Tickets

It is a long standing complaint that tickets such as those snapped left are more or less illegible to the older eye.

Maybe someone ought to connect Southern - responsible for these particular tickets for travel with Southwestern Trains - to the arty people at our university of creation here at Epsom. Maybe they do commercial as well as arty artistry.

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Crane

As luck would have it the No.76 bus dropped us off in York Road rather than the expected Waterloo Road, so we got the bonus of this fine crane from the walkway onto the concourse at Waterloo Station.

Not extended on this occasion, but possibly the very same machine as noticed at reference 1. If we suppose that the thing had been inactive for the intervening month, would it have been cheaper to leave it there or to move it out and then back again? Does it all depend on market forces on the day or are there set tariffs? Any offers?

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/portraits_25.html.

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Winterreise

Last week to hear the Winterreise in the Temple Church, in the middle of the lawyers, off Fleet Street. Sung by Angelika Kirchschlager, accompanied by Julius Drake, a pair heard earlier in the year at the Wigmore Hall and noticed at reference 1. And with the church being noticed at reference 2. Part of the interest on this occasion being to hear the Winterreise sung by a soprano instead of the more usual tenor, part being to hear it next to a performance of that other cycle, 'Die schöne Müllerin', noticed yesterday at reference 4, and part being to see how the Temple Church did as a concert hall.

Started off buying the tickets from somewhere on the Internet, clearly a more amateur operation than the RFH. More like the Dorking Concertgoers, with whom we go most years.

The actual evening turned out to be very hot, hot enough that some of the young trees on Meadway (on the way to the station) were suffering. Not for the first time, I wondered about the entirely respectable people who sit in their million pound plus houses, but who can't be bothered to pour the occasional bucket of water on young trees at the end of their quite short drives which clearly need it. To my mind they are not respectable at all; rather people who are all too keen to take, to accumulate wealth, possibly at the expense of others, but not at all keen to give.

At Waterloo Station we headed for one of the bus stops on Waterloo Road, where, moved by recent reports about the amount of obesity in our schools (THEY ought to do something about it), I was moved to do a quick check on the pavement. I couldn't manage both directions at once, so I settled for those heading towards the roundabout, away from the Old Vic. Three proper fatties out of 58 persons passing, of whom two were ladies and all three of whom appeared to be Latino. And so onto the No.4 bus for the senior bus passed ride to the bottom of Chancery Lane.

Picnic'd under the south windows of the Temple Church, admiring what looked like an opera flavoured audience, no doubt what happens when you have an opera singer trying her hand at what people in the US call art songs. On into the church to find a very Morse like occasion, just like those episodes of Morse or Lewis which involve a musical session in the chapel an Oxford college, less the penguin suits. Lots of high and mighty, lots of wives keen on music and good works, various hangers on like ourselves. But perhaps unusual in another way, in that I imagine a fair proportion of the audience were lawyers who earned a great deal of money and for whom stars of the Wigmore Hall were just the hired help, not really distinguishable from the people who worked the bar at their daughters' weddings. So the chap who did the introductions, rather nicely as it happens, a stand in for the past master or something (all very masonic these lawyers), spent most of the concert quite obviously thinking about something else, perhaps whatever it was he had to do the day following. And he took no trouble to hide this, despite the fact that he was in full view of the singer. His wife, to be fair, looked like she really was interested in the proceedings.

This was the first time that Kirchschalger had sung the Winterreise and we were sitting on a level with her, quite close with a clear field of view, so a lot closer than is the case (for us) at the Wigmore Hall. When she started, I thought there was not going to be enough power, but she soon got into her stride. Sometimes she really hit something and the whole building seemed to be full of her voice. I associate now to remarks about the reverberation of buildings in reference 5, another church as it happens, in Oxford. She was dressed well, but not in an exposing way, and made a lot of use of her face and upper body. Lots of power and lots of feeling - with the former having been more in evidence with Breslik a few days earlier: they both had power and they both had feeling, but the balance between the two was different. And she must have known her accompanist well as there was little visible interaction between them.

On this occasion, I did not think about Kirchschlager's hair at all. Perhaps I would have done had I checked reference 1 before setting out instead of after. Points for and against here, with for including being reminded of things to be watched out for and against including having prejudicial thoughts being put into one's head.

I did try following the words rather than the faces but gave up after the first few verses. Faces much better, despite the loss of most of the words. Maybe it would work better if I used varifocals, as does BH, rather than having to take off my outdoor glasses to read the words.

No.76 bus back to Waterloo and so onto Epsom for marmite sandwiches, the first such for months, and Calvados.

Wound up the proceedings by reading, once again, Bostridge on the matter of triplet assimilation in 'Wasserflut', first noticed at reference 6. I have to say, that while I more or less understand the theory of the matter, I cannot hear it (in the Pears/Britten version), despite the score being littered with said triplets. Maybe one needs to be musical, or to be able to manage a session with a maestro who can go over the finer points in slow time. At least I am reminded that a plus of the gramophone is that one can concentrate on the score (Bärenreiter-Verlag in this case) without feeling that you are missing out on the main business. Also that there are many ways of listening to music - in which connection, my late brother used to assert that musical knowledge was an unnecessary luxury, sometimes even an impediment, but then he had lots of musical knowledge, so I am not sure how he could have been so sure about it.

Bostridge also mentions the trick of making each member of the audience who cares to look feel that the singer is singing for them; a trick that Kirchschlager pulled off for me. She may also pulled me into her orbit enough that I died, as it were, with her at the end of her part of the last song, 'Der Leiermann'. I certainly lost focus at that point.

PS: since visiting this church for the first time getting on for a couple of years ago, the Earl of Pembroke memorialised there has cropped up again in Powicke, as noticed at reference 3. I don't think that in my student days, when I occasionally used to use the nearby Temple tube station, I had any idea that the temple in question was the temple of the Templars. But given that the Templars were the bankers of their day, perhaps that does give us the link to the lawyers who live there now.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/last-songs.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/09/knights-in-armour.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/powicke-on-lord-edward.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/die-schone-mullerin.html.

Reference 5: Auditory Neuroscience: Making Sense of Sound - Jan Schnupp, Israel Nelken and Andrew King - 2012. Chapter 1, page 33 in my paperback edition.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/winterreise.html.

Reference 7: https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/.

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Steele

The advertisement in the 'Evening Standard' mentioned earlier.

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Works

We noticed some relatively modest works involving the Oxford Street canopy of John Lewis some months ago at reference 1, thinking perhaps it was something to do with bats.

But these works have expanded rather than contracted, never mind completed, and they continue to this day. Expanded to the extent of wrapping one side of this large building in a fairly fine netting. Are we still with the bats, some other kind of animal life - or has the building fallen into the clutches of one of those conceptual artists whom you pay to do frightful things to your building?

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/bats.html.

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Die schöne Müllerin

Just about a week ago, to the Wigmore Hall to hear Schubert's 'Die schöne Müllerin', a song cycle we may never have heard live before: certainly there appears to be no record on the blog, and our concerts were much thinner on the ground in the days before blog.

A muggy and humid evening and the trains were said to be OK, although it did turn out that the Victoria trains were off.

The hollyhocks in Meadway were looking well, despite the heat, with some of them a good deal taller than I was. Flowers I like, but for some reason I have never tried to grow them. And I never did flowers at all on the allotments, although I did do ornamentals like pampas grass and bamboo.

Picnic'd in Cavendish Square, then off to the hall, decorated with yellow flowers, including some small sunflowers, and not much more than half full - which surprised us, with 'Die schöne Müllerin' being billed as both a major work and a popular work. Although checking with Bachtrack later, there were no further performances billed in this country and only two or three in Europe. And a curiosity in New York where it is offered with guitar and baritone. So not that popular. While there are what look like dozens of Winterreise's. I was rather impressed and I liked the lightening of tone, not as bleak as that of the later work.

From the programme notes we learned that the tone of Müller's original poems was all very ambivalent, rather ironic, certainly in performance in Viennese drawing rooms - while Schubert stripped all that out in his music and went the full romantic mile. Artistic license in adaptation.

BH, who followed the words rather than the faces, my usual custom, thought it wonderful - although she thought the young man of the songs was a bit wet and should have taken a leaf out of the hunter's book. The rest of the audience was also very enthusiastic, earning themselves two encores: I think the 'Erlkönig', at any rate a song with a lot of 'Vater' in it, followed by something by Dvořák, from the next door country to the tenor of the night, that is to say Pavel Breslik of Slovakia, ably assisted by Amir Katz of Israel. Both of whom were new to us, with the nearest thing being Parson Katz in 'The Good Soldier Švejk', a book I once knew very well.

Still warm outside and lots of summer clothes to be seen.

Vauxhall was in a bad way by the time we got there, but we managed a late running Epsom train after a short wait - to find, sitting opposite us, a couple of the singers from the Tommy Steele (in his eighties if you please) version of the Glen Miller story. Proper luvvies, of middle years, one of whom thought he ought to tell us that his picture was in an advertisement in the 'Evening Standard' that BH was reading. Lots of luvvy talk of shows past and present, digs past and present. Names dropped here there and everywhere. And it seems that one at least of them was actually in theatrical digs. Such places still exist.

PS: intrigued by the absence of terminal 'e' at the end of the feminine 'Müllerin', so not like the French. Must find someone who knows how these things are managed in German.

Reference 1: https://bachtrack.com/.

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Brownwood saga (continued)

In the course of a routine inspection, BH discovered what looked like fresh wood worm holes in the seat of one of our chairs, holes which we thought ought to be treated.

My recollection was that there was at least one small tin of wood worm killing fluid in the garage, the same sort of small tin as can contain 3-in-1 oil, maybe 50ml. A small tin which search failed to turn up.

So in the course of my morning walk, I called in three shops. In Wilko, I could find neither wood worm killer nor assistant to tell me where it was, although I did find the wood care shelf full of varnish and polish, so maybe they don't do it. In Robert Dyas, I found both, but they could only offer a litre, for £15 or so, which was far more than I wanted. Ditto Wilkes. So the plan was to try Amazon when I got home.

But when I got home and explained what I was up to, BH found a spray can of the stuff (in the garage, as it happens), which I suppose I had not found because that was not what I had been looking for. Spray which will be applied in due course.

And just to complete the saga, I did check on Amazon to find that the smallest quantity of wood worm killer than I could buy was 250ml, still rather more than I wanted, but better than a litre. Rather less than the tenner the chair might cost me in a junk shop on the Isle of Wight, where they still have such places.

All of which led to thoughts about waste, about how I am made to buy far more wood worm killer than I want. Perhaps part of the answer is that very few people have brown wood these days and so have little need for the small quantities of wood worm killer that one needs in that connection. They want the larger quantities needed to deal with sheds or roofs or floors. Perhaps another part is that all the stock-small-amounts-of-everything sort of hardware stores which would have sold me a 50ml tin have been killed off by the big stores and that small quantities of obscure items can be better supplied from a central store on the Internet than from big stores scattered over the country. So not just waste; there is a reason for it.

Branch down

The wind only brought a few twigs down in our garden, but did rather more damage down Longmead Road.

With this snap not capturing the raw white of the break at all well, which had been very striking in the dull light of today's noon. Where has all the yellow come from? Yellow which is all present and correct when one zooms in on the original 8.63Mb, so it must have come from Cortana, rather than from Google.

I noticed in passing that the giant sequoias of reference 1 are still alive and reasonably healthy looking, although the rather naff posts with sackcloth ribbons are starting to come apart. I shall take a closer look next time I am down - and maybe I will find that a biology class from the school opposite are taking an interest, as suggested.

PS: having taken a little drink (from Majestic), I am very impressed that I can correct this post, and that I can view the corrections, in another window, more or less instantaneously. Which must amount to a fair amount of trans-Atlantic traffic. C&W still rules! But maybe peanuts compared with all those YouTube clips of people in leisureware on Love Island whanging around the world. That burns up serious bandwidth.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/03/sequoiadendron-giganteum-in-focus.html.

Polish croissants

'Polish Taste' open in Ewell Village this morning, with a new-to-me girl behind the jump. Still no kabonosi, so I relieved them of their remaining stocks of veal sausage, not as good, but not bad, and took a box of the pastries illustrated from the pile on the counter.

Described as 'rogaliki domowe z dżemen' from Polish Village Bread, who I think are the people who work the car boot sales at Hook Road Arena and from whom I have bought BH's rye bread in the past.  Translated as 'home made croissants with [chokeberry] jam'. With 'dżemen' looking quite close to jam, 'domowe' looking rather home flavoured (from French or Latin), leaving 'rogaliki', which Bing does indeed translate as croissants ,on the basis that the literal translation is little horns, maybe by extension the word for the crescent moon. Bing also offers lots of recipes and YouTube clips about how to make them, so presumably a popular snack.

However, nothing like croissants from France, being made of a light pastry, rather than the fatty, flaky stuff served with French breakfasts. Not too good cold, tasting too much of vanilla, but a few minutes in the microwave and they were fine. All done.

PS: not to be confused with Rogalki, a village in the administrative district of Gmina Topólka, within Radziejów County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. Maybe a hundred miles west of Warsaw. With Pomerania presumably the same place as was once home to that crack regiment of the old German army called the Pomeranian Grenadiers, ranking just below their Guards.

Reference 1: http://www.polishvillagebread.co.uk/.

Wine shipper

Following the visit to Heima noticed at reference 1, we thought it would be nice to buy some more of the wine from Slovenia, so towards the end of our recent holiday on the other island, we drive over to Meadowdale Wines, in Swanmore, just south of Ryde proper.

Operated by a long-resident Swede out of a shed at the side of his house, a Swede who was more than happy to sell us half a dozen of his finest Slovenian - flat packed unlike the stuff that we more usually get from the likes of Majestic. We learned that he got his wine by touring the wine fairs, at any one of which he might sample a hundred or more wines, presumably mostly from smaller producers. It seems that after spitting out, the trick is to make notes on your catalogue as you go along, and then revisit the likely ones for a second try. And possibly for an invitation to the winery itself to do the job properly, to be sure that this smaller producer could produce a consistent product. The money side of things was handled by a card reader and a laptop application, both from Paypal, seemingly a good solution for someone in a modest way of business. We wondered but did not ask about physical security.

Postcard

Returning to our car we noticed what appeared to be the tower of a Victorian church so decided to take a look. And it turned out to be the place which, given the small and dwindling congregation was thinking about closing its doors, and the church hall attached, to the dismay of the various groups which still used this last. Meeting about it that very same evening. The church of St. Michael and All [nine orders of] Angels.

Unusual, not to say, rather forbidding appearance from the outside, including an unusual apse, unusual at least in parish churches. Inside, a visitors' book dating from the early 1950's. High church, built in the middle of the nineteenth century, perhaps something of a show off item at the time, perhaps like the church at Ranmore noticed at reference 2. A large vicarage, so perhaps the ecclesiastical equivalent of a rotten borough.

Nave

With the fancy brickwork reminding me of that of St. James the Less just off Vauxhall Bridge Road, noticed at reference 3. Notice also the stations of the cross and the suspended, elaborate crucifix, both unusual in an Anglican church.

Nave vaulting

Lady chapel

The lady chapel with a ceiling painted with the nine orders of angels and with at least two sanctuary lamps (I think the one in the middle was the one which was lit when we visited).

Our Lady

The lady of the lady chapel.

Chancel

Forbidding exterior

Out and back down to Tesco's to buy some Pukka pies (only the best would do) for tea. Some difficulty as to size, as while one two person chicken pie would not have been enough, two would have been too much. So we settled for one two person chicken and gravy pie and one one person chicken and mushroom pie. I might say that, as it subsequently turned out, I much preferred the former to the latter, containing as it did rather too much of a thick floury sauce, not unlike tinned mushroom soup.

We also found a table full of second hand books, donated by grateful customers, to be had against a donation to some charity or other.

The haul

Rolph, because I got muddled up with the rather earlier Rolfe, famous for Hadrian VII.  But not a problem as he turned out to be an interesting chap that I used to read in the New Statesman, many years ago now. Enright looked to be amusing, another take on the Alexandria of Lawrence Durrell. George because of the family connection with Burma. This turned out to be a novel about a couple of chaps in the British army in Burma at the time of the Japanese occupation during the second world war.

Frontispiece

Which I found interesting for its account of one of the few of our places which were occupied by the enemy, at a time when there were certainly some people in this particular place who thought that the Japanese might be a better bet than the British. Interesting also in that is was printed in 1948, a time when woodcuts were still used to illustrate popular books, had not been completely eclipsed by photographs. Although, that said, woodcuts did hang on in niche markets like catalogues for scientific instruments and books about birds and animals - such as that mentioned at reference 4, a book which subsequently provided invaluable support for the animal game at reference 5.

Winding up with a quick, last visit to Yaverland, before heading home to tuck into the pies.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/heima.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/st-barnabus.html.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=james+less+church+vauxhall.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/11/dalhousie.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/05/new-game.html.

Brown wood

From time to time I mention the demise of brown wood - a little prematurely if this public house on the posh side of Epsom is anything to go by. Overall effect very brown, despite the purple paint below the dados.

Notice also the table mats, possibly felt backed fake slake, and, top right, the bottom of a picture which I took to be a Jack Vettriano print. The chap whose answer to snooty remarks from more classy artists was that you might be more classy but I make a lot more money. Perhaps that was before the world of art was taken over by the corpses of sharks. And rest assured, the glass thing bottom left is not an ash tray, rather a candle. No closet smoking in the back bar here.

Returning through town at around 2300, I was also pleased to see that our two long-standing clubs were both alive and well.

The queue from the place which used to be called Chicago's stretched out into the street, round the Spread Eagle (now a fancy clothes shop) and into the High Street proper. Must have been several hundred of them, in various states of dress and undress. All under the watchful eyes of a small posse of community support officers.

While outside the place which is still called the Boogie Lounge there was a much shorter queue. The place I was once allowed to inspect while wearing Wellington boots and duffel coat because it was very early and so empty - although I am sorry now that I declined the offer of alcoholic refreshment.

Trusting capitalists

More annoyance from EDF this morning, in the form of a letter announcing a price rise.

Which I was not that bothered about, but I then got lost in a whole lot of rigmarole about customer rights and the variety of tariffs on offer. Including the postscript snapped left to the effect that all these tariffs will come and go with the ebb and flow of market forces.

The overall effect of all of which is to remind me that I no longer trust companies of this sort to treat their customers, that is to say me, with respect or consideration. We are just mugs to be smothered in clouds of impenetrable verbiage and from whom they are going to extract as much money as they possibly can.

At least I am fortunate enough to be able to just drop such stuff in the shredder.

Proving bin proved

Following the completion of the bread proving bin reported at reference 1, I am pleased to be able to report now that it has had its first outing, on the occasion of batch 478, which weighed in at just about 5lbs 8oz.

This snap being taken at the end of the three hour second rise, in the front room. I thought that it was warm enough there not to need the more usual airing cupboard. . One of the resultant loaves is now being forzen, while the other awaits teatime.

I can also report that we have  just had a few drops of rain, possibly the harbingers of the promised torrential rain.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/bread-proving-bin.html.

Blackberries

A few days ago I noticed (at reference 1) the poor state of the blackberries this year. While today, going through the passage under the railway line leading to Screwfix, things seemed a bit better. Maybe being in the passage helps: plenty of shade and also low lying, which might mean that it is wetter. I might even go back to pick some berries this afternoon.

En passant, I thought Cortana had done a reasonable job on the snap left, given the difficult conditions, with bright sun giving lots of light contrast and with the various plants giving lots of focus variation.

On the other hand, Microsoft have done something to their Photos application, which I use by default to display pictures, which seems to mean that it takes quite a while to compute the display image from the stored image, although things are much faster the second time around. And I was confused by the file create date being later than the file modify date. In any event, maybe yet another case of Microsoft software eating up all the hardware on offer and a bit more, a policy which has served them well over the years - but when one has got used to more or less instant, it is still a bit tiresome to have to wait 5 seconds while a picture loads.

To be fair, the images are often very good.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/cherries.html.

Vesevo

A not proven verdict on the tipple named for the Vesuvius (a Greco di Tufo from Vesevo) noticed at reference 1. We took the first bottle towards the end of a well lubricated meal, to think it nothing special, but got on much better with the second, taken by itself, some weeks later.

A 2016 vintage. All a bit Italian to me, but I think the story is that Vesevo of reference 3 is a brand owned by the people at reference 2. A cuddly independent no longer.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/tunbridge-tipple.html.

Reference 2: http://www.farnesevini.it/.

Reference 3: http://www.farnesevini.it/cantina.php?c=31&cc=9.

Hole in the High Street

From time to time I mention the ancient and seemingly thriving Bugle Inn in Brading, no doubt helped along by its large and accessible car park. And with 'bugle' here being  the name of a sort of cow, that is to say a young bull, according to OED, a usage dating back to beginning of the fourteenth century. A word also, at that time, used for a wild ox, from the horn of which was made the ancestor of the modern bugle, as used by the Salvation Army and others. A pity, as I had at first thought that this sort of bugle might have been so named for the noise that it made, to my mind a far happier derivation. In any event, all tied up with the bull ring a bit further along the street, noticed at reference 1.

View facing left

Now, as can be seen from the view facing left, the oldest part of the building on the far left was, at some point, supplemented with the taller building to its right, the building which now carries the label.

View facing right

Then something of a gap, then facing right, the wall of the next building, which the owner, presumably not the Bugle, has allowed to be painted in the same style as that on the left.

We were curious as to the origin of this large gap in the row shops and such which once lined both sides of the busy and thriving High Street of this very old town. There must always have been something of a gap as the Bugle took coaches (in the days of horses and carts) and would have had a substantial yard out back. But what about out front? Was it something as drastic as second world war bomb damage, strayed over the Solent from the heavily bombed Portsmouth?

Certainly no point in filling the gap with commercial premises now as this town, like Shanklin noticed earlier in the day, has far too much commercial property on the High Street for present needs.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/brading-ring.html.

Horton

The heat beating wheeze of cycling rather than walking noticed at reference 1 was stepped up this morning by my getting out at around 0630 instead of 1030. So pleasantly cool when I left at 0630 and just getting warm when I returned from the Horton Clockwise (extended version) at around 0730.

Horton Lane surface starting to break up with substantial cracks starting to appear between the three or four strips of blacktop needed to span the road. Not a problem for a cycle, the main hazard to which being the cracks, holes and canyons around drains and drain covers at the side of the road. And it being a while since I have cycled locally in a regular way, I no longer remember where all the bad ones are.

Another problem is that the back troubles which prompted me to pack in cycling as my main form of exercise are showing signs of life after just a week. Maybe mainly a posture issue, but it can't be helped by the jarring of the lower back when one hits an unexpected canyon.

Heavy and fast moving traffic on the Ewell by-pass at 0700, the sort of traffic which I am no longer used to. Probably just as well to keep my hand in. Things slowed down by the time I got back to Epsom, but, pushed into the Ashley Centre gyratory by road works in Hook Road, discovered lots of new-to-me but seriously unpleasant canyons.

Plus, on exit into the High Street, I was overtaken by a fast moving idiot in lycra, travelling through the slow moving traffic at the junction at a speed which made him a hazard to all, not least to me.

In which connection, I might say that I am, at long last, making a serious effort to use the cycle tracks, where available, to keep me off the road proper. I have more or less got used to them in London, so maybe I will get used to them here in Epsom.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/cherries.html.

Chine time

We may not have made it to Ventnor Botanic Garden, a pity since its dry country plants from places like South Africa and Mexico were probably doing very well, but we did make it to Shanklin Chine, important, inter alia, for the large numbers of carex pendula there. Rather surprised this morning to find that I have only been noticing all the carex for about three years, with an early example being found at reference 2. If I had been asked to guess, I would have said for about ten years.

Took the Island Line train from Brading (now a heritage, not to say historic railway station) to Shanklin, the line being a semi detached portion of the South Western Trains franchise. Rolling stock quite old now, with the roofs as illustrated and the seats as sat on. One needs to be careful when one's carriage bumps over the points. There seemed to be a marked disinclination to take our fares, despite our having bothered to take our senior rail passes on holiday and BH wondered whether there was some low level industrial action going on.

One can see that the line is a bit of an anachronism, but also that we find it very convenient and the few trains that we rode on in the course of the holiday were pretty full. We would be sorry to see it go.

On through the town, with far more retail space than is now needed, so lots of charity shops. Yet another town centre which somehow needs to shrink down to a size commensurate with modern needs.

Tea and cake at Cinderella's, an unusual tea shop which doubles as a sewing shop, with the proprietress working away on her sewing machine between customers. Lots of dainty china and lots of dainty clothes providing the decorative scheme. Plus two very dainty dogs, which we were told were an unusually small variety of Shih Tzu. We learned all about the scandalous matter of some circus people forcing their way into the empty shop opposite to paste their posters on the inside of the windows. The police, it seems, had declined to intervene on the grounds that trespass was a civil matter. The proprietress was worried about what such obvious breaches of good order and discipline would do for rents and footfall.

Looking for the name of the unusual tea shop in gmaps, I was amused to come across this view of a bus in Street View. The camera man clearly had a sense of humour. As it happens, we have eaten in the restaurant immediately to the right of the bus, a place where, as I recall, we took a nice drop of Riesling. And if you look down the street rather than up the street, no bus at all. An illustration of the interesting discontinuities which arise when panning around in Street View, discontinuities which arise from the fact that the view is not taken at an instant in time, rather it is a series or sequence of views taken through time. No amount of careful cut and paste can paper over all the cracks.

On and into the chine, a sort of Victorian relic, with the nearest other such that I can think of being the High Rocks at Tunbridge Wells of reference 3. Perhaps the first time in our history that there were plenty of people with a spot of time and leisure and who wanted something to do with it. So attractions of all sorts.

An interesting plant covering a damp and shady rock face.

A snap of some of the many carex to be seen in the chine, these one also on a rock face.

Some of the residential and holiday opportunities at the bottom of the chine. The glazed addition left usually houses a small but interesting exhibition of old photographs, water colours and the like. Cortana has not done a bad job, but the echium to the immediate right of the addition is a bit fuzzy. And, in any case, not in the same league as those at Ventnor noticed at reference 1 below.

Out to stroll along the beach back to Sandown where we settled for a bus back to Brading. Free with out senior bus passes, so a day of free transport.

On the way, taking in at least one snooze on the beach and the café already noticed at reference 5.

PS: a reminder to the curious: hovering over the telephone snaps, a long file name appears at the bottom of the screen (or at least it does when using Edge from Microsoft), a long file name which includes the original date and time. And in case of truncation the full long name can be recovered by right click, copy link and paste into Notepad. So you can check our movements!

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/echium-pininana.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/06/apsley-3.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/10/shorter-notice-2.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/keats-kitchen.html. Memory fails again, Gewürztraminer not Riesling.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/things-went-wrong.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/carex-deceased.html. The carex which had featured earlier in the holiday.

Pork soup

It being a hot and humid day, a spot of soup for lunch seemed to be the thing, which is just what it turned out to be. Brought out the sweat nicely.

Put 4oz of pearl barley in a saucepan and make up to 3 pints with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for a bit.

Finely chop three small onions and add them. Simmer for a bit longer.

After about another twenty minutes. Coarsely chop 4oz of pork tenderloin and add that. Simmer for a bit longer.

After about another half an hour, finely slice 4oz of white cabbage add that. Simmer for another five minutes and serve with brown bread.

Total cooking time around 75 minutes.

Fishy pain

I have been prompted by the latest newsletter from the people at Dana to think about fishy pain again.
Hitherto my interest has been in whether fish can be considered to be conscious of pain or not and on that point the answer seems to remain quite possibly. They seem to have a lot of the right sort of neural machinery and they seem to exhibit the right sort of behaviour. On the other hand, despite sharing lots of structures and lots of machinery with us, fish are also very different from us and it is hard to be sure one way or the other, despite the efforts reported at references 3 and 4. My own forced choice would remain for some sort of dim consciousness for large bony fish; well short of what one expects of a healthy, adult human, but something nonetheless.

But today, I start to wonder whether there is anything we ought to be doing about it, given that collectively we kill large numbers of fish without much regard to the manner of their going. A lack of regard which would, these days, rightly be regarded as a disgrace if the animals in question were poultry, never mind pigs, sheep or cows.

The 24th May piece in the Washington Post to which Dana sent me, by one Tim Carmen, suggests that things are moving on. Despite the robust, no-nonsense attitudes of many sports and commercial fishermen, there is change, with both electrical stunning and captive bolt guns being used for some of the larger farmed fish. Some of this is driven by decently killed fish tasting better than it would otherwise.

However, whatever we might do or  might not do, a lot more indecent killing will carry on in the wild – from where I associated to a sentence in the hawk book noticed reference 7 about the rabbit dying at some point during the process of the goshawk eating it. What is the point of our fussing about the fate of a few farmed catfish if the rest of the animal world carries on red in tooth and claw?

To which my answer is that I am reasonably clear that we are all damaged if we tolerate the indecent killing of animals, even in the pursuit of food or some other creditable purpose. With there being more damage if we are actually doing the killing ourselves or it we are doing it for sport. As some Christians might say, we are all God’s creatures and we ought to show each other some respect. With some of the arguments here running parallel to arguments used against capital punishment and torture, along the lines that we don’t want the sort of people who make their living doing this sort of thing on the payroll or living on our street. A problem once solved in India by getting untouchables to do the dirty work.

PS: with the illustration being a boat loaded with mullet near the fish farm in the Crimean village of Olenivka (Pavel Rebrov/Reuters).

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/01/more-fishy-thoughts.html.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Victoria+Braithwaite.

Reference 3: Do Fish Feel Pain? – Victoria Braithwaite – 2010.

Reference 4: Pain in Aquatic Animals - Sneddon, Lynne – 2015.

Reference 5: http://dana.org/.

Reference 6: on.dana.org/FishBrains. Paste this into your browser and you get taken to the right place at the Washington Post, a place which does not seem to be available if you try to go there direct.

Reference 7: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/12/goshawk-white.html.

YouGov

This morning YouGov were interested in my awareness of certain - maybe twenty or thirty of them - brands of confectionary. Maybe half of which I had heard of.

They seem to think that I spend my life worrying about these brands. That I talk to my friends and relations about them, that I remember seeing advertisements for them. With the result that I clicked through most of the survey. But they have got a small amount of information from me: that I have not heard of lots of obscure brands (one of which presumably paid for this particular survey), that I have not been either annoyed or entertained by advertisements from any of them.

Quite a lot of the surveys they ask me to do are like this. While they relatively rarely ask for my views about important issues of the day. Like the nature of the customs controls on fruit and vegetables from Spain after Brexit. Or why it is that strange MPs from Eton manages to clock up so much air time. Ditto Clooney.

On which thought I go on to check at Wikipedia, which tells me that 'Rees-Mogg was born in Hammersmith, London and educated at Eton College. He then studied History at Trinity College, Oxford, and was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. He worked in the City ... then co-founded a hedge fund management business, Somerset Capital Management LLP. Rees-Mogg has amassed a significant fortune: in 2016, he and his wife had a combined net worth estimated at more than £100 million. Moving into politics ... being elected as the MP for North East Somerset in 2010 … Within the Conservative Party, he joined the traditionalist and socially conservative Cornerstone Group; his views on social issues are influenced by his adherence to Roman Catholicism'.

So despite being odd, he is also clever and will be able to afford to get his fruit and vegetables helicoptered in if it all goes pear shaped. Or if things really get bad, shove of to some tropical tax haven. No probs for the upper classes. I associate to the wheat growing landowners of Ireland during the potato growing famine.

Cause and effect

Having put it down a few years ago, yesterday I picked up Jakob Hohwy's important book on the predictive mind. All about how the mind is a hierarchically organised prediction engine based on Bayesian principles, the evolution of which must have started aeons before Bayes was around. With part of the idea being that you see what you expect to see. So if, for example, you see something rustling in the bushes by the side of your path through a tiger infested jungle, your brain is apt to turn that something into a fully fledged tiger. Or, in the jargon of the snap left, if your prior expectation (p(H)) is high, your posterior (p(H|D)), your evidence based reasoning, is apt to be high too.

One of the examples he adduces being the clouds in the sky, which seen from below are rather flat and two dimensional, while seen from above from an aeroplane are full of interest. For Hohwy, this is an example of the brain knowing that the upper half of the visual field is usually not very interesting and so not trying very hard. Perhaps a consequence of our having spent a lot of evolutionary time wandering about the savannahs of Africa under a bright blue, but rather featureless sky. Much more important to keep an eye on all the dangerous bugs slithering around on the ground.

For me, there are at least three complications. First, my understanding is that, perhaps because of said wandering about the savannahs, there are more receptive cells in the upper retina, corresponding to the lower part of the visual field, that there are in the lower retina. So one is getting a stronger signal from the lower part of the visual field. Second, I would have thought that the clouds viewed from above, from an aeroplane, are generally much closer than those viewed from the ground. Furthermore, one is moving quite fast relative to the clouds and the brain is able to extract lots of information from the changes in the signals from the clouds arising from that movement. Third, the side of the clouds one is looking at is being illuminated by the sun, giving rise to plenty of shadows for the brain to work on.

None of which blocks the Hohwy example, but which does make it more complicated than might at first appear. An illustration of the care needed when drawing conclusions from observations.

No doubt someone somewhere has devised a natty experiment that demonstrates that the effects of my three complications are indeed amplified by prior expectations, as per Hohwy.

Maybe someone else can find the source of the snap. Both Bing and Google clearly know about it, but I have failed to track it to its source, despite the clue  bottom right. With the most entertaining result being a more or less pornographic offering from pinsdaddy.

Reference 1: The predictive  mind – Jakob Hohwy – 2013. Page 33 in my copy.

Reference 2: Bing knows all about this sort of thing, turning up another example at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/swc/about/street-displays/illusion.

Shoes

By way of an exception which proves the rule, I was taking a look at the sports bit of the Guardian yesterday and my attention lighted upon an interesting piece about expensive running shoes. To simplify, what do we think about being able to buy running shoes from Nike for £1,000 a pop which improve my performance by 5%? Such an improvement being more than enough in top level running circles to make the difference between making the national team or not.

Thinking about this some more over the breakfast wholemeal - from the smart and handsome Tesco's between Ryde and Brading - a Tesco's which made one think that the Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane was looking a bit tired, rather as had the similar sized Sainsbury's at Vauxhall before it was demolished a year or so ago - I thought that there were various interlocking requirements on a good sport.

First, the sport needed to be reasonably open, so that there was a big enough pool of participants.

Second, there had to be a reasonably level playing field, so that any reasonably talented participant who put in the time and effort stood a chance of winning.

Third, there needed to be some noise in the system, so that the outcome of any particular game or competition was not too predictable.

All three of these requirements go to making games and competitions interesting, both from the point of view of participants and spectators.

Big sports are mostly regulated, in part to make sure that these requirements are met and that the sport remains attractive. Sometimes this regulation takes the form of banning certain kinds of dietary supplements, sometimes of banning certain kinds of equipment. Sometimes the idea is that money should not talk. Sometimes - as in the competitions between chess playing computer programs - money was no object and the only thing was winning.

The Guardian jury, in so far as I can recollect my read of nearly 24 hours ago, was out. The article highlighted the issues, but did not come to a conclusion. Perhaps they left that to the big brains of the IOC, an organisation with very worthy looking objectives on the front page of its website, corruption of the higher levels of its bureaucracy notwithstanding.

PS: which all leads to yet another worthy project for a secondary school. Build a spreadsheet with three columns as above and then write lots of rows for all the sports that one can think of. Add more columns as seems appropriate and as data is available. Compute lots of nifty graphics and write some catchy words. Submit to teacher for marking.

Reference 1: https://www.olympic.org/the-ioc.

Close up

Close up of one of the sea side rocks of the previous post. Surprising what the telephone can manage in bright light, when one can barely see a thing on the screen, barely enough to click the button.

Shady corner

Another shady corner for a hot day, this one at the eastern end of the car park at Bembridge Lifeboat. Impressive looking lifeboat and fine views from the walkway to it.

Also an opportunity to visit the Lifeboat View Café. A place where we have taken excellent crab sandwiches in the past but where, on this occasion, we took tea and toasted tea cake. A place which sports, for waiting at table, young men in shorts as well as young ladies in short skirts. But then it is the Range Rover side of the island and you do get to hear the odd Surrey accent.

No web site, but it does manage a Facebook page. No link provided, in order to maintain solidarity with reference 1. Helped along by a recent report that 'Mark Zuckerberg has once again found himself at the centre of a row, after saying posts from Holocaust deniers should be allowed on Facebook'. Another very rich IT guy who is a bit short on talent for public relations. But a bit long on talent in his eye for the bottom line, with another report claiming that the Facebook censors are very slow to take down inappropriate material posted by big advertisers; in part because inappropriate material generates lots of clicks, in part because they don't want to upset said advertisers, that is to say the people who pay the rent. Unlike the rest of us, the little people.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/making-statement.html.

Reference 2: https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/MarkZuckerberg.

Yelf's

A comfortably shady corner for lunch, out the back of Yelf's Hotel in Ryde. An old hotel with a splendidly old fashioned atmosphere dating from what appeared to be a refurbishment in the 1950's. Lots of light brown wood.

With the kitchen being up the stairs behind, giving the waiting staff some useful exercise.

Esplanade

Two handsome trees on the western end of the esplanade at Ryde, as seen from Michelangelo's. They looked rather well in the late afternoon light.

Yaverland continued

We did not abandon Yaverland after the sequence noticed at references 1 and 5, but we did calm down a bit, did introduce some other activities. But this to report on the remaining Yaverlands.

Saturday 14th. Regular format of park, walk, swim, snooze etc. A family of kestrels on a ledge near the top of the crumbling part of the cliffs. One older lady daring to be bare, that is to say to go topless; the first and only such of the holiday. Plenty of beach apparatus of one sort or another, including another round of flyboarding. Tide right up to the wall, which occasioned a  number of defections and a modest amount of sand got washed into our picnic. Closed the visit, after a further snooze, with tea and rock cakes at the café.

Monday 16th. Regular format of park, walk, swim, snooze etc. At least one kestrel. Two swims. Tide right up to the wall again, which again occasioned a number of defections. Several older swimmers, mostly in pairs. One younger lady doing sterling service with her three boys and whom I suspected of changing from one bikini to another after she swam. Did not like sitting around in a wet swimming costume, however brief.

In the evening to Michelangelo's of Ryde, visited several times over the years. Recently the subject of a strong puff from a national newspaper which claimed it was one of the three best offerings of north Italian food in the country - which seemed to me to be rather a far-fetched claim. I had what I thought was a very ordinary minestrone, might well have come out of a tin from Heinz. Followed by gnocchi in a rich sauce, perhaps a touch too rich for me. While BH had scallops and so forth in a sauce which looked very similar. Plus linguine. Possibly a better choice than mine. Followed by tiramisu, again good but at the rich end of the spectrum. Taken with pudding wine. Followed by grappa from Julia, an outfit which is certainly known to Bing, but not to the extent of having a website. White grappa rather than the yellow grappa of reference 4 (there called by its French name of marc) and said by our waitress (who was, I think, actually Italian, at least ancestrally) to be better. Tasted well enough.

White wine good, but our wine waitress who was not Italian, rather some other sort of foreign, had no idea why it was named for a sheep. But enlarging the rear label would suggest that it did indeed come from the people at reference 3.

Wednesday, 18th, the last visit. Late start (for reasons to be noticed shortly), so just the one swim. Maybe an hour after low tide. Beach still sandy and entirely practical for swimming.

All in all, a fine beach. Lots of sand. Lots of beach to walk on. Lots of natural beauty. Good swimming. Lots of people - including a lot from up north as well as locals - but not so many as to swamp either beach or car park. A total of nine visits in the course of the 13 full days of holiday, all bar one involving swimming. The other four days being Shanklin (train), Bembridge (half day), Ryde (train) and Newtown (car), only managing to make it west of Ryde on the one occasion. No Osborne, no Ventnor Botanic Garden, no Carisbrooke and so on and so forth.

PS: but we have a few years to go on the swimming yet. I don't think BH's parents gave up sea swimming until they were in their eighties.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/yaverland.html.

Reference 2: http://www.ristorantemichelangelo.co.uk/.

Reference 3: www.torredeibeati.it/en/.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/russian-pots.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/rock-cake.html.

Bread proving bin

I am pleased to be able to report the completion of the second phase of the bread proving bin project, phase one of which was reported at reference 1. Irrespective of whether there are phases to come, I now have what is probably the best such bin in Epsom.

Pleased also that completion did not involve purchase of supplies; timber, ironmongery, brassware or anything else. In fact, the improvised design of the lid, in two parts held together after the fashion of a children's toy, did not involve any hinges at all - and no fastenings beyond the screws, a cup hook (back, visible) and an eye hook (front, invisible). All of which were to hand. And FIL would have been pleased as the slightly elastic, white shoe lace holding the two parts of the top together was recycled from what had been his supply of such things. Odd how shoe laces so often seem to outlast the shoes that they came with or were procured for. Lid shown improbably open to show off the interior.

Lift front to see how the proving is going, lift front and top to move the proved bread.

Currently wondering about the wisdom of varnish. For, it would harden the surface of the timber against the knocks of working life to come. Against, traces of glue may spoil the appearance of the varnish and fumes from the varnish, certainly while fresh, may taint the proving bread. We shall reflect.

PS: the improvised design of the lid also brushed over any difficulties which might otherwise have arisen from my cutting, at times, a millimetre or so wide of the proper line. Nicely illustrating the flexibility of in-house work. Had parts of the work been contracted out, the contractors would have had to have been held to their proper lines, otherwise nothing would have fitted together. Related to the issue of the council grass contractors doing their their ten cuts a year, come storm, rain or snow. They have to be held to their lines too: anything is better than actually having to supervise the work.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/diy.html.

USSR

Lefties of a certain age will remember the Foreign Languages Publishing House of Moscow, an operation which pumped out large numbers of books in English (and presumably other languages). Books which were perhaps a little utilitarian, as befitted the workers' republic, but which were also very good value.

I was reminded of them by this book, picked up for a tenner at the second hand book shop at the top of Ryde, an operation we try to fit in in the course of our annual trip to the Isle of Wight (and to be found at reference 1). A book which does not seem to have a date of publication but which, I would guess, dates from the 1960's and was produced under the auspices of the Muslim Religious Board of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, a board which may well have succumbed under the new senior management team.

A book which I presume to have been printed in Arabic and which comes with a pull out booklet containing the text and the list of the 135 full page illustrations in Russian, English and French. Illustrations which are a mixture of black and white and colour, not glossy but rather arty. Lots of mausoleums and lots of madrasahs. Different from us in that while we have lots of tombs in and around our churches, we do not generally go in for mausoleums. And while we have church schools attached to cathedrals and otherwise, we generally allow them to go in for a general education, rather than, for example, rote learning of the New Testament.

In the margins I learned that while we might use Arabic numerals, they are so named for being decimal numbers, not because we actually use the same numerals as the Arabs, although to be fair two or three of them are same or at least very similar. I had then thought that I was close to being able to decipher the dates in the Arabic text, but actually I am confused, with 1371-1372 coming out as 1372-1371. Not got a grip on the direction of writing at all, although the book as a whole does seem to be back to front. Plus I had thought that they counted from the birth of their Prophet rather than from that of our Lord. But assuming that 1300 means 1300, there are lots of big and expensive buildings here from the 14th century, roughly the same time that we were building many of our cathedrals.

I think the book shop man must have been pleased that the book had found a good owner, as he treated to me to the substantial (if second hand) carrier bag from Tesco, visible to the left of the book itself, and fully up for holding this quite heavy book.

Reference 1: http://ryde-bookshop.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.softschools.com/languages/arabic/numbers_1_10_in_arabic/.

Cherries

We saw an advertisement in the paper for cherries from M&S, so for once we consciously and knowingly responded to an advertisement.

However, it was very hot, and I thought cycling might be a softer option than walking: you might burn off more water but, on the very up side, you are air cooled. Much less likely to get overheated. So, for a change, an extended Horton Clockwise, something I have not done either on foot on or saddle for some time.

I noticed in passing that the blackberries looked a long way off being ripe, far more so than those on the island. While last year, according to reference 1, they were getting on for ripe at the beginning of the month. Must try and take a closer look today.

The Polish shop in Ewell Village was open again.

And a little later I parked up outside M&S in Epsom High Street. Cherries all present and correct at £5 for 750g - not that much more than I would have paid in the market, but what I hoped that I was buying was quality and reliability. Which was how it turned out to be, two thirds of the way through them and just one dud. Otherwise very good.

The boxes were rather substantial, a sort of jigsaw in MDF, with rather flashier versions being highlighted on today's front page of their website at reference 2. Destined for a full life as child play accessories in the course of the summer.

The packaging was slightly tricky, with the country of origin being Spain, but the variety being Somerset, and since the latter is the longer word, a quick glance is going to register grown in England, perhaps subliminally, therefore good. One suspects that M&S would not be too proud to stoop to such tricks.

We then got to wondering about the logistics operation which delivered enough boxes of cherries to all the hundreds of M&S food halls in the land to be ready to respond to a national advertising campaign. Maybe two or three full-on articulated lorries worth all told? My paternal grandfather used to deliver a cart load of cherries to Cambridge market from time to time, so perhaps several lorry loads, a hundred years later, is not that unreasonable a haul from a single grower. But there must be a lot of fertilizers, insecticides, spraying and other inorganic stuff going on in order to maintain top-notch appearance and quality on such a scale. There were also chillers, as the cherries got home still cool, which gave them a dull appearance, but that soon wore off in our dining room - with chillers presumably being essential on what must be getting on for a week's journey between the tree and said dining room.

Do their pickers come from places like Bulgaria or can they get by on locals?

But I should not moan and carp. Probably the best cherries we have had this year.

PS: presumably the Spaniards, who grow a lot of our fruit and vegetables, are not going to be too keen on a hard Brexit.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/blackberries.html.

Reference 2: http://www.obeikanmdf.com/.

Things went wrong

A café where various things went wrong, including the snap, although I cannot now work out what the white splodge was caused by. Perhaps it will come to me in the course of the afternoon. Perhaps there is some magic which can be worked with Photoshop or even the picture editors which come for free with Windows - but I don't suppose that I shall ever know.

One of the several cafés on the promenade at the bottom of the cliffs which run between Shanklin and Sandown, a place we had once patronised some years ago, in the days when it was running down, when it was being run by an older couple who wanted to retire. Now sold, bought and refurbished, with a cook out back and various young ladies out front.

It being very hot, we elected to sit inside, out of the sun, but in a fair amount of clutter, that is to say beach flavoured merchandise. And on the route of one of the young waitresses who was bored and had taken to pacing up and down the café.

Not off to a great start, when the musak was turned up to greet us. We decided that it was pointless telling young people that we would rather do without.

We then ordered sandwiches, ham for me and tuna for BH. With me being careful, or at least trying to be careful, to explain that I just wanted a sandwich, without a whole lot of stuff (aka garnish) on the side. Then I couldn't decide whether it was more proper to ask for a bottle of still water, which helps the modest profits of these places along, or to ask for tap water, which is far more ecological. Settled, without the use of a coin, for the former on this occasion.

My ham sandwich on factory white was fine, good even. Just what it said on the tin. But the cook out back could not bear to send it out with any garnish, so he had added a dollop of crisps. Tuna sandwich also fine, although rather more tuna to the bread than I would have liked, but collected several penalty points for being served up on a warm plate. The bit of the garnish which was supposed to be coleslaw looked a bit grim too.

I then took what I thought was a fruit scone for dessert, not something I usually go for, as they usually seem to be stale and stodgy. But it had not occurred to me that 'fruit', which to me meant things like sultanas and raisins, would here mean cranberries, which I avoid on account of the warfarin. Also because I don't like them very much. All rather annoying how they seem to pop up everywhere these days, along with the sour dough bread which is presently very fashionable and which I also avoid for two similar reasons. A pity because there seemed to be lots of them to pick out of what was otherwise an entirely presentable scone, neither stale nor stodgy.

Perhaps I should have asked for tap water after all.

PS: the right sleeve of my white shirt, completely out of focus because Cortana had rightly decided that it was the cranberries that were of interest?

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