off and the the drivers somewhere to go while they were waiting.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/fake-170.html.

Reference 2: https://theaudleypublichouse.com/.

Group search key: fakesk.