Trolley 157

Captured by the dust bin by the bus stop, just past the Kiln Lane entrance to Sainsbury's, on the way to Ewell.

With the umbrella doing sterling service as a parasol, the sun already being good and hot today by 1100. Much more effective than a sun hat, although I have noticed before that we in England do not, generally speaking, use them. The only other one I passed today was a small one attached to a pram.

Not the best snap as it was pretty much guess work, being more or less impossible to make anything out on the screen of my telephone, with my back to the sun.

And another

Another death which should not have been, this one rather more recent, in January of last year, near Huddersfield.

Still no news from the body charged with the inquiry, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), with my not being able to make any sense of the update of January of this year. While that of December last year talks of the inquiry being on hold, as far as the public are concerned, until after the trial of one of the parties in April (of this year). I quote: 'In addition, there is a possibility that investigators will need to consider evidence given at the trial of Moshin Amin in April next year as part of their ongoing work. It is my view that the investigators should be given time to properly assess any new or relevant information that may be presented during the criminal proceedings'.

Yet another case where we do not seem to be able to get the inquiry right.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/03/huddersfield.html.

A death which should not have been

From time to time I moan about our increasing enthusiasm for lawyers, trials and long drawn out inquiries when things go wrong, most recently at reference 1.

Today I notice an article by Lana Spawls about a death which should not have been in the 'London Review of Books' of 21st June, with Ms. Spawls being a young doctor who finds the time and energy to write articles for newspapers.

The death, of a six year old boy, with Down's syndrome among other complaints, occurred in February 2011 in the Leicester Royal Infirmary. The doctor involved, a paediatric registrar, was found guilty of something called manslaughter by gross negligence (a verdict which is not available in Scotland), was given a suspended prison sentence and was afterwards struck off, earlier this year.

Speaking for myself, I do not care for the use of the criminal justice system to deal with matters of this sort, except in truly exceptional circumstances. While the circumstances in this case appear to be more a matter of the staff involved in the care of this boy being grossly overworked.

Politicians, the media and the public at large ask the impossible of the medical profession - and then blame those at the sharp end when the inevitable mistakes happen. I dare say that something of the sort will be the upshot of the Grenfell inquiry, except that this time it will not be the medical profession in the firing line.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/catastrophes.html.

Batch 476

Following the purchase made at reference 1 and delivered at reference 2, the new tins have now been tested.

Not having any suitable lids, the second rise was without lid and took rather a long time, nearly four hours, but was entirely satisfactory, with the dough rising nicely above the rims of the tins.

And when cooked, it was easy enough to get the loaves out of the hot tins. They looked well enough out of the tin, but they shrank and wrinkled as they cooled down, with the result illustrated left.

Two other down sides. First, I think I need to cook the new style loaves for a little longer, it taking longer for the heat to penetrate this more spherical form. Maybe up to 45 minutes from 37 minutes, 42 minutes on this occasion. Second, I have not yet got used to loaves which are more the shape of a large cake than a loaf. I had got used to the rather flat loaves, Mediterranean style, which I had been getting from the plates from Taiwan.

The bread board, composite, probably from Lakeland, is relatively new. While the bread knife dates from the time of our marriage, getting on for fifty years ago.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/batch-474.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/tins-from-hong-kong.html.

Country life

I have noticed before how countrified it can seem from the platform of Stoneleigh station, despite its being two stations nearer London than Epsom station.

This morning I discovered another country corner in the form of a path running along the back of the houses of Stoneleigh Park Road, next to the railway and coming out by the railway bridge over Ewell By-Pass, aka the A204. Not a path which seemed to be heavily used, although I dare say it has seen some courting couples in its day.

Oddly, unlike the rough path running from the back of Sainsbury's to its rail bridge, at the bottom of West Street, no audible action from small birds.

Marine engineering

A different sort of heritage last week, in the form of a visit to the Institute of Marine Engineering etc to be found at reference 1 and at No.1, Birdcage Walk, the prestigious address reflecting the past glories of both our merchant marine and our shipbuilding.

A visit to hear a lecture from a marine engineer about engineering incidents at sea, their numbers, causes and costs. These last, in the examples given, being a million euros or more per incident - and that, I think, was just the cost of repair, not including the loss of revenue.

Pulled a Bullingdon at Kennington Lane Rail Bridge for an uneventful journey of 11 minutes 56 seconds to Storey's Gate, with the stand being quite near the Westminster Arms, an establishment which I used to use occasionally, on this occasion busy with tourists with just a sprinkling of workers who had bunked off early.

A little early so took a stroll around old haunts, getting close enough to the bar at St. Ermin's to be able to admire their front garden, a splendid bit of green in an otherwise rather brick filled area. Followed by a doze under a tree in St. James's Park, on the way to which I passed the odd mural illustrated above, in Carteret Street and decorating the back of No.5 Queen Anne's Gate. Easily found in gmaps, while google proper took a bit longer, but resulting eventually in 'on a reveal on Carteret Street is a ceramic mosaic, which is thought to be a 1920’s advertisement for the former ‘Victor Talking Machine Company’. The development provides a better visibility of this interesting feature and this is welcomed' - towards the end of some planning document from the days of GLC. Presumably an area which contained enough people who could afford such things.

Onto the Institute where there was light control on entry. Some evidence of past glory in the form of a large auditorium, large bookcases and models of ships, while we were shown to a small, but very smart conference room. With wall furniture including wooden boards with the names of past presidents, one for every year since 1889, with quite a good sprinkling of admirals. About twenty of us there, a mixture of veterans, students and everything in between to hear from our marine engineer, retired from the sea but still employed in the industry.

Our engineer was a competent rather than a good presenter, but he seemed to know his stuff about things which can happen to ships. Roughly half of the things being bumping into things, half engine failure and a sprinkling of other stuff. Mile for mile, passenger ships seemed to have a much worse record than cargo ships. He wasn't saying whether Chinese ships were better or worse than South Korean ships, with the two countries between them accounting for most new build. But he did say that quite a lot of incidents were down to operator error.

A ship's main engines appeared to be a scaled up version of a two stroke diesel engine. With the additional complication that it had to be good for (say) 1,000 hours continuous running, with break down on the high seas having plenty of potential for disaster. Break downs which might include bits of piston breaking off and generally fouling up the works, perhaps causing terminal damage to the cam-shaft. In which connection he talked of the bolts holding the various bits of the pistons together being too tight, or at the very least being unevenly tight. Which reminded me of my short exposure to mending cars, many years ago now, during which I learned that torque wrenches were all the thing when it came to fixing the cylinder head back on the engine block.

He told us that ships' engines would be much more reliable if owners invested more in engine monitoring systems. The technology is there, but too many owners would rather take a chance than spend out on prevention.

Another problem was unauthorised spare parts, spare parts that is which had not been passed by the manufacturer of the engine in question. Another was contractor competence. Hard to be sure that some miscellaneous contractor in the far-away port to which your ship has been towed is actually competent to do your repair. Another was loss of on-board engineering skills, making a ship's captain unhealthily reliant on what said miscellaneous contractor might tell him. Another was cutting corners on fuel and lubricating oil. All very difficult in a highly competitive, low margin business.

On the way out, I completely forgot that I had been thinking of going back to Vauxhall, and headed back to Waterloo, where I made the pole position at the top of the ramp in 10 minutes 29 seconds. Parliament Square seemed a bit tricky, with the road markings not seeming to work for the cyclist who wanted to head out onto Westminster Bridge. But not so tricky that we did not have a family party of Dad, Mum, girl on the back of Mum's bike and two more, quite young girls on their own bikes. Not sure that I would care to cycle with such young children in the middle of London's rush hour. The girl on the back got very excited telling me about losing her upper front teeth, with her knowing the exact date of each loss. Mum told me that the going rate was now £2, up from the sixpence (2.5p) of my day. But then the girl on the back was told to calm down as Mum was getting windy about her bounding around in her seat so much.

Then the cycle lane on Westminster Bridge was completely blocked by rickshaws whose passengers had been let off to take pictures of the sights - presumably including themselves.

Trains were in a bit of a mess but I got a train to Earlsfield and a couple of minutes or so after I arrived there, a delayed train to Epsom pulled in. A train containing a young lady who pulled the prize for being tall, the prize for short skirt and the prize for high heels. And perhaps a fourth prize for being able to pull it all off, unlike a much younger lady attempting the same feat at Epsom Station. She also had a slight limp, something one seems to see quite often in ladies, although it was not clear whether it was hips or feet which were the problem.

Decided it was too hot to walk to a hostelry to take a beverage and caught a cab home.

PS: a bonus was a couple of issues of the house magazine 'The Marine Professional'. IT seemed to be quite a big issue - from ships without crews to cyber attacks. Plus all sorts of bits and bobs - including the fact that big cruise liners are big sources of air pollution in the places that they call at. Rules about pollution from their exhausts piffling compared with those that apply to today's motor vehicles. Plus a flyer advertising course in ISO 55000, the standard for management of assets of this sort. Which reminded me of the days when we spent large amounts of money on quality certification of civil service computing. Never quite convinced that it was money well spent, although it was certainly a push in a good direction.

Reference 1: https://www.imarest.org/.

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

Fake 40

A number of premises at the Fire Station end of the famous Kings Road in Chelsea have decorated their fronts with flowers, possibly some spin off from the Chelsea Flower Show at the end of May.

This one being the once famous 'Six Bells' public house, now operating as the Ivy Chelsea Garden (reference 1). Possibly a branch of a chain spun out of the Ivy celebrity haunt in Covent Garden (reference 2).

The flowers are entirely fake.

PS: the present building was built around 1900 and there had seemed to be some connection with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the chap who gave his name to the art school in Glasgow which burned down recently, for the second time. Possibly no stronger than the name of the pub and the name of the architect appearing in the same document about heritage Chelsea.

Reference 1: https://theivychelseagarden.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.the-ivy.co.uk/.

Group search key: chf.

Tins from Hong Kong

The cake tins from Hong Kong, noticed at reference 1, turned up a few days ago, maybe two weeks after ordering them. Wrapped in a large plastic bag and with a ticket suggesting that they had been dispatched from Oldham, near Manchester. This ticket was stuck on top of another ticket, also addressed to me, but which included the phrases 'United Kingdom' and 'Zip code'. And a second pair of bar codes, the translation of one of which included the suffix 'HZ'. Had the tins really come from Hong Kong, but via a distribution centre up north?

Not tins however as they were made of thin aluminium, and by the time they had got to Epsom they had acquired a couple of small dents. But I think they will serve the purpose well and I will report further in due course, probably tomorrow, scheduled for the next batch.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/batch-474.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HZ_(character_encoding).

Trolleys 155, 156a and 156b

Captured this morning at the end of the open air part of the passage between the High Street and Station Approach.

One trolley from Waitrose and two from the M&S food hall, these last scored as one as they were chained together and they were moved together. Just a few bits of litter to dispose of.

The Waitrose trolley yielded a sturdy token from BUPA.

Note the Trek cycle behind the railings. The same brand if not the same model (and certainly not the same paint job) as the bicycle I still use around Epsom, although probably not as much as the Bullingdons in town.

Booze

The large bottle of new-to-us Sylvaner. With Kumpf et Meyer being an entirely respectable establishment, into natural methods but without a website. 16 biodynamic hectares in northern Alsace, as described at reference 1.

The wine was fine, but perhaps not quite as good as the Sylvaner noticed at reference 2. Included here so that I can find it next time. Maybe the menus at Terroirs evolve, with wines and cheeses coming and going.

PS 1: I don't think I have ever come across any Kumpfs before, but it just so happens that the villain in my latest Maigret, 'Le Fou de Bergerac', is called Meyer, from somewhere unspecified in central Europe, the sort of person to whom you would go if you needed some forged papers. It was also the name of the Director General of Statistics at the time I did my stint at Eurostat. A post presently occupied by one Ms Kotzeva, lately the Head of Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute, and never again to be occupied by an Englishman - if it ever was.

PS 2: investigation reveals that the statistical Meyer was actually Jacques Mayer, spelt with an 'a', ably supported by one George Clark, from our own Central Statistical Office, who went on to serve a succession of DG's in the same capacity. Keen on jazz as I recall. From the time when it was still OK to take white wine at the canteen at the top of the Kirchberg Tower during the working day.

Reference 1: http://dryckesbutiken.se/producers/domaine-kumpf-et-meyer/.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/cheese-home-overseas.html.

Reference 3: Memoirs of Eurostat: fifty years of serving Europe - KS-49-02-183-EN-N - 2003.

Group search key: pta

Busts

The bust gallery at the NPG. A sort of low key version of what used to be the sculpture gallery of Tate Britain, before the sculptures were kicked out in favour of the rubbish thrown up on our beaches and such like stuff.

To the right, what I imagine is a portrait of William Gilbert "W. G." Grace, MRCS, LRCP, the most famous cricketer ever, with the initials being to do with the medical part of his career. Nominally an amateur, I was amused to read in Wikipedia that he was also notorious for his love of both the lime light and the money.

I associate to the two serious cricket buffs I have known over the years, both of whom could get quite lyrical about good batsmen, batsmen who could not only score runs, but could also do it with great style. Both of them rather disdained baseball as vastly inferior, but no doubt baseball buffs talk in the same sort of way. While more recently I have read that Eric Gill (of reference 1) could get very lyrical about one Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji Jadeja, GCSI GBE, one of the most famous cricketers of his generation. Also a genuine nabob.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/books-from-honiton.html.

Reference 2: Eric Gill - Fiona MacCarthy - 1989.

Group search key: pta.

Escalator

The splendid escalator up to the upper galleries of the NPG. Good that they could give this feature a bit of space, and have not yet found it necessary to spread the shop over all of it.

Group search term: pta.

Henry

Sir Henry Unton, 1557-1596, with this picture of and about him, particularly about his passing over, having been mentioned in an earlier post.

With thanks to the National Portrait Gallery, from whom I have downloaded this image. Not quite up to the standard of the Getty organisation at reference 1, but it will serve the present purpose.

PS: I might add that, for the avoidance of doubt, I do make a contribution to the NPG from time to time. Also that we have had report of a fine restaurant up near the roof. Something to be tried at some point.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/06/mrs-seacole.html.

Group search key: pta.

Fake 39

There were four or five of these boards erected outside the Holiday Inn at Solstice Services on the A303, not far from Stonehenge. Presumably not to do with football as we have the Union flag, while I believe football is played by parts, quite possibly including an all-Ireland part.

But clever, as you did not finally get rid of the illusion until you passed your hand across what appeared to be the fabric-in-the-wind imitating bumps and humps. The boards are actually quite smooth and flat, except at the rounded edges.

I might add that the Holiday Inn is a very decent place at which to stop for tea. Spacious, comfortable and with pleasant service. At £10 for a pot of tea for two and a fair attempt at a bacon sandwich for one, excellent value.

The bacon sandwich came in one of those little baguettes for one, a baguette which had probably been in the freezer when we walked through the door. Warm, but not exactly higher grade bread, while the bacon, though plentiful, was a touch salty. I managed to stop them providing a dab of salad with it, but not to stop them providing crisps. BH obliged.

Portraits

Off to London last week to the see the portrait noticed at reference 1. Overcast but set to be hot, although not in the same league as it has turned out to be this week.

Started well with a fine shot of a crane from Ainscough from the walkway out of Waterloo Station, where it overlooks the northeastern side of what was the Eurostar terminal. The people last noticed more than four months ago at reference 3. We stopped to wonder about the economics of building a shiny new terminal for what Wikipedia tells me this morning was exactly 13 years, to the day. Someone up there must have a sense of humour.

On to the Festival Hall, extensively decorated with large, brightly coloured flags, not obviously arty. We did not get to find out what they were doing there but BH did take her morning coffee. We were entertained by an energetic young man haranguing a school party down on the floor of the Clore Ballroom and by a meeting going on in the main sitting around area consisting of a dozen people sitting in a circle, all gazing at the laptops on their knees. The leader of the meeting appeared to be droning on about something or other; perhaps he was explaining about something important on their screens.

Not many minutes later we were in the National Portrait Gallery, to find the BP exhibition in a rather smaller space than I had expected, rather hot and crowded. There was some rubbish, as was to be expected in these days of Catholic tastes, and a number of portraits which we liked, but we thought that the judges had got it right and Miriam Escofet's entry was best of show, if seeming rather mannered in real life. We also found we had completely missed the important symbolism of the furring of the edges of one of the items arranged in the foreground and the double rim of another, something to do with the transience of all earthly things.

Upstairs, where we spent some time with the Elizabethans with their love of finery. Jewels for the ladies and large fancy swords for the gentlemen. I was particularly taken with a narrative painting about a gentleman who died fairly young, commissioned by his grieving widow. Lots of very small undertakers' mutes filing across the landscape. Illustration to follow.

A bit further on we came across a young foreigner who was make a small scale copy of a bust in a lump of some pale stuff on the end of a stick, with the aid of a small spatula and his fingers. It was rather a good copy, so he clearly knew his stuff. Once again, pleased to find an arty person who took his craft seriously.

Altogether a place which was pleasant, quiet and spacious, but somehow more like one of the museums at South Kensington than the National Gallery next door.

Out to see a fine cavalcade heading up Charing Cross Road, towards Tottenham Court Road. Big black Mercedes, outriders, goon cars, the works. Why on earth would anyone that valuable be travelling up Charing Cross Road? To open the fine new tube station at Tottenham Court Road?

Struggled through the scaffolding to take a downstairs table at Terroirs, away from the heat and the bustle. Service and bread as good as ever. The dish of the day was a simple rissotto, rather good. Followed up with some salad and pork terrine. I had forgotten to look up the name of the Sylvaner which they do here which I like, so we settled for something else, to be rather taken aback to find that the bottle was a litre rather than the usual 750ml. With the result that we were somewhat full and somewhat pink by the time that we had finished lunch.

Wandered through a surprising amount of new build Seven Dials to the cheese shop to stock up on Poacher.

Wandered on towards Kingsway. Item one, we noticed what we had thought were two regalia shops outside the Grand Temple had shut down, one of them with two rather disconsolate looking masons, with tails and top hats, standing outside. Item two, we noticed that Lowlander, a bar I once used to be taken to, was more a Belgium themed restaurant these days, offering, inter alia, moules with chorizo. Perhaps not for me any more.

Arrived on Kingsway, we inspected the church of St Anselm and St Cæcilia. An oasis of cool and quiet on a hot and busy afternoon. Unusual in that it had a rather open plan altar with the organ behind. Sanctuary light appeared to be over this altar, rather than in the more usual Lady Chapel. Windows looked to be the same sort of thing - iron casements in wooden beds - as those with which the houses on our own Chase Estate in Epsom were built. Perhaps worth another visit, perhaps before lunch this time.

Church done, we caught a bus, with the final sight of the day being the Kingsway offices of Mishcon de Reya, whom I know, probably quite wrongly, as doing very well for themselves out of the antics of celebrities. No doubt they deserve each other. See reference 4 to take in a very noisy promotional film clip. I managed about 10 seconds of it.

Hot, bright sun on the train home, making viewing a bit tricky, but I still managed a couple of ones at Earlsfield.

PS: some time later: it has been drawn to my attention that Miriam Escofet passed through the University of Creation in the days when it was more modestly known as the Epsom School of Art & Design, shortly before we arrived in town from Norwich.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/portraits.html.

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

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/steel-day.html. The day of the inspection of the constructional steel at Tate Modern.

Reference 4: https://www.mishcon.com/.

Group search key: pta.

Fake 38

Some packaged food makes a virtue of how new it is, while some makes a virtue of how old it is, how it is just like your Mum used to make when you were a child. With my Mum being one who, as it happens, made a good deal of jam over the years.

So this jam, from Tesco's, is in the latter camp, pretending to be very 'Olde Worlde', going so far as to imitate the 'Bonne Maman' jam pots from France, the ones with the fake checkered cloth caps. The brand last noticed five years ago at reference 1.

But rather than a fake check we have a fake woodcut. A fake made by the artist doing a line drawing on his computer, after the fashion of a woodcut, the sort of thing that was commonly used to decorate books and magazines in the 1930's, and then getting it transferred from the computer to the lid of a pot of jam. No wood cutting involved anywhere along the line. But the fake serves to enhance the impression of old, playing to the carefully fostered illusion that old is good.

Which in the case of jam might be true, with the stuff we ate as a child being far superior to what is readily obtainable from supermarkets now, mainly because we put in a lot more fruit to the square inch, as it were. But we did not go to the bother of cutting out bits of checkered cloth for the lids, settling for pre-cut clear plastic discs from the kitchen department of one of the local department stores.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-rocks-of-rochester.html.

Reference 2: http://www.bonnemaman.co.uk/products. Chequering clearly visible.

Suites, suite

Last weekend to Milton Court, to hear the first three of Bach's cello suites, given by Jean-Guihen Queyras as part of their Bach weekend there. As far as I could make out you just got the first three, I could find no mention of the last three.

Young lady on the train with the sequins style of sparkling makeup down both sides of her face. The sort of thing first noticed at reference 1, a little more than a month ago. Perhaps it is the latest thing.

To take my attention from her face, I wondered what sort of a sin I had committed in the scheme of such things, by buying my train ticket from the machine, claiming the senior rail card discount when I had not actually got the thing with me, as is clearly required by the rules, but something which is only very rarely checked. On the other hand, as I usually do, I had bought a one day Travelcard when a simple return to London terminals would have done. Travelcard on the grounds that if I did decide to go on the tube at some point in the day, it was a pain these days not to have bought a ticket in advance. Another rare eventuality, so this might be considered as a donation to TFL. If I had been challenged, I would probably have said that I had bought the ticket at the machine before I realised that I had forgotten to bring my card with me and thought it too complicated to sort all this out at the window. Which would have been an untruth, but which would probably have served. Three Hail Marys and an admonition to have something more interesting to confess next time?

Wrong sided by one of those blue vans from Pimlico Plumbers on the Waterloo roundabout.

Mild infraction of the rules regarding traffic lights, as much a misunderstanding as an infraction. But I associated to the far-off days when we thought it fun, when a first year undergraduate, not to pay to attend screenings put on the film society, preferring instead to have long conversations with the steward about mislaid tickets.

Having taken a sandwich at home, there no call to visit the bacon sandwich department in Whitecross Street, quite possibly open on a Sunday, and so straight to Milton Court which was sold out, although quiet at that point as I was a little early. As it turned out there were quite a few empty seats, so people must have block booked the whole weekend, then did pic n'mix on the day.

Seat E13 perfect, right in the middle, just the right distance from the action. Fairly serious French couple in front of me, otherwise surrounded by a quite democratic collection. Not the sort of people whom one would expect to see at the Wigmore Hall at all. Perhaps Bach weekends attract a special sort of customer.

Queyras was very good. Played from memory, mostly gazing vaguely at the ceiling, ear to his strings. Slightly aware of his breathing, aware enough to think that playing music is a fairly athletic business, at least for the upper body, and musicians probably have to work at their breathing. He had nice stage manners, including an encore in the form of the prelude to the fourth suite, a birthday present for his father, for whom it was a favourite.

I left wondering about whether the sound from a cello comes mainly from the strings or mainly from the holes. Clearly something to be chased up on day when I am feeling bored.

On arrival at Waterloo, redlighted my Bullingdon for gears which were about to slip and the absence of a bell. Just missed a train, which gave me a chance to take a beverage at the Cabin upstairs and to have another go at the train indicator intended for use by platform staff, hung off the rails at the end of the platform. Despite there being moving trains to provide clues, I did not get very far with working it out. See reference 2.

Scored a one from the train at Raynes Park. The aeroplane seemed very big, so it would have been very low over Earlsfield had I been there. Proof, should it be needed, that I should have taken refreshment at the Half Way House, rather than the Cabin.

Sadly, back  home, Bachtrack is not throwing up any more suites in this country in the immediate future. Seems a bit extreme to go to Europe for the purpose. Valletta Baroque Festival in January?

PS: 17 minutes 42 seconds out, 17 minutes 7 seconds return. More or less got the hang of the tricky lights around Blackfriars Bridge now. But not yet got the hang of cycling in two-way cycle tracks, maybe six feet wide; still not being keen on having bright young things in lycra rushing towards me at high speed.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/persian-grub.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/spot-difference.html.

What you see is what you get

A post arising from a chance encounter with reference 1, with the chance encounter having been prompted by reference 7. The lead author, Jan Johan Koenderink, is a Dutch physicist and psychologist known for his research on visual perception, computer vision, and geometry. He is interested, inter alia, in the business of how we make tidy and coherent percepts out of the messy and complex stimuli arriving at the eyes.

I see linkage to the world of LWS-N introduced at reference 5, in that I think we are both supposing our percepts to be driven by some cunning but two dimensional arrangement of neurons, at some remove from the various stimuli arriving from the outside, in this case all the various stimuli arriving from all the muscular activity involved in moving our eyes and head around, moving the images around on the retinas in order to get a proper look at the three dimensional objects in the real world. How is this arrangement organised, or in the word of LWS-N, compiled?

Note also, that while we might think of a visual percept as being very much like still photograph, all that stimulation, all that muscular activity involves time and it takes a little time to compile that percept. Perhaps a few hundred milliseconds. I associate to the fact that if there is no movement in the outside world and no muscular activity, then after a few seconds, any image will fade, be it ever so interesting. A fact first demonstrated during the middle of the middle of the last century, with a Russian, Alfred Lukyanovich Yarbus, being one of the pioneers, and with a rather more recent description to be found at reference 7.

The experiment on which this paper reports, involving the participation of 75 or so students, is about the size and shape of the visual field. Not how it is out in the world, but how it is in our minds – where, at the current state of the art, in cannot be inspected and measured in a direct way, in a proper and replicable way with electrical and mechanical instruments. We have to rely on the unreliable reports of the students.

Most of Figure 2

We start with a translucent, white hemisphere about one metre across. We mount the hemisphere at a convenient height on the back of an opaque wall panel and cut a peep-hole in the panel at the centre of the hemisphere. What do we see if we illuminate the hemisphere from behind and put an eye – just one eye – to the peep-hole?

So far, the answer would be nothing much. Some people will see a surface and most people will see a sort of white mist (with a similar trick having been played at the Light Show at the Hayward Gallery, back in 2013. See reference 8). So we help them along by pasting a whole lot of circular, black polka dots, all the same size, all over the interior of the hemisphere, more or less at random. With the completed set-up being illustrated above – bearing in mind that what we have above is not what you would see from the peep-hole, rather what the authors call a ‘orthographic frontal view’. Think of the huge difference between what you see on a three dimensional globe and what you see on a two dimensional, Mercator projection of same. With the result here being that, after a few seconds of a ‘luminous, misty space, with black balls floating about in random configuration’, nearly everybody will now see a surface.

Furthermore, the authors claim that the fact that all the polka dots are circular is a strong cue for what they call ‘global local frontoparallelity’, which I think amounts to saying that what you think you are seeing is a whole lot of polka-dots on a plane surface a little way in front of you. No doubt there is plenty of experimental evidence to this effect.

There is support for the ‘illusion’ of frontoparallelity in the trick with the soapy mirror that Gombrich tells of at reference 3. Stand in front of a soapy mirror and trace the image of your face in it – to be surprised how small that image is – having thought that it would the more or less the same size as the face itself.

Whereas I had thought that the circles would have been a strong cue that the surface was everywhere orthogonal to the line of sight, that is to say a hemisphere, with the point of view at the centre. Otherwise some of the circles would have been flattened, something in the way of the skull in Holbein’s famous picture of the ambassadors in the National Gallery, noticed at reference 4.
Now none of the students were privy to what is behind the peep-hole. There were no patterns, no lines and the surface looked pretty much the same everywhere. So what sort of a cue was going to be given by the polka dots?

Part of Figure 5

So when they had had a good look around, without any of the fixation straight ahead business which is common in experiments of this sort, they were asked to draw the shape of what it was that they saw, in the form of a horizontal section. They were given a large sheet of paper containing a helpful dashed line, along the lines of those above, with the eye at the peep-hole at the bottom and the centre of the field at the top.

The snap above contains about a third of the total, one for each student, tidied up a bit. Now what was surprising to me was that only a small proportion of the students reported anything like the right answer, that is to say a hemisphere, which would appear here as half a grey, circular disc. A quarter of a grey, circular disc, rather flattened, was much more common, which might be described as being half way between the frontoparallelity which was cued and the hemisphere which was the case.

Noting here that the students had been primed to report what they actually saw, not what they thought they ought to see, given their knowledge of eyes and so forth. Not too much interaction between top-down and bottom-up; a tricky point, but one which the authors thought they had covered. With the upshot being that the students were not much good estimating either the angular dimension of their field of view or the curvature of what it was they were looking at. There was lots of variation between one student and another and there were a lot more students who got it very wrong than there were who got it more or less right.

The experimenters were not so surprised, having had the benefit of knowledge about what various thinkers past and present had made of this problem. It seems that some early modern painters knew all about it, not to mention nineteenth century savants. See again, for example, reference 3.

One might worry about the tricky point, but that would not disturb the robust finding that they students did not, in the main, see the hemisphere that was there. A failing that evolution would not much care about, polka dotted plexiglass domes not being that common in either jungle or savanna.

The paper then went on to talk about internal local signs and external local signs, with local sign being a term that had first been introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century by one Rudolf Hermann Lotze, and which had then gone out of use for many years. I do not yet claim to understand what these signs are about, but maybe the internal local signs are what puts a bit of intelligence into array of neurons which is generating the subjective visual field, something in the way of what is being attempted with LWS-N, while the external local signs are all the tricky, mostly small, movements which the eye makes in order to make sense of things in the world outside. It is from the way that the stimuli on the retina change with these movements that the brain gets knowledge about objects, their shapes and their positions. New knowledge which can then be merged with stored knowledge about the world and its ways. Maybe those movements are used to code this knowledge?

I think what the paper is telling us, inter alia, is that there is, often but not always, a deficiency of internal local signs, with the result that most of us make a bit of a mess of interpreting what we see through the peep hole. What your eyes see is very often not what your brain projects into consciousness.

But I shall persevere with local signs for a bit longer. I may well have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

PS: perhaps we should try out one of those robots with eyes and see what it makes of the hemisphere? What does computer vision do with tricks of this sort?

References

Reference 1: Wide distribution of external local sign in the normal population - Jan J. Koenderink,  Andrea J. van Doorn, James T. Todd – 2009.

Reference 2: http://gestaltrevision.be/en/. With gestalt being, in this context, a word capturing the way that the brain imposes order on chaos, the way that the brain works hard to see something sensible out there. With Koenderink being on the staff.

Reference 3: Art and Illusion – Gombrich, E. – 1960. See for example, chapter VIII in Part Three, ‘Ambiguities of the Third Dimension’. There are peep-holes to be found there.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/06/jigsaw-8-series-3.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/an-introduction-to-lws-n.html.

Reference 6: The fading of stabilized images: Eye movements and information processing - Stanley Coren, Clare Porac – 1974.

Reference 7: The Mind Is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater – 2018.

Reference 8: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/light-show. An exhibition which was noticed at reference 9 following.

Reference 9: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/02/an-outing-in-three-parts.html.

Culinary affairs

Last weekend we thought to try the wine from the German bit of Italy, that is to say the South Tyrol, noticed at reference 1. With the most recent mention of the Tyrol before that being reference 2. I also remember meeting an Italian cook in a public house in Sussex who came from the Alto Adige, but have failed to trace any notice of him.

The centre piece of the occasion was to be a roast chicken, so sage & onion stuffing was clearly called for. First stop the organic shop in Epsom to buy some hazelnuts, a shop which seems to be doing better out of selling coffee and snacks that it is out of selling ingredients for home use. Second stop the bread stall in the market for a white split tin, which had almost certainly been through a freezer at some point in its life. Rather heavy feeling. Third stop the butcher in Manor Green Road for some smoked streaky, the presentation of which was very poor, but the bacon itself was fine. The resultant stuffing can be seen between the rose and the wine, good, but even better cold as it turned out. I think I should have used more bread, given the amount of celery, onion and what have you.

Rose looked and smelled very well, from the prolific floribunda by our back patio. I didn't used to care for this sort of pink rose, but I think I must have got used to them. The originals of both paintings above can sometimes be found in Tate Britain.

A bonus of the white bread, being rather heavy to eat in the ordinary way, was that the balance, that is to say about half of it, was made into a bread pudding, pudding which like stuffing is hugely better when made with white bread than with any kind of brown bread. Something which we used to have every week or so, so it made a nice change to have one last week.

But dessert on this particular occasion was cherry clafoutis, my having acquired two kilos of very cheap cherries from Spain. Cherries which looked OK, red and shiny enough, with only about 5-10% of them being damaged, but which were curiously tasteless. Better stewed, better still in clafoutis form.

Some of the bacon went on top of the chicken, the rest served to flavour the chicken soup, made with the carcass of the chicken a few days after the main event. With the chicken broth being thickened with both grated potato and red lentils. Very good it was too, with the half gallon or so of it being done in a meal and a bit.

Last but not least, the Praepositus wine was excellent. Topped off with a drop of middle of the range Calvados from Majestic. Roger Groult Réserve 3-Year-Old.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/hampton-court-not.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/mistake.html.

Reference 3: http://www.organico.co.uk/. The organic shop in Epsom. Slightly more organic than their rival Grape Tree, these last being good for brick dates.

Big day

It was a big day yesterday as in the course of the morning I was promoted from a three pill a day person to a four pill a day person. A whole new pill!

FIL lived long enough and well enough to get up to a dozen or so, without losing count, so I have got a little way to go yet.

More irritation

A couple of days ago I was irritated by the Guardian. Today, I was irritated by the Standard which, from a distance, appeared to be describing the people who spray paint our buildings and the track side furniture of our railways, in a headline, as graffiti artists. For all the world as if they were respectable people.

Corbie

Since Corbie the Crow did not want or was not able to land a killer punch over Brexit, yesterday's Guardian offers something which may be more in his old-fashioned line.

It seems that there is a crisis in the supply of carbon dioxide in northern Europe, with interruptions in the supply of carbonated drinks and frozen chickens looming. Part of the problem being that three of the big plants in this country have been shut down for summer maintenance. For which we should perhaps read summer holidays.

Given that the private sector is so obviously not competent to maintain supplies of this key ingredient of the national supply chain, very much part of what the Tories and their securocrat friends like to call the critical national infrastructure, there is obviously a strong case for nationalisation before it is too late.

Corbie should push for an emergency debate. It is the least that he can do.

PS: maybe also he should fix up a fact finding mission to India to talk to the people at reference 1. Maybe Bullingdon Boris would like to go along for the ride - or maybe not, as big people are not at their best when temperatures are in the 40's.

Reference 1: http://www.co2gasplants.com/.

Trios

The love affair with trios continued last week with the Razumovsky Ensemble giving us one trio from Schubert (D.929) and another from Shostakovich (Op.67) - with this occasional trio doing a better job of ensemble playing that the people noticed at reference 2. From which we deduce that Oleg Kogan, who leads from the cello, knows his business.

The weather was summery enough to resume picnics in Cavendish Square with its handsome trees. We wondered about their roots, given the car park underneath, ending up thinking that the Westminster Council tree people must have got it right as the trees look healthy enough and the car park has been there some time, with Wikipedia telling me of an IRA(P) attack on it in 1992. The Morrison's trolley noticed before was still there, looking a little tired. Unfortunately my snap of same was spoiled by my getting my finger over the lens of my telephone.

Wigmore Hall maybe two thirds full, but the lack of faces did not put off the ensemble which did very well indeed. Inter alia, one really got a sense of being able to track all three parts, something I rarely get with a quartet. Maybe my working memory can only cope with three, the three-in-one, aka the Trinity.

Little trouble switching from Schubert to Shostakovich on this occasion; perhaps it helped there being an interval.

Made it to Vauxhall, through all the building works underneath the John Lewis canopy, with five minutes to spare, so no need to run up the final flight of stairs to platform 8.

Wound up the proceedings with crumpets with Marmite. Must be some months since I last had a go at the stuff, it being a bit like pork pies, something one gets a yen for from time to time. From where I associated to that very special occasion, perhaps near Warrington, when I was passed by a Marmite tanker thundering up some motorway or other. See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=trios. Evidence of the love affair.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/trout.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=marmite. See the third of the three posts turned up by this search for Warrington. More than a decade since I first mentioned it.

Reference 4: http://www.razumovsky.org.uk/.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/razumovsky-ensemble.html. This being the only mention that the archive contains of any of the musicians involved here, from around two years ago. But we have been to at least once concert under this banner much more recently, just about a year ago - although had I been asked, I would have gone for a few months ago. More memory problems. Or are they archive problems?

Irritation

Perhaps it is the hot weather, but I found yesterday's Guardian particularly irritating.

Some newspapers (and most politicians) peddle the illusion that you can have public services without raising the taxes needed to pay for them.

While the Guardian peddles a completely different illusion, the illusion that there is a nice way to deal with migration. It does not seem to recognise that as long as the supply of migrants exceeds the demand, which given, for example, the conditions in most parts of Africa and those in most parts of Western Europe, is likely to be the case for a long time, there have to be barriers of one kind or another. And when  migrants are determined, which some of them will be, this is going to get unpleasant. There is going to be crime and there are going to be innocent victims.

It's easy for us to be holy when we have the natural barrier of the Channel. Not so easy for countries in the front line, like, for example, Hungary, Turkey and Libya.

So let's try and behave in a decent and humane way - while recognising that there are limits to what we can do. As the suit said to the president on West Wing, there is a lot of bad stuff going on out there and you can't fix all of it.

Trolley 154

Captured about half way between the capture of trolley 153 and Sainsbury's. Wheel lock present but not deployed.

A little later, I passed two more, tucked behind the derelict van in Stones Road. Passed up on the grounds that Batch 475 was rising and needed my attention - which did indeed turn out to be the case when I got home half an hour later. Maybe tomorrow.

The derelict van has been there for some years now and has been noticed at least once in the past at reference 1. Took a few searches to get it, with just a simple 'van' doing the job in the end: no need for all my cunning at all, as it turned out.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/12/trolley-110.html.

Trolley 153

Captured on the West Street side, that is to say the Sainsbury's side of the footbridge over the Waterloo line. Nearly new.

The first trolley for getting on for a month, with the last having been as long ago as 26th May.

I also record the tweet of a mistle thrush on Clay Hill Green. First spotted on top of a lamp post, where I thought it was perhaps a jay. It then moved to another lamp post and then onto the grass within a few feet of me. Definitely a thrush not a jay, declared mistle rather than song on the grounds that RSPB says the former likes open ground, like parks, while the latter likes enclosed ground, like gardens.

Not something I see very often. Indeed, search of the log reveals just one tweet in ten years, at reference 2. And that does not now look like a very solid tweeting.

PS: search confused by mistletoe, which meets a request for mistle. With there being a lot more of the former than the latter.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/trolley-152.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/06/tweet-tweet.html.

Chez les Flamands

I have commented in the past about Maigret not being involved in miscarriages of justice, but the odd story I have just finished - Chez les Flamands - appears to be one such. From Volume IV of the collected works.

Another story involving rivers, canals, barges and barge life. Maybe one day I will work out what proportion of the Maigret stories involve strong watery content. With this one being set in Givet, on the Meuse, on the eastern end of the border between France and Belgium, during one of the regular times of flood, when barge traffic is more or less suspended for the duration.

Maigret is summoned to Givet to help a cousin of a cousin of his wife, or something like that, falsely suspected in being involved in the murder of a French girl, the unmarried mother of the son of her, that is to say the cousin's brother, with the French girl and her brother being (not unreasonably) keen to make what they can of it. All mixed up with race and class as the cousin is Flemish and from a middle class family and the girl is French and from a working class family. With Simenon somewhere in between...

Maigret has no official standing in Givet and is poking around in a private capacity. Needless to say, after a few days he gets to the bottom of what is rather a grubby matter. The cousin of a cousin is guilty after all: she lured the French girl into her bedroom and then bashed her head in with a hammer, subsequently dumping the body in Meuse with the help of her brother. Some provocation but plenty of premeditation, with it looking like a guillotine job to me. But having solved the crime, Maigret walks away, not sharing his findings with the local police, with whom he had been in close contact. The cousin is not charged with anything, although it all rather ends in tears in other ways.

My French is not that hot, so maybe I have read it wrong, despite reading it twice. But if not, why has Maigret walked away? Do considerations of family loyalty stretch that far? Normally he is a great stickler for making sure that justice, if not justice according to the letter of the law, gets done. Further reflection needed.

PS: Givet is at the end of a finger of France sticking into eastern Belgium and the site of a once important fortress, controlling this part of the Meuse, called the Fortress of Charlemont. Not to be confused with the equally important fortress of the same name in Ireland. The view of the canal running to the west of the Meuse proper, just to the north of Givet proper, is taken from StreetView. I think Simenon has taken a few liberties with the geography of the place.

Powicke on the Lord Edward

Reference 1 being a book which I bought from the Kingston Oxfam shop for £5.99, maybe as long as ten years ago. A book which has been dipped into from time to time, rather than read. So far resulting in references 2, 3 and 4.

I have dipped again this week and offer two snippets.

During the regency of William the Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, during the minority of Henry III, it became necessary to ban a proposed tournament at Blyth, on the grounds that it might disturb the realm, only recently settled down after the civil wars. Presumably the one a few miles north of Worksop, rather than the one on the coast, in the wilds of Northumberland.

It seems that tournaments were very violent and very popular among the upper classes. An opportunity to shine, perhaps to capture valuable arms, armour and horses, perhaps to capture prisoners who could be ransomed, according to the regular rules. The Marshall himself had been very successful in tournaments in his salad days.

The church tried to ban them, but that was never going to work. Richard I did try to confine them to five designated tourney grounds, generally an area of open ground out in the country, but within reasonable reach of a town with inns and so forth. He also indulged in a spot of regulation with charges, fees and rules. It seems that tournaments were popular attractions, rather like the fairs then or the races now, and all kinds of people used to turn up and there were all kinds of goings on. No doubt a revenue opportunity, something no medieval king could afford to turn up.

Despite Richard I's efforts, Edward I had to go further, banning the use of heavy armour, pointed swords, daggers, staffs and maces. Too many important people were getting themselves killed.

Gradually, over the centuries, the upper classes switched to hunting and racing, with only the last mentioned now being allowed. With duelling having been a temporary aberration. So how on earth do they let off steam when they are young now? Do they have to make do with gambling, not mentioned by Powicke?

Second snippet, the invention of parliaments. It seems that at the time of the Conqueror, his companions in arms, by then his vassals, gave their assent, in assembly, to proposals to tax. All the vassals to be taxed had to be present to give their assent in person. Proposals to tax to pay for a good fight in France (or perhaps Scotland or perhaps, faute de mieux, Ireland) were generally more popular than proposals to tax to support the King's household expenses.

But this was all a bit cumbersome and gradually, this requirement for assent was weakened. The king would call an assembly, giving reasonable time, place and notice. He would then ask the assembly about a tax. If those present at the assembly agreed to the tax, then that tax was then binding on all, whether or not they had bothered to turn up to the assembly. Quite a big departure at the time.

Powicke has not yet gone into the details of how the assembly voted, about, for example, whether unanimity was required.

PS: what did the Greeks and Romans do? I don't think they did tournaments.

Reference 1: King Henry III and the Lord Edward: the community of the realm in the thirteenth century - F. M. Powicke - 1947. In two volumes.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=bellow+powicke.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=walter+scott+powicke.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=armagnac+escrow.

Reference 5: http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_57.html. Handy history of the Marshall. He died a Templar and was buried in Temple Church, due to be next visited next month.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/09/knights-in-armour.html. The first visit, prompted by P. D. James, not F. M. Powicke.

Virus attack?

This morning, in the course of the last post, I was, seemingly, invited by Google to tell them what I thought about Chrome, with the chance of a prize. It did not occur to me that the invitation might not be what it seemed. The fact that I was using Edge, on a laptop on which Chrome was loaded but rarely used, did not surface.

I win my prize and click on the green box, to find that BT was awake even if I was not.

Once again, rather dispiriting to find that the fine bit of invention and engineering which is the modern Internet should be home to so many bad people. That we have to spend so much time, treasure and effort to keep them at bay.

I associate to the Middle Ages, when one huddled in hovels around a castle in the hope that the owner of the castle would provide some protection against the various marauders knocking about the countryside, in return for protection money, usually, in those days, taken in kind as specie was scarce. And we thought that we had moved on.

More Clandon

I have not thought much about Clandon, the stately home near Guildford which burned down some three years ago for a while now, but last week we decided to go and take a look and see how it was getting on.

The view on arrival from the car park. The shell of the building wrapped up in state of the art cladding. For all the world like one of those big buildings you can pay some artist to wrap up. Maybe the con artist featured at reference 8 and presently floating in the Serpentine. A giant bath toy according to today's Guardian.

Maybe a few dozen visitors there, a mixture of pensioners like ourselves, young families out for a picnic and a sprinkling of tourists. Plus maybe a dozen trusties, some young, some old.

Walls stripped back to the brickwork by the fire. Substantial brickwork from the early eighteenth century, largely paid for by Jamaica slaves and sugar, through the medium of a Jamaican heiress, Elizabeth Knight. Neatly made timber structures providing us with safe access.

The genuine marble of the fireplace survived, while the fake marble of the once grand pillars did not. Once the fire got in behind the plaster, the lathe lined interiors of the pillars had no chance, making fine chimneys for the fire.

A detail of the plaster. Note how the iron pegs have been used to support the plaster a couple of inches off the face of the brickwork. Was it to stop the plaster getting damp at a time when damp courses had not been invented or was it to provide a bit of insulation at a time when central heating had not been invented? We associated to the flammable cladding of another building.

Some of the rooms were panelled in wood rather than in plaster.

An old settlement crack between the outside wall right and the cross wall left, with the two not having been bonded together properly, nothing to do with the fire, which simply served to reveal it. Not sure why there would have been any settlement, given that we are up in the chalk downs, which one might have thought would have provided sufficient foundation. This part of the building attended by a young lady trusty who might have been one of the engineers on the project; she certainly sounded quite knowledgeable. She told us that the fire had been caused by a fault in an electrical distribution panel, but we did not think to ask whether that had been a proper witch hunt, with a proper sacrificial goat as at reference 9. More seriously, would it turn out to be the culmination of a long, sorry saga of cutting costs and cutting corners, a systemic failure rather than an individual failure - for which the National Trust would have less excuse than the National Health? Keeping a visitor attraction up and running is not the same imperative as keeping a hospital up and running.

Checking, it turns out that the National Trust has been admirably open about the report into the fire, and a few clicks turns up their pointer (at reference 10) to the report by the Surrey Fire & Rescue Service. Next step is to read thing.

Down in the basement, with support provided by aluminium props from Titan Props, the engineering props people in Germany (reference 4) rather than the theatrical props people in Glasgow. Whatever happened to the steel props from Acrow of my youth? Wikipedia and ebay know all about them, but I have failed to track down the website of a manufacturer.

A view of the wrapped building from the other side. Scaffolding on the same lines as that at Castle Drogo a few years back. That being a leaking roof job rather than a fire. See reference 5. Almost time to take our picnic.

A plaque at the entrance to the sunken garden. We wondered how many more of them might be scattered about the land. Do they mean memorial to colleagues who died in accidents or worse, 'en service commandé', as the police say, in a similar connection, in Simenon?

The sunken garden, seemingly modelled on the green one of the two at Hampton Court Palace. The subject of the jigsaw noticed at reference 6. Very nice it was too, despite the rotating heritage board, centre field.

What, for some reason, I took to be a marsh orchid, despite being in downland grass, with subsequent checking with Wikipedia (reference 7) suggesting that I might have been right. A puzzle.

Having now seen what is left of the place and admired the grounds, complete as they are with lots of handsome trees and shrubs, I have come up with a new wheeze. Take the walls down to near ground level. Restore the basement, more or less intact, and use it for exhibitions, perhaps starting with some of the stuff rescued from the fire. Turn the ground floor into a smart new pavilion, keeping some of the surviving brick work for heritage souvenirs, but otherwise all concrete, steel and glass, complete with an outdoor terrace and a state of the art NT restaurant. Keep the gardens more or less as they are.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-suggestion-for-trustees.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2016/01/clandon-redux.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/05/to-clandon-or-not-to-clandon.html. The first of the three earlier posts on the subject of what to do about Clandon.

Reference 4: http://www.ischebeck-titan.co.uk/.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/04/drogo-3.html.

Reference 6: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=sue+ryder+wells.

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

Reference 8: http://christojeanneclaude.net/.

Reference 9: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/catastrophes.html.

Reference 10: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/news/clandon-fire-report-published.

Rival to the aloe

Last week to Café Rouge to take a spot of their Puligny-Montrachet, on the terrace, very French, it being a warm enough evening for that sort of thing. So the same wine and the same waitress as we had on the occasion noticed at reference 4. The waitress tried quite hard to get us to take something to eat and was only slightly mollified by my rounding out the occasion with a drop of their quite decent Calvados, not listed on the online version of their menu.

Which also lacks prices, which suggests that there might be some location variation in same, which I don't think is unreasonable, but which I don't think is the case in places like McDonald's. Maybe I ought to check. I associate to the beer tent we had for a couple of years up on the hill at the Derby Meeting on the Downs. Run by a main line brewer who was proud to be selling warm beer from barrels at the same price as he charged in his pubs. Which we all thought was very reasonable. I think Marston's, but it may have been Theakston's. Somewhere up north.

So we spent an entertaining hour or so watching all the young people coming out to play. We speculated about how important all the students - University of Creation, Nescot, and Laine School of Dance & Drama - were to the commercial life of the town, thinking of places like Nottingham where they are the biggest business in town. Presumably they all go to help keep our High Street alive, now quite thickly populated with booze bars, coffee bars and restaurants.

We also wondered about the maintenance cost of this heritage window, in what is probably quite an old building. Don't see wooden glazing bars very often now - with the houses on our estate, getting on for a hundred years old now, having been built with steel casement windows in wooden beds. Sash windows out. With the steel just as hard to keep in good condition as the old-style wood would have been.

More heritage in the form of two quite old yew trees off picture to the left. I think they are part of the town plan, which makes them listed trees. And they do go some way to making up for those the council have just chopped down as part of remodelling traffic flows in the High Street. A scheme that I would have voted against, thinking that there were better things to do with the money, a small number of millions, but we shall see. Maybe they know what they are doing.

We spotted this rival to our aloe flower on the way home from Café Rouge, this one outdoors rather than indoors. But I don't think it is a relative, despite the similar format of the inflorescence, as the format of the leaves looks quite different, circular rather than alternate.

Our own inflorescence has now done its business and we are thinking about whether to cut it out, as we did last year. No sign of any more on the way.

Reference 1: https://www.uca.ac.uk/. The creation people - who once ran a small competition among some third year students to come up with some IT branding & collateral at H. M. Treasury. Part of their reward was High Tea in the very conference room from which Sir Winston Churchill announced the end of the war in Europe to the crowds below. A rather fancy conference room, with marble pillars and all that sort of thing. Now part of the HMR&C empire, the Treasury having been sent around the back.

Reference 2: http://www.nescot.ac.uk/. Yet another place of learning where the boss has awarded herself an unseemly salary.

Reference 3: http://www.laine-theatre-arts.co.uk/. Strong line in young people to go out and work the entertainment departments of cruise ships, aka floating care homes.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/casual-dining.html.

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