Batch No.740

Being the last batch of January. Snapped here after two and a half hours' worth of first rise in a warm airing cupboard. The rising dough did not get to lift the lid, which it usually does in the summer, when the dough starts rather warmer than it does at this time of year.

Sturdy bowl from an operating theatre in one of the hospitals in the Exe Vale group, probably closed down if not demolished. Best not to inquire about what has been in it over the years.

At the start of what turned out to be more than two and a half hour's worth of second rise in a cool front room - but in front of the fake gas fire which did provide a bit of radiant heat. In the summer, I have the front door down - just visible at the top of the snap - and don't bother with the fire. The south east facing room gets quite enough sun when there is some.

Loose bottomed baking tins from Silverwood via an old-fashioned hardware & kitchen goods store in Tavistock. They have done very well.

Very possibly the Lawsons at reference 2 and snapped above. Turned up by gmaps.

The finished product, some of one of which went down very well a couple of hours later. The other was frozen - not what one really wants to do, but the frequency of bake gets a bit much without it.

Batch elapsed time on this occasion seven hours. One does not have to stay in for the first rise, but it is as well to keep an eye on the second as it is all to easy to leave it a few minutes too long - as little as five can be enough - and get huge bubbles in the loaves, or worse still a collapse. The sort of thing noticed at reference 4, near two hundred batches ago.

Bread done, out for a short stroll, to find this herald of spring coming up in a verge near us.

With 'Herald of Spring' once being a family fun day held at roughly this time of year at Bourne Hall, in Ewell Village. Not sure if they still do it, what with the plague, austerity and one thing and another. I suspect not.

With this rather bigger display, just a few days later. Not very photogenic though, with the delicately coloured crocuses not holding out against the strong noonday sun.

PS 1: search of the archive confirms Lawsons at reference 3, although on a forced choice, I would have gone for well before 2019. But then, I have commented before on the vagaries of my episodic memory.

PS 2: and despite the remarks at reference 3, Robert Dyas is still holding in there. We still have one in Epsom and I think they are still to be found up in town.

References

Reference 1: https://www.silverwood-bakeware.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.lawsonshop.co.uk/.

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

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/disaster-567.html. The taper of the tins from Hong Kong mentioned at reference 3 above is visible in the second of the two snaps here.

A good programme

A couple of weeks ago to the Wigmore Hall for a very attractive programme: Beethoven's Op.18 No.4 and Op.59 No.3. I have been following the first for a long time and the second for a while: but would they fly on this occasions? Would expectations be too high? Offered by the NOVO quartet of reference 1. No record of having heard them before in the archive.

But for some 18.4 outings, which read like they come from another world, see reference 2.

A day which started with discovery of my first pill box error. That is to say I had got the pills wrong in the plastic contraption - four slots for each of seven days - I use for dispensing my pills. Recovery from which probably soaked up quarter of an hour. A good job that pills tend to come in different sizes and colours and in different popper packs. The first time such a thing has happened in more than ten years of using a pill box.

Waterloo trains off again, so it was a Victoria then bus day. With both trolley and stick. 

Can't remember just at the moment why I took this particular snap at the station: it may have been that different panels of brick were shown up different by some trick of the light - but if that is what it was, the trick did not survive the telephone experience. Perhaps if I take another look at the bricks it will come back to me

The change of time to the afternoon (15:00 instead of our usual 11:30) left us slightly short of time at the Wigmore Hall end. I think we still did Olle & Steen, but by the time we had waited for the barista to do her stuff, I did not manage to finish my half pint of coffee. Which was slightly annoying.

We also caught a couple of unusual registration plates on the way. The first, a registration which was four numbers, 7773 or 7775, registered somewhere in the Persian Gulf, I think Bahrain. Not quite fast enough with the telephone for zoom to give up the exact number. Not, I think, a format which is allowed in this country.

But this Bentley was stationary, so I could manage that. Carcheck says a 2009 Continental GTC. Top speed of 195mph. Failed its MOT on trivia twice: trivia maybe, but you think that the owner of expensive wheels like these - maybe £30,000 - would take more care.

A hall which was very full for the occasion, so we can't be the only people who are fond of these particular works. And both works worked very well. Perhaps it was the verve & spirit of the young quartet that worked for us.

Out to take a meal at Ponti's, our first visit for a while. Perhaps the first since mid-November last, as noticed at reference 3. Wine availability was a bit patchy, but as it happened, the one that we wanted was available, so that was a good start. Fiano di Avellino. Last taken back in 2022, as noticed at reference 4. Another afternoon concert, as it happens.

Bread and olives, followed by a rather fine pizza for me and gnocchi for her, a change from sea bream being called for. Wrapped up for me with a spot of the pink ice cream favoured in the west country, more accurately raspberry sorbet. Just the one scoop as sorbet seems to be something that restaurants are quite generous with - not like green vegetables.

Plus a spot of grappa. Which came in a bottle with a very plain label. So was it cooking grappa from some wholesaler or grappa artigianato (?) from the parental village?

A rather gross person on the train home, tucking into coke and crisps. Harmless enough, but all rather off-putting. While on the rare occasions that I eat on a train, I try to do it out of sight. 

Home to a curious experience with our copy of 'View of Delft', where by some trick of the light the river (or canal) in the foreground was very reflective, just like a real river might be in the right conditions. I wondered if this was a possibility the artist had taken into account.

While today, not for the first time, surprised at how much digital images vary, even with today's technology. We have two copies of the painting, again rather different, but they have the excuse that they are quite old - one of them, I believe, one of my parents' wedding presents.

I have probably seen the real thing as a child, at the Mauritshuis at the Hague, from where the snap above is taken, but I can remember nothing about visiting the place, beyond the bare fact of visiting. I suppose that the wedding present is somewhere between the two snaps. Has the painting been cleaned since?

Failed to find anything remotely like it in gmaps. Perhaps, along with nearby Rotterdam, Delft was badly knocked about in the second war.

Very dry mouth in the evening, two oranges, two sticks of organic celery and a mug of tea notwithstanding. Although I am starting to suspect the acid in oranges of exacerbating the problem, probably kicked off by the interaction of alcohol with my water tablets.

References

Reference 1: https://www.novoquartet.com/.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=18.4.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/schumann.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/d956.html.

A matter of no importance?

This story, concerning Alan Bennett, starts with a misspelling at reference 1 and his book at reference 2. BH has been reading this book and she was very pleased to tell me yesterday evening that Fortnum & Mason had been founded by the Mr. Fortnum who did serious time as a page (whom I now know were not all boys) to George III.

My memory however was that the founding was all to do with someone who had done serious time as a footman to Queen Anne, some years previously. Queen Anne had a thing about having new candles every day and this footman was able to make a business out of recycling the candle ends, with candle wax at that time being expensive enough for this to be a good business.

Last night's thoughts to this morning's checking

I suppose in a modern palace, someone would be charged with gathering up all the old candles and disposing of them. With all this being recorded in the accounts in the proper way. While in those days, things were all much more informal, and while the footman may have been given permission, given the concession, there must have been lots of leakage. Other members of the household putting candle ends in their pockets. Candles which the Queen was not going to come across being renewed unnecessarily to improve the supply of candle ends. Wax candles being used in places where rush lights or dripping or whatever would have been good enough. All very messy.

In the morning, I took a look at the Internet, where I quickly turned up references 3 and 4, which more or less confirm my version of events.

But why had I known about this? When had it cropped up before? Search of the archive was indicated. First I turned up interest in Queen Anne - for example at reference 5. But persisting, I turned up reference 6 where there is indeed a brief reference to the story in question. Getting on for five years ago now. So all prompted by curiosity about the shop prompted by consumption of their fine chocolates. And in the margins, I am reminded that Fortnum's was bought up by a Canadian businessman, Garfield Weston, as long ago as 1951.

Back to Bennett

Next stop, take a look at the book that BH had been reading. It turns out that the pages in question were Bennett's recollections - possibly originally captured more or less at the time - of writing his play about the madness of King George, for which see reference 7. I am reminded of the complicated business of turning history into drama that works - a business which involves taking liberties with the truth. But what else is one to do? The truth is not going to work on the stage, and not enough people will be prepared to pay to see it. One has to compromise. A compromise that has to take into account that some of the audience - people like me - are a bit fastidious (not to say precious) about historical truth in historical dramas and fiction.

And the page business is a one-liner. A minor fact which is wrong amid a welter of other facts. Is it reasonable in a book of this sort to expect the author - or his assistants - to check all this sort of thing? I suspect the answer is that it wouldn't pay, it would cost too much - as a proportion of sales revenue - to be a runner. One just trusts the author's memory to be reasonably reliable. A trust which I suppose the author might lose if he is too careless or too free with his trivia - and lose sales in consequence.

It strikes me now that reference 8, which I am presently dipping into, may have something to say about all this. As may reference 9, a book which I have owned, more or less unread, for many years.

Further report in due course!

A further thought

Further thought produced the snap above.

Suppose that the box on the far right is the event in which we are interested, the event we want to make into a story. Further suppose that we have constructed the tree of causation of this event. Where links are somewhere on the spectrum 'this event preceded that event in time' and 'this event caused that event'. And where all these events occupy time, sometimes quite a lot of time.

Then there is, in general, no way to map all these events onto a line, onto a sequence. While a story is constrained to be a sequence. So we have a problem.

And even in the case where none of the events overlap in time, that one can map them onto a sequence, that may not be very helpful from the point of view of exposition. Although it is true that detective dramas sometimes tease by offering clues at the time of creation and, if you have the knack and are lucky, you make the connection at the right time, some time later.

And the diagram gets much more complicated when we distinguish facts from events and when we allow peoples' knowledge about events as events in their own right. A variation on what development psychiatrists call theory of mind, something human children start to acquire around the age of two or three.

So there is room for theory. Perhaps this is what reference 9 is all about.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/fishcotheque.html.

Reference 2: Writing home - Alan Bennett - 1994.

Reference 3: https://www.fortnumandmason.com/stories/our-history-timeline.

Reference 4: https://www.fortnumandmason.com/stories/fortnums-and-the-royal-household. The source of the snap above, date presently unknown.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/queen-anne-revision.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-modest-celebration.html.

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

Reference 8: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word – Walter J. Ong – 1982. 

Reference 9: Narrative discourse - Gerard Genette - 1980.

Rough and tumble

Or yet another digression from my perusal of reference 1, this time in connection with the use of tree trunks for construction and funerary purposes in lowland Scotland in Neolithic times, when there were probably more trees than there are now.

The starting point of the digression being the book at reference 2. A glossy looking book which, to judge by the number available secondhand, sold pretty well. With the secondhand prices varying a great deal - and with that snapped above being unusually cheap. 

But that did not stop the book getting a rather bad review at reference 3. A bad review which had the important virtue of telling you about quite a lot about the book under review before getting stuck into criticism of it - a virtue which is often missing from reviews in the pages of the NYRB or the TLS, in which the book ostensibly under review is more a peg on which to hang an essay about something more or less related. In this case, part of the trouble is alleged to be undue haste to publish a glossy version of what started out as a PhD dissertation, haste prompted in part by the scoring of academics and academies according to their tonnage of publications.

She also mentions the modern habit of including all sorts of pictures of marginal relevance in one's text, a habit she appears to find very irritating. Which brought me up a little, as I do a fair bit of this myself. I think it livens things up a bit.

It so happens that I am reading Richard Church (at reference 4) on the subject of reviews, both from the point of view of the reviewer and the reviewed. In his case, he often also knew the author of the subject of his reviews. And on his account, friendships at least sometimes survived bad reviews. 

While I wonder now how well I would cope with an adverse and public review? Perhaps the answer is that one gets used to it; it is all part of the rough and tumble of the literary world. Or in this case, the archaeological world, a world in which this reviewed author, Gordon Noble, went on after this book, to have a successful career as both author and academic.

I associated to the rough and tumble of drafting papers and reports in the Civil Service, which are apt to be thoroughly savaged by one's colleagues, elders and betters in the course of their production. Savaging or knocking about which is all part of the process of arriving at a good product. And one does, indeed, get used to it.

One part of the Neolithic story in Scotland, might have been huge funerary bonfires, with one idea being that one wanted to make a stirring event of a funeral in order that the memory of the departed would be fixed, at least for a while, in the minds of the participants. A way of binding the group together in the absence of any kind of written record? Perhaps the funerary games of the Greeks and Romans served a similar end?

Another part might have been the erection of split tree trunks as markers of burials. A fairly permanent marker of a burial, an alternative to the long barrows, where the same split tree trunks may have functioned as a sort of ridge pole.

I associated to the ease with which one could split quite large logs when they were fresh, in the aftermath of the great storm of the late eighties: a cold chisel and a club hammer were enough. No need to mess about with an axe. We had a fine 5th November bonfire that year, on a vacant plot on a housing estate on the eastern outskirts of Norwich. The same logs would have been much less tractable when they had dried out a bit, when they had seasoned.

But the question for today is, do such speculations about the psychic purposes of activities which are pretty speculative in themselves serve any useful purpose?

Off the top of the head, my answer for now is yes. It is a way into how these minds might have worked, more than five thousand years ago. Not quite the same as how the Neanderthal minds might have worked fifty thousand years before that, and for which we have much less to go on, but it is a start of sorts.

PS 1: in the margins of all this, I learn that Scotland boasts impressive public archaeology, if references 5, 6 and 7 are anything to go by. Perhaps, being less densely populated, there is more of it left. Notice that both the present author (Noble) and his reviewer (Sheridan) appear together at reference 7. I also learn that the Dogger Bank vanished long before Neolithic immigration from Europe kicked in. For which see reference 8.

[Among the best-known features of Great Langdale are the Langdale Pikes, a group of peaks on the northern side of the dale. From below, they appear as a sharp rocky ridge, though they are precipitous only on their southern side; to the north, the land sweeps gently to High Raise, the parent peak of the range. The Pikes themselves include (from west to east) Pike of Stickle, Loft Crag, Harrison Stickle and Pavey Ark]

PS 2: also that you can locate the source of something like a stone axe head by its chemical signature, with the mix of trace elements being as good as a fingerprint. Well almost: a bit like with yesterday's pollen of reference 9, you can never be quite sure that some quarry you don't know about won't come up with the same chemical signature as that of the quarry you do know about. In the meantime, lots of axe heads from all over the country have been put down to Great Langdale in Cumbria. A place I remember as being somewhat spoiled by the large number of spoil heaps from dead mines and quarries.

References

Reference 1: The Circular Archetype in Microcosm: The Carved Stone Balls of Late Neolithic Scotland - Chris L. Stewart-Moffitt – 2022. 

Reference 2: Neolithic Scotland: Timber, Stone, Earth and Fire - Noble, G. - 2006.

Reference 3: review of same by Alison Sheridan, then of the National Museums of Scotland. Cambridge Archaeological Journal - 2007. Turned up by Bing. Sheridan is now, I think, something of a media archaeologist.

Reference 4: The voyage home – Richard Church – 1964.

Reference 5: https://www.pkht.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://scarf.scot/regional/pkarf/. 

Reference 7: Cremation Practices and the Creation of Monument Complexes: The Neolithic Cremation Cemetery at Forteviot, Strathearn, Perth & Kinross, Scotland, and its comparanda - Gordon Noble, Kenneth Brophy, Derek Hamilton, Stephany Leach, Alison Sheridan - 2017.

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

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-botanical-digression.html. 

A botanical digression

A digression this morning to pollen analysis. The trail starts at reference 1, where Stewart-Moffit writes about the order in which trees arrived in north eastern Scotland after the ice retreated 12,000 years ago or so: ‘… Birch (betula) first appeared с. 9500 BC with Hazel (corylus) с. 8050 BC; they were followed shortly after by broadleaved trees such as Elm (ulmus) c. 7550 BC and Oak (quercus) c. 6550 BC with Ash (fraxinus) and Alder (alnus) by c. 6150 BC. Scots Pine (pinus sylvestris) could also be found at higher altitudes as shown on Map 2.1…’.

This took me to reference 2 which goes into rather more detail about how this is done, with pollen.

Lots of material about pollen analysis on the Internet, where I am also told about various standard texts, which seem expensive. But I guess the offer of the text at reference 3 snapped above is an aberration or a mistake: one sometimes gets odd prices in Internet marketplaces. But there are the encyclopedia entries at references 4 and 5 - and for those of a historical bent there is reference 6.

This all works because pollen grains come in all kinds of bizarre shapes and, up to a point anyway, one can identify a plant - say down to the level of a family of plants - by its pollen. Furthermore, pollen lasts a long time and one can still identify very old pollen in this way, even fossilised pollen.

So if one can find a stratified source of pollen which one can date by other means, one is away. It seems that cores taken from the sediments at the bottom of lakes or from old beds of peat are good sources in the present context.

[Coire Ardair, north of Loch Laggan, was occupied by a valley glacier during the Loch Lomond Stadial. Its maximum extent is constrained by the moraines in the valley bottom. Photo: B. Davies]

One then samples the core in some appropriate way, separates out the pollen, samples that again, and then peers at individual grains through a microscope and identify it. If one does enough of this, one can plot the relative frequency of pollen grains of the species of interest over time, say over the past 12,000 years, that is to say after the Loch Lomond Stadial (of reference 7). Which is all fine and good when you reduce it to the sort of summary I started with above - but it all looks to depend on a great deal of skilled but grunt work (by students?) and quite a lot of assumptions about pollen production and dispersal.

Dispersal by wind that is. The method does not work very well for the much smaller volumes of pollen dispersed by insects.

Lakes and bogs good because the pollen does not move about much once it has landed. Streams bad.

Extraction of pollen grains from the sample is likely to involve filters (for size), acid baths and alkali baths. It seems that, with care, the pollen grains can stand up to all this.

In order to profile a single sample, the researcher might need to look at and identify as many as a thousand pollen grains. Which presumably amounts to a lot of quality time peering down a microscope. Slow work until one has committed the shapes of the common pollen grains to memory.

A simple pollen diagram. Probably fictitious. And now the tricky work of interpretation can start! 

One of the problems being that while hazel nuts were important in the Stone Age economy in Scotland, the pollen of the hazel cannot be distinguished from that of the bog myrtle - a plant which likes peat bogs and which is well-liked by beavers. Parts of the plant are sometimes used as a flavouring - but not as a food.

Conclusions

An entertainment for a dull Monday. But there are lot of people who take it much more seriously, for their living.

PS 1: I have just taken delivery of a nice, but very small, hardback edition of 'Much Ado about Nothing' from 1953. Which originally cost what I thought was the surprisingly large sum of 15/-. The Cambridge edition, the heritage Arden edition seemingly having vanished from the shelves. Against a forthcoming visit to the Theatre Royal, to see the chap that I remember from 'The Night Manager'. BH will use a text from the other place, that is to say from Oxford.

PS 2: some time later, I started to wonder whether the complex shape of the pollen grain had anything to do with it knowing it had landed at the right place, on the right place on the stigma of the right sort of plant. A thought probably inspired by remembering vaguely about Van der Waals’ forces between compatible complex molecules. Gemini said up to a point, but not in the way of a lock and key. And in the time available I only found papers which talked of adhesion at the level of individual proteins, rather than at the level of geometry. One more thing to turn over in slow time.

References

Reference 1: The Circular Archetype in Microcosm: The Carved Stone Balls of Late Neolithic Scotland - Chris L. Stewart-Moffitt – 2022. 

Reference 2: The form and fate of Scotland's woodlands – Richard Tipping – 1994.

Reference 3: Pollen Analysis – Moore, P., Webb, J., & Collinson, M. – 1991.

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

Reference 5: Pollen Analysis - Margaret Kneller - 2009. In Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments in Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series from Springer. Via ResearchGate. A bit easier going than reference 4.

Reference 6: One hundred years of Quaternary pollen analysis 1916-2016 - H John B Birks, Björn E Berglund - 2018. 

Reference 7: https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glacial-geology/british-irish-ice-sheet/younger-dryas-loch-lomond-stadial/the-loch-lomond-stadial/.

Reference 8: Much Ado about Nothing - Sir Athur Quiller-Couch, John Dover Wilson (editors) - 1923, 1953.

Surrey affairs

This prompted by an email from Surrey County Council covering their latest newsletter.

Reorganisation

It seems that reorganisation of local authorities is in the air again and Surrey County is pitching to be a unitary authority, taking over the fairly modest functions presently left to districts - with the most visible perhaps being planning. It so happens that Surrey is a conservative county and it is to be expected that unification will be opposed by Epsom and Ewell council which, unusually, is run by the Residents' Association. Which I count as closet conservatives, but they will still want their independence and their jobs. While Labour doesn't get much of a look in, with just two out of the 80 odd county councillors. The same as the greens.

Surrey would also like to be a strategic authority with an elected mayor - with all bar one of these presently being Labour. Mostly big conurbations like London, Manchester and the West Midlands. But it seems that Surrey is considered at 1.2 million people to be a bit on the small side and so needs to team up with some neighbours.

The present map of Surrey looks fairly messy, taking account as it does of all kinds of history and facts on the ground. Like the GLC grabbing Chessington, that is to say the white finger sticking into Surrey to the west of yellow Epsom and Ewell in the course of some previous reorganisation. The nice neat boundaries you get in a lot of the US are not going to fly here.

I have always favoured unitary authorities, but the last time this was all chewed over, quite a lot of places, including Surrey, opted to maintain the status quo of a two tier system. Which leaves lots of lesser mayors taking it in turns to take a year in post: the chaps who wear heavy chains, open fêtes and attend worthy causes. Making any kind of change all looks terribly complicated and I dare say we will end up with some messy compromise.

And that is without taking a look at the areas used to organise our health systems, also subject to regular reorganisations. I have lost track of whether or how well health authorities align with local authorities. Police, I think, we have got sorted out, with nearly all police authorities being either counties or groups of counties.

M25/A3 interchange

This was another item which caught my eye.

A lot of money is being poured into the M25/A3 interchange, which I presently understand to be both a bottleneck and an accident black spot. Furthermore, I have been irritated in the past by Wisley moaning about having to take a bit of a hit here, without appearing to recognise that there were other parties taking hits too. Time to have another dig. Which fairly quickly got me to reference 3, all 500 and odd pages of it. Nature lovers will be pleased to learn that both bats and newts get a look in, although I did not come across either  bat tunnels or newt tunnels.

The bottom line seems to be that the government has decided that we need a decent road network to support a decent rate of growth and to that end this junction needs to be upgraded. Much the same as the argument for ramping up Heathrow, albeit on a much smaller scale. We can only get other kinds of new infrastructure like hospitals and prisons without (tax) pain by getting (this elusive) growth to pay for it.

I did not find any simple statement of what it would all cost, but what we seem to be getting is a new improved roundabout and new improved slip roads to replace those that we have now. Plus a bit of widening of the A3 on either side of the junction, this no doubt being the bit which takes a slice off the Wisley gardens.

So, the difference in outcome between the DS (do something) option and the DM (do minimum) option looked small while the difference in cost looked large. The planning process looked hopelessly elaborate, there was lots of planning jargon and I dare say lots of planners are doing very well out of the whole business. To the extent that we all like charging around in our cars we all get to benefit - but it is not the same as hospitals and prisons. Maybe it is just another example of what the columnist Simon Jenkins once described as big-project-itis. It is the big projects with big sales budgets which get sold to governments: little projects like mending Longmead Road or the pot-hole on West Hill don't make the cut.

We do get a diagram of the project, but it is rather small and the legend is even smaller. No doubt a larger version can be found somewhere in the attached forest, but I did not trouble to search for it.

But I did turn up this layman's version. From which I learn that the old roundabout - the circular one - will be retained for the use of pedestrians, cyclists and the like. Badgers?

And for crane lovers there are some fine pictures to be found at reference 5, from which the snap above has been lifted. I wonder if one could have got near enough to watch the action live? Do they provide a viewing platform? Complete with vans full of fast food? Or maybe they streamed it onto our smart televisions with one of those breathless voice-overs from Gary Lineker?

Trivia

Not long ago we took some kippers from Waitrose, still a good buy at a fiver or so for three of them, which makes a good meal for the two of us. Made with real smoke from up-north, or at least that is what we are led to be believe - although least one smoke house in Craster - I think the one which was next to the main pub and which had lots of black tar oozing out of the vents at the top - went up in flames.

In course of all this, I was reminded that the tray inside our fish kettle (from John Lewis), is something of a Chinese puzzle. It sometimes takes me quite a few minutes to get the hangers back in the right position from that shown. Which makes it a bit of a mystery how they get out of position.

And last but not least, mistletoe, a subject to which I shall return in due course, with mistletoe seeming to set to migrate from being an ornamental to an invasive species. These ones from a road on the Chase Estate, not far from where we live, snapped in the course of a short, early evening stroll with my stroller.

PS: I have just learned that Aberdeen is so named for being at the mouth of the River Don. Obvious really.

References

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

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_authorities_of_England.

Reference 3: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/south-east/m25-junction-10/.

Reference 4: The Planning Act 2008: M25 Junction 10/A3 Wisley Interchange: Examining Authority’s Report of Findings and Conclusions and Recommendation to the Secretary of State for Transport - The Planning Inspectorate - 2020. 

Reference 5: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/m25-junction-10-project-profile/.

Fish cakes

A fortnight ago to Vauxhall to take fish cakes at the Estrela, where they happened to be one of the dishes of the day.

A mild overcast morning, mild for January. With the first non-scoring trolley, from the M&S food hall, being on the ground on Station Approach.

With the second being outside Vauxhall Station. A stack of trolleys from Sainsbury's. All carefully engraved with 'not for sale, hire or loan'.

A bit further along I came across a warning notice, which told me to go to reference 1 - which is going to have to do in lieu of a maker's mark.

The website talks of products, as if they did actually make them - and are not just a distributor for Wanzl. But it is hard to be sure from what I have seen.

Somewhere in the vicinity a chap wearing an ethnic version of my duffel coat, with hood (up) and vertically striped in black and white. Perhaps cotton or wool, looking a bit like the sort of thing you use for towels or dressing gowns, in which case it would not be much good in the rain. Never seen such a thing before.

On past an indoor climbing space. An aspect of climbing that I was never much good at, having a poor head for heights and a poor strength to weight ratio, certainly as far as upper body was concerned. Plus, if I am to exercise, I like to be in the open air, if not up a mountain. Not the same in a gym at all. Cycling is just the same: I cannot muster any enthusiasm for exercise bicycles: it has to be out on the open road.

One of those green walls which are all the thing in London just at the moment. It looked to me as if it could do with a bit more water than it was getting - but in any case odd that I had not noticed it before.

While this building, solidly built and once operated by the London School Board, I would guess as a primary school, may have been let out to one of those more or less privatised educational operations, the sort that go in for deputy executive head teachers. I suspect what used to be called a special school run by the people at reference 2, who are possibly mixed up with the people at reference 3. Probably not mixed up with the social reformer Octavia Hill of references 4 and 5. She was more into housing and open spaces than education. In any event, on reflection, perhaps having a pop at their management structure is a bit unfair. Probably not that sort of operation at all.

Something else which I had forgotten about, if I had ever noticed it before - although BH claimed to know all about it. The substantially built Wheatsheaf Hall behind what used to be the Wheatsheaf public house, a place where I used to take the odd beer. Very good beer too, as I recall. Which of the two did the name start with, or was there something else?

A heritage door pull on the front door of the Tate Library. Perhaps from the 1920s? Inside to make use of one of their computers, remembering on this occasion which bit of the number on my card needed to be typed in - but having forgotten my indoor spectacles. I managed, notwithstanding.

And so to the Estrela and fish cakes, two of them. Rather more chewy than you might expect. Taken with an equally fine rice and bean stew, just about visible in the saucepan upper left. Didn't quite manage all of it.

But I did manage all the Deu la Deu. According to the website at reference 7, just the thing for seafood, as illustrated by the fine snap above - although I dare say the octopus is not quite as big as might at first appear.

There was also some wrapping in the form of bread, olives, soup of the day (not a particularly good day), almond tart and a spot of aguardente. I learn from reference 9 that this last can be made from all sorts of stuff, including sugar cane, in which case it is not that far removed from rum. Popular in Latin America as well as on the Iberian peninsular. Literally firewater, although that is not its usage.

Out to notice some fine detailing underneath a window on the building next door. Not the sort of thing that you see much of on today's brickwork.

And the house that used to be the Wheatsheaf, the place where I discovered baked oxtail. I also wondered, not for the first time, about the placement of the hefty looking front chimney stack. Was the window below always blocked up? Then what happened on the ground floor, in what used to be the public bar - a bar I don't think I ever patronised?

Arrived at Raynes Park to find that my train was cancelled. Texted BH to rearrange pick-up, then managed to fall asleep in the waiting room and miss the next train. BH not best pleased.

However, my exit from the platform down the stairs at Epsom was brightened up by a fine young chap who was very keen to carry my trolley for me, a trolley which seemed nearly as big as he was. He sported a fine smile and a badge saying that he was something to do with Jesus. I declined, as nicely as I could manage.

Home to find that the Archduke of Waterloo advertises in the Epsom Comet, the print freebie from the people at reference 7. Perhaps Surrey, with its good connections to Waterloo, is the native haunt of jazz people?

They even offer a facsimile of the print version. Lots of public notices.

PS: The father of Richard Church, a chap who has been keeping me busy since last July, was keen on the open road too. First cycles, then motor cycles and then cars. See reference 8. There is also a church two and church three is on the stocks.

References

Reference 1: https://she-ltd.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.ohs.uk/.

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

Reference 4: https://octaviahill.org/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Hill.

Reference 6: https://adegademoncao.pt/en/wine/alvarinho-deu-la-deu/.

Reference 7: https://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/epsom/.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/church-one.html.

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