Big haddock

In which I celebrated something, perhaps remembering to go back for the umbrella that I had left in NatWest bank, not having been able to do my business there as my pensioners' bus pass was no substitute, despite the better quality selfie, for my driving license.

The fish man from Lowestoft, from the same operation that does Ewell and Stoneleigh, was doing our Thursday market. The fish man who was able to offer me the largest piece of haddock that I had ever seen: lightly smoked, that is to say with a paler shade of yellow paint than that which is sometimes used for smoked cod.

A little over a kilo in weight. I took two middle cuts, one large for self, one small for BH, leaving the two end pieces for a Sunday kedgeree. Perhaps to be taken with a little white wine.

While the middle cuts were taken in a simpler fashion, boiled with boiled vegetables. The larger bit of fish had around 12 minutes, the smaller around 8. In the snap of it all above, the third tranche of courgette was sent to the back for looking a little large on the plate. 

The fish was very good. Firm in texture and not too strongly flavoured. Maybe the firmness is what you get from a middle cut taken from a large fish. Moistened with just a little butter.

For dessert, what was left of the plum crumble from the day before. Taken, in BH's case, with cold custard.

PS 1: what happens when I have no valid bus pass, driving license or passport?  Am I to be deemed an unperson by the banks if I decline to use buses, cars and aeroplanes?

PS 2: what is it about smoked haddock which makes it froth white when brought to the boil in water? 

Trolley 681

Two medium sized trolleys from the M&S food hall, captured in the Kokoro Passage on the way home from a day in London. A day which was warm enough that I had removed both No.2 winter woolly and scarf by the time I got back to Epsom. Just as well that BH had suggested that it was a bit warm for either (vintage) Dannimac or Duffel coat.

On the way to the food hall, took in the planter previously noticed at reference 2. Still growing, not harvested but not flowering either. Growing fast, so rocket is not a bad name for it, right or wrong.

This morning, I try Google Images again, using a sub-snap snipped out of the middle of that above.

Arugula is top of the list, but the leaves offered do not look quite right. Other suggestions include poppy and wall rocket, both wrong, I think, as in both cases flower shoots would have appeared by now. And leaves not quite right for poppy.

I shall continue to wait in hope for flowers. Maybe get another look in later this morning.

In the meantime, my forced choice would be the garden rocket of reference 3.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/trolley-680.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/trolley-672.html.

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

Group search key: trolleysk.

Trolley 680

Back after Trolley 679 for two more trolleys from the Kokoro Passage, these ones from Waitrose for a change.

One without a handle, but ownership given away by the colour of the handle holder which remains. The bolt in the centre of which was threaded, leaving me wondering what the handles were made of - having assumed that they were some kind of metal tubing. Must be something, at least at the ends, to take the thread.

Quite usable without the handle, but I thought it proper, nevertheless, to return to Waitrose's back door, since they have one and I know where it is, for them to decide its fate. The man having a fag outside denied ownership at first but backed down when I pointed out the matter of the handle holder colour.

A short walk morning, so off round the Screwfix circuit, to find this tree coming into flower. I thought perhaps a whitebeam, having noticed this tree before at about this time of year, and so it proved to be, with blog search turning up reference 2 below, something over a hundred trolleys ago, that is to say a little less than a year ago. Common whitebeam, otherwise Sorbus aria.

I suppose if I was a corporate with an IT department, rather than an individual, I could have tested whether Google Image could find the previous picture, but, as it is, I was dependant on remembering the name.

Most of the leaves seemed to be in terminal whorls. However, although some of the images turned up by Bing look to have whorls, Wikipedia talks of alternate, so I shall have to take a closer look.

I might also say that there seems to be taxonomic movement in this area, with discussion at the genus level, and some untidiness in the Wikipedia treatment. Perhaps the Wikipedia editor is having trouble keeping up with the taxonomists.

While outside the former Tchibo shed, the daisies are doing well.

With there being more than daisies when one looks more carefully. I noticed, in particular, the pretty blue flowers that I know as speedwell, flowers which used to infest the lawns at the family home in Cambridge, much to the annoyance of my mother. Perhaps as much because it had been imported from the garden of one of my father's sisters as for any other reason. Probably Veronica chamaedrys, commonly just veronica. I think BH can get cross about it too. See reference 6.

PS: in the margins, Gemini mentioned the Amygdaloideae sub-family of the roses, which includes the whitebeam above. The connection with the amygdala in the brain being that the fruits of the former have almond shaped pips or stones, while the two halves of the amygdala are also described as being almond shaped. From the Greek. A sub-family which causes a lot of trouble to the taxonomists: to lump apples and pears in with plums, cherries and peaches or not? See reference 7.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/trolley-679.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/trolley-570.html.

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

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

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

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_chamaedrys.

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

Group search key: trolleysk.

Trolley 679

Trolley 679 captured in the ramp down to the Kokoro Passage from Station Approach. Another M&S trolley returned to their food hall.

PS 1: this typed towards what looks to be the end of a nocturnal thunder storm, at least nocturnal thunder, lightening and rain, if not quite a storm in insurance speak, which distinction I read at reference 2 can be important. Cover for storm yes, cover for bad weather no. So all quite important if your holiday camp has just been washed away by flood following rain. Plus the lightening was much more impressive in the dark than it has been by day in the past.

PS 2: I remember once, when we were very young, staying in a camp site near St. Tropez. A camp site which had been carved out from around a river which was subject to flash floods when there was rain in the hills behind. There having been such a flood a few days before we arrived: dried out but with a fair amount of mud spread about. From where I associate to all the council estates built in this country, in such places, after the war. Cheap, vacant and available land I suppose.

PS 3: a little later: for these purposes storm or not is a binary dichotomy - which it is not. The rule might be whether or not the weather system in question has been given a name, but maybe the vagaries of Met Office bureaucracy in this matter are not a strong enough peg on which to hang serious money? Maybe, if one goes into the physics of it all, one could find a phase change which does yield a dichotomy. Enough heat in the thunder clouds for bubbles of steam to form? A sudden shift in temperature and/or pressure? But even then, converting that generality to observed facts from a particular time and place that a barrister could argue to in court, might prove tricky.

PS 4: in which connection, I might say that Gemini did a good job on explaining where the energy that goes into lightning comes from, that is to say from the sun heating up moist air close to the surface of the air, moist air which then rises. It was not so good at wrapping this up into a neat and tidy story, but it chuck out enough clues that I could do that bit. And it may be that the clues were not terribly accurate in detail, but I have not checked that.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/trolley-678.html.

Reference 2: What’s a ‘storm’? Butlin’s sues Aviva over definition after flood damage: Holiday group to go head to head with insurers in High Court after rains shut down Somerset resort - Eri Sugiura, Alistair Gray, Ian Smith, Financial Times - 2024.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Modigliani

A week ago or so, to the Wigmore to hear the Modigliani Quartet, a quartet I had heard once before, as noticed at reference 2. Inter alia, the day of the Viennese hot dog. Mozart: K156, Elise Bertrand: Lui e Loro, Beethoven: Op.59 No.1. This last being the very quartet, as it happens, that I had heard at St. Luke's back in 2023. Perhaps it is one of their specialities.

As it turned out, a day without trains at Epsom, so driving to Sutton again. I didn't manage to book the car park the day before - not finding out how to park the next day - but I was able to book before we set off, which saved fiddling with the telephone in the station car park. From there to the town platform where the train was ready and waiting and so served as a convenient waiting room. I snoozed part of the way to Victoria and woke to the chattering of a young girl, perhaps 5 or 6. BH told me that she had kept it up more or less all the way from Sutton. Would her parents go the distance?

Out to admire the tulips in Grosvenor Gardens, from where we took a No.36 bus to Marble Arch, where there was an unsightly clutter of hire bicycles. From thence to Olle & Steen in Wigmore Street where I took expresso (for once in a while) and one of their Kløben buns. Decaff for BH who is taking a holiday from caffeine, salt and sugar.

The concert to follow was very good, rounded off by the scherzo of Beethoven 18.6 as an encore. And we liked the Bertrand piece in the middle, although not sharable as it does not seem to have made it to YouTube. Nor have I come up with a convincing translation of the title.

Perhaps the expresso got me onto form.

Out to inspect a fine hole in the road, with a serious bit of shoring to keep it open.

Made our way down to Pierre Victoire of Dean Street, as noticed ten days previously at reference 4. Taking in the rather grand post office at the junction of Mortimer Street and Great Portland Street on the way - not many of them left these days. Not clear that this building was built for the post office, nor was it clear why it had been built in this rather florid way at all, quite unlike its neighbours. No doubt now on some heritage list.

And then a bit further on the embroiderer, Hand & Lock, of reference 3. I was a bit surprised at the size of the premises given over to hand embroidery - having thought that this sort of thing had died out years ago. But alive and well since 1767, perhaps getting by on fancy uniforms for royals and the upper ranks of the military. Plus the odd handbag for a celebrity or pop star. Perhaps Elton John is one of their customers.

And last but not least, an impressive bit of steel framing for a building going up near Oxford Street. Presumably a concrete core for lifts and so on, steel frame for the rest of the building, marble for the atrium, fancy cladding for the outside.

We had booked a table on this occasion, being the middle of what might have been a busy Sunday afternoon. Just as well, as it was fairly busy, possibly even full at some point during our visit. Imitation French, rather in the way of the late Terroirs, if rather more fussily so.

Some baguettes in a proper French bread basket, although I imagine the baguettes had been cooked from frozen. Not quite cooked enough to my mind.

Wine satisfactory, but I thought it little oversweet and a little overpriced - a 2018 'Les vieux murs' - a Pouilly-Fuissé from one Jean Loron.

The beginning of Copilot's unsolicited story is snapped above, having slipped into French for some reason. 27 euros at reference 6, more than I had expected, so perhaps Pierre Victoire apply a lower multiple than the usual three. While Loron looks to be a big operator, with a website with all the usual big vigneron trimmings.

To eat we both started with parsnip soup, which was fine. I followed up with rabbit pie, which was OK, but a bit thin - and not in the same league as the rabbit I had taken at the Estrela a few weeks previously, noticed at reference 7.

Probably made in the same way as pies in many public houses: pour a bit of stew into a bowl, top off with a slab of ready made puff, pop into a hot oven for ten minutes. Not really a proper pie at all. Nothing like the fine steak and kidney pie offered at the Tea House Theatre - finding which is left as an exercise for the more intrepid reader.

Followed up by what turned out to be an interesting take on tiramisu. It went down better than it looked, perhaps helped along by the amber nectar to the side.

Rounded off the proceedings with the piano previously noticed at reference 5. Carping above notwithstanding, a good meal in a pleasant atmosphere. We may well be back.

Somewhere along the line, the latest thing in public sinks. A very curious design to my mind, but I dare say there is some thinking there somewhere, if only I could grasp it. But where is the plug hole?

A bit of redevelopment from the 1930s?

Despite appearances, a cocktail bar. Clearly fuelled by the recent lunch, I got muddled with my locations and, thinking that it was where the Coach & Horses of reference 8 used to be, explained to the doorman that it used to be a pub catering mainly to alcoholics. On which he explained that he was quite happy to take that kind of trade too. Why did I not step inside? This morning I find that the Coach & Horses is still alive and well a few hundred yards away, now a member of the Fullers family and not quite the house it used to be fifty years ago. 

Once the fine commercial baker, Dugdale & Adams, from whom I used to buy excellent small, round wholemeal loaves, not long out of the oven. Good enough to be taken without butter or cheese. See reference 9.

The crowd got steadily denser as we moved down towards the embankment and we abandoned our plans to get the tube at Trafalgar Square. Bicycles a bit of a problem to.

Eventually working out that it was the day of the marathon. We caught the tail end, working its way to Parliament Square.

Once across the river, reminded of Mrs. Thatcher's curious spite in her choice of position for Nelson Mandela. Whatever was the matter with her?

But maybe it all works out in the end. Footfall past him now probably a lot higher than if he had been given some more prestigious location in or around Green Park.

Plenty of Bullingdons on the ramp at Waterloo, unlike the morning of the day before.

Struck, not for the first time, by the tower of the church across the road from the station, on the approaches to Waterloo Bridge. Snapped below in Street View.

I doubt whether using Greek revival below topped with Baroque above would work on today's much larger buildings, but I also doubt whether the detailing of today's buildings will wear as well visually as that of these older buildings.

Changed at Clapham Junction for Sutton. Various deep conversations, no doubt alcohol fuelled, both on the way to Clapham Junction and to Sutton. From where BH drove us home without further incident.

References

Reference 1: https://en.modiglianiquartet.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/modigliani.html.

Reference 3: https://handembroidery.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/grub-up.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/piano-82.html.

Reference 6: https://www.loron.fr/en/vins/pouilly-fuisse-les-vieux-murs/. 

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/wet.html.

Reference 8: https://www.coachandhorsessoho.pub/.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/batch-572.html.

Sausage stew day

We thought yesterday it was time to use up the small saucisson from Bastides out of Waitrose that had been sitting in the refrigerator for a while - having been surprised a few days previously by interesting white fluff growing on the cut end of a chunk of black pudding. I might add that we just cut the fluff off, along with a centimetre or so of pudding, and consumed the balance without any ill effects. While the saucisson had not been opened and should be good for a good while - proper saucisson being full of evil preservatives - but still and all.

Browned some garlic and freshly pounded black pepper - quite aromatic when prepared in this way - in rape seed oil at around 11:15. Added chopped onion. Dab of left over vegetables. Added orange pepper. Added tomatoes. Added a little celery. By which time it was around 12:00. No added water.

Around 12:50 added coarsely chopped sausage (200g) and chopped mushroom stalks. Around 13:00 added the mushroom caps - having quite forgotten about the cook separate option of reference 2.

Plus there were no potatoes and I switched from pasta to rice, this last the residue of having thought to make the stew into a form of risotto. Maybe next time.

In parallel, cook a cup full of rice and half a packet of spring greens. These last in boiling water for a little more than five minutes.

Served up around 13:10. All very good. We did most of the stew, all of the rice and greens. We could have done with a little more rice. A modest portion of stew left over, probably to be taken under bread later today.

Notice the puddle, visible bottom left in the snap above. A puddle which, given that no water was added, seemed to be the result of cooking driving a lot of water out of the mushrooms.

Dark, sweet grapes for dessert. Plus two small oranges, what Sainsbury's call 'easy peelers' without distinction of variety or place of origin. For once, these particular ones were quite good, sharp and sweet, not rather soft and watery as they often seem to be.

PS 1: the hawthorn presently in full floral splendour, with part of the crown being snapped through the front bedroom double glazing in the snap above.

Looks pretty good from the front drive, where there is also quite a strong perfume when the wind is right. Then this morning, BH spotted a couple of fat pigeons feeding on the blossoms, from which their stomachs can presumably extract the nectar. She also reminded me of the old country custom of making sandwiches from the bursting buds of the hawthorn; a handy supplement for the rural poor of old.

PS 2: the Bing search term 'saucisson bastides' did not turn up reference 1, just shops selling the stuff. It took the power of Copilot to remind me that the proper search term was 'bastides salaisons'.

References

Reference 1: https://www.sacor.fr/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/trolley-641.html. The last stew appears to have been more than 35 trolleys ago, that is to say a couple of months. And regarding fluff, I think the sausage involved here was a purchase which did not include the present sausage.

Senior moments

A day for cheese and a day for visiting the RHS library at Vincent Square, but also a day for senior moments, some large, some small.

There were also plans for Bullingdons, and no longer knowing the area around Vincent Square very well - once the home of the late Richard Crossman - almost the inventor of ministerial diaries with his three fat volumes of same - I thought to take a map with me. I do have a map, but it is quite old and tatty and I thought that a tailor made map on the telephone might be more convenient.

But not caring to link my telephone accounts to my computer accounts, moving a picture from the laptop to the telephone electronically is a bit fiddly, so I settled for taking a picture of the laptop with the telephone. Various interesting Moiré patterns on the way, for which see reference 2, with the result included above. Not great, but serviceable. In the event, I managed without needing to get it out again. Perhaps the process of making the map had served as sufficient reminder of the geography of Vincent Square.

The next matter on the agenda was what to take to wear on back and face. The answer was nearly everything: Dannimac, three sorts of spectacles, gloves and the old-style sunhat, the sort you can just stuff in your pocket, with no hard peak to get in the way.

On the way to the station, I learned about the rather nifty Irish passport card scheme, whereby you can opt to get a credit card sized identity card to go with your passport. A card which helps with all those people who want to see ID these days. A scheme which us national-identity-card phobic Brits - several schemes for same having foundered over the years - might find helpful. If they didn't like or didn't want, the phobics did not have to play, but the rest of us could get on with our lives. See reference 3.

A first senior moment about the cradles used by people working on the outsides of tall buildings. Window cleaners and above. With this one involving a lot of clipping and unclipping of safety harnesses, which must have slowed things down quite a bit.

Not altogether clear what they were doing, but they did lift out one of the fascia panels. Reasonably heavy, but one man could manage once it was out. A senior moment in that I could not recover the name of the thing they were working from. The word 'cradle' only came back to me when I got back to Epsom Station later in the day.

Ramp at Waterloo empty apart from a few broken-down Bullingdons, this being about 11:00 on a Wednesday morning. Luckily, as a regular, I knew about Concert Hall Approach, a small stand on the other side of the tracks, and was able to pull one from there. What seemed like a cold, stiff breeze from the north on Waterloo Bridge. Lots of people on cycles, some of them Bullingdons, overtaking me. Would never have happened in the olden days.

One of the free-market hire bikes infesting central London these days. With the nerve to park on a Bullingdon stand.

But I make it to the cheese shop in good order and do my Poacher business there. Heading off to the stand at Old Compton Street, I was amused to notice that some of the sprinkling of stalls on the way sport CCTV cameras in an attempt to deter light fingered tourists. But what would the police actually be able to do with a picture of a tourist pinching a souvenir handbag or whatever? About as much as they can do with Nigerian diplomats who pay no attention to the parking regulations in their diplomatic cars?

Pulled a Bullingdon and headed down - it was more or less rolling down to Parliament Square - to Vincent Square for the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society. For public, walk-in purposes a large modern room on the ground floor.

Not all that many books there, certainly no valuable old tomes full of careful colour engravings of plants, flowers and fruits, but there was a big computer screen with access to both the catalogue and the wide world (in the form of Google) which I could use to explore the borage family and the more botanical matter of merosity, the business of controlling the numbers of parts of flowers and related structures, a business which cropped up in my not very successful attempts to identify various alkanets and comfreys of said borage family, and for which see reference 4.

More Moiré effects, but quicker than writing it all down, for which last, I was not, in any event, very well equipped. Not properly tooled up for visiting a library at all. From where I associate to the fact that as an undergraduate I very rarely if ever set foot in one - unlike most of my fellows who found such places convenient for private study. Never mind the books, but you did get quiet and a table to work on.

What you did not seem to get here, even including the books held at Wisley rather than London, was plant identification guides for what I might call the serious amateur. Perhaps the sort of identification which requires careful examination of plants has been swept away by the magic bullet of DNA analysis of very small samples. Not so much need to bother with whole plants anymore. 

But I did turn up the guide at reference 4: a large format, handsomely produced paperback from the University of North Carolina. Furthermore, after a modest amount of administration, I was allowed to take the book out for a month. I am finding it both interesting and helpful. 

Secondhand prices very a good deal on Abebooks and eBay, but I think I have picked one up very reasonably from Mishawaka in Indiana, USA.

And I have a soft spot for places called things like North Bend and South Fork, for which we clearly don't have the right sort of rivers here in the UK. And there might be a bonus in the form of various interesting bits from the library it once belonged to. Whereas the present copy has little more than the return slip of the Lindley Library inside the front cover. A slip on which five borrowings are recorded, including my own, the other four probably all the same borrower over four months 2010-2011. Maybe I will be able to hang on to it until my own copy turns up.

I was also reminded of gadgets called book snakes, handy for keeping your book open at the right page. I use a short length of some brown tropical hardwood for the purpose - maybe twelve inches by three by one and a half - but I might go for one of these snakes, as Bing turns up lots of them on 'book beads snake'. Or I might just borrow some of BH's pearls. Much more classy.

In the margins I learned about the yew forest of Kingley Vale and the ABC model of flower development. The yew forest, near Chichester, is to be found at reference 6 and looks to be a worthy target of a short break later this year. Trees for me and mounds for her.

A lift neatly slotted into the stair well. Altogether a fine facility. Relaxed and open - if not quite as grand as the new library at Wisley. Long may it last!

Pulled the third Bullingdon of the day and headed down to the Tea House Theatre, which was more or less full. I took tea and a bacon sandwich. The tea was good, once again complete with strainer, caddy and all the trimmings. Except that I started with my second senior moment, by pouring my tea, through the strainer into the little stainless steel cup intended to hold the strainer, rather than into the teacup provided. I luckily I stopped before there was more than a very small puddle on my table, soon dealt with with the napkin provided. White damask, also very proper, as recently mentioned at reference 7.

The bacon sandwich was substantial and good, the only problem being that it came in that triple decker format, hard to eat daintily and I would have preferred the same amount of sandwich organised in regular format.

Entertained by music from Classical FM Requests, which was not that loud and could have been a lot worse. Including a piece by a chap called Zimmerman requested by a lady who explained that she used it when doing marathons. Something soothing and string orchestra as I recall, but I am not sure now that it was the late Bernd Alois Zimmermann, rather than the Hans Florian Zimmer who has done lots of film music. In any event, I completely fail to understand why people doing outdoor exercise feel the need to stop their ears with music or anything else - which seems to me to be a very odd thing to do. Much worse that having it on in the background while one is supposed to be concentrating on a bacon masterpiece.

Followed up by a hefty slice of something described as a Victoria Sponge, something which BH is rather good at. I suspect this one of having seen the inside of a freezer, which did it no favours, and it came with a very large amount of jam and goo, this last a rather heavy form of butter icing, maybe a centimetre thick and probably made with vegetable oil rather than butter. Plus the red jam was nothing like the same quality as the stuff from Bugden's that they sell in pots.

Foreigners seem to be able to make goo which is probably just as calorific, but which is a lot lighter in the mouth. The sort of cakes sold in tea shops in Piccadilly, at some remove from this one.

A piano in a corner. Not scored first because I am sure I have noticed it before and second because one cannot lift the lid to check the maker.

From the tea shop to Vauxhall Station, from which the top of the Shard was visible in among the cloud. Plenty of challenging behaviour from delivery cyclists on the way there. Only the one aeroplane, as a train to Dorking pulled in more or less as I reached the top of the (many) stairs up from street level.

Did the trolley at reference 8 on exit from Epsom Station. Which came with my third senior moment as, when I was in M&S I remembered that BH was not able to get pearl barley on her last visit to Sainsbury's. So I wondered around for a bit, all ready to settle for 'ready meal joint', when a young lady directed me to the dried vegetable department, where they did indeed have pearl barley. Which, in due course, I duly and triumphally presented to BH to be told that it was tea that was the problem, not pearl barley.

From there to the Marquis. Now a member of the Mitchell & Butler family, very quiet compared with what I imagined Wetherspoon's would have been, but comfortable. On this occasion, well worth paying the extra for my glass of wine.

The bar where I have, in the past, played 'shut the box', was shut off with white goods below and a portrait above. And while I was contemplating same, the house was visited by a council inspector, the first time I have noticed such a thing. Amongst other things, he was interested in the cleanliness of the glasses, here marked down a bit, probably because they were not using a detergent in their glass washer which could cope with our hard water. He also went down into the cellar.

To my right a scene from old Epsom, a scene from which I was unable to get rid of the reflection. Furthermore, I have been unable to work out were the shot was taken from. I had thought the town end of East Street, where there are some buildings of this vintage, but which I have been unable to match with any of those above. Something else for a rainy day.

To my left a table which was a stretched version of the table in the dining room in BH's Exminster home. While that in my Cambridge home was a little newer, pale brown rather than dark brown, something from the wartime economy range. The sort of table which contained a good deal of recyclable oak and which could be picked up for next to nothing - perhaps 10/- or a £1 - at jumble sales in the 1970s. I have had quite a few of them over the years.

Walked home, taking the shorter route via Meadway, rather than going right over the hill. Having forgotten to take my midday potion, despite having carried it about all day.

PS 1: the heavy rain overnight has pushed up the jelly lichen on the back patio splendidly.

PS 2: and inspecting my email, I find another invitation from Silversea cruises to join in a spot of global warming in a spot not yet infested with tourists. But Silversea are working on it.

References

Reference 1: https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/libraries-at-rhs.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern.

Reference 3: https://www.ireland.ie/en/dfa/passports/passport-card/.

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

Reference 5: Guide to flowering plant families - Wendy B. Zomlefer - 1994. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Reference 6: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/kingley-vale/.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/wet.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/trolley-674.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/tax-gap.html. More musings from the Marquis.