House out back

In the course of inspecting the cycle shed, it struck me what a handsome building the station itself was.

Presumably in the bad old days when we had British Rail and a bunch of idlers with jobs for life, the station master would have lived upstairs, and got full value from the handsome bay window - which, when I first knew the station, looked out on a garden centre, now affordable flats. No idea what was there when the station first went up.

A station master who would have spent his days off tending the flower beds which used to run up and down the platforms, once a sight to gladden tired commuting eyes.

We no longer have much attendance and we no longer have flower beds. But, to be fair to new management, the toilet is much more likely to be in decent working order than used to be the case.

I wonder whether, as robots destroy more and more of our jobs, that the system will bring back the jobs of the people who used to mind our railway stations. It would surely be better than having them on benefit?

Group search key: ecs.

Bike shed on top

There is some vegetation on the roof already and I have a suspicion it might be one of those roofs which end up covered with a crawling plant called seedum. At least one couple round here have tried it on their front garden and given up after a year or so, so it will be interesting to see how this roof gets on - assuming that is, that seedum is the plan.

Group search key: ecs.

Bike shed outside

With my own road bike, a sturdy Trek which has served well, to be seen at the entrance. The Karrimor carriers have served even better, for perhaps forty years now, although I am told that as far as this sort of thing is concerned, they are not the company they once were.

The only irritant with the carriers has been the way their bottoms are tied into the frame with a sort of fancy elastic band, with newer bags and frames doing something rather better.

Group search key: ecs.

Bike shed inside

A bicycle shed has appeared in the forecourt of Ewell West Station, currently the south pole of London's Oyster card system. A very grand two-storey affair clad with what I think used, on farms, to be called Yorkshire boarding. Breaks up the wind without eliminating ventilation, and can stand up better to serious wind than solid walls. Same sort of principles as are followed in the design of breakwaters at the sea side.

This interior view shows one of the two banks of racks, together with the services pole (on the right in this snap) which provides air & tool facilities. Brought to us by a new-to-me company called Cyclepods, a company which one supposes makes most of its living by selling cycle racks to factories, towns and railways. Presumably this one has been funded by some combination of Transport for London and Network Rail. See reference 1.

Does Bullingdon Boris have a finger in this particular pie? Or one of his Bullingdon friends?

I shall try to make a point of counting the bicycles when I pass it - which, at a guess, will run at around twice a week on working days, on current routing. Something to do when there are no trolleys to be found.

PS: I was interested to read that the once exclusive Bullingdon Club is on the point of collapse for lack of members. A fate foretold more than a century ago in 'Zuleika Dobson', in the affair of the Junta, an exclusive Oxford dining club. Turning the pages of the book to check this important factlet took too long, so I was reduced to downloading a text file from Gutenburg (see reference 2) and using the Word search facility to turn up the second occurrence of the word 'club', about a third of the way through. The same trick had not worked on the kindle, as it had told to me wait while the file was indexed - with my not being at all convinced that the kindle did that kind of stuff in the background. See also reference 3.

PPS: it turns out that I had underestimated the sophistication of the kindle. What was not indexed at the time of loading the book onto the kindle, is now indexed, some four or five hours later, despite the kindle having been turned off as far as I was concerned. And gives the same answer as the MS Word search.

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

Reference 2: https://www.gutenberg.org/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-tale-of-two-charities.html.

Group search key: ecs.

Mark Maigret

A piece of yellow card which fell out of the current volume of my Maigret, the bottom half of some larger whole, presumably once used as a bookmark.

Rich associations from when France, like England, was well stocked with well stocked tobacconists. With one, for example, being from the time when you only had to ask a tobacconist whether he had this or that obscure brand of cigarettes in for him to get a carton of the things in. Retail margins must have been good. Also the time when some young adult males thought it cool to be able to bang on about said obscure brands and their various merits - rather like their heirs bang on about coffee now. No woodies here, thank you very much.

Presumably related, by name at least, to the Boulestin restaurants which we have had here in London for nearly a century. See reference 1. It is even possible that we have used one of their various incarnations, probably in the 1980's or 1990's. The only catch being that I remember moderate prices and moderate décor in Fitzrovia, which does not seem to fit with what a quick google turns up.

Bénévent-l'Abbaye is a modest little place smack in the middle of France, maybe 25 miles north of Limoges, while the chap I bought the Maigret from is maybe the same distance to the south. See reference 2. Maybe second hand book dealers are not that common in central France - they certainly seemed to be thin on the ground in Paris when we were last there, maybe ten years ago now. I think we came across one in a week. Antiquarian yes, second hand no.

Nor does gmaps know anything about a Rue Boulestein, the best it can do being a small town garage called Boulesteix. While google does not seem to know anything about a Yedo. Mystery.

I close with the factlet which has just popped into mind: the verb limoger meant, during the first world war, to put a French general, who was not doing too well in the front line, out to grass. Perhaps the French army's depot for saucisson sec was in Limoges. The management of which was general greedy.

Reference 1: http://boulestin.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/simenon-1.html.

Dressing up

Earlier in the week, to the Duke of York's for a matinée performance of 'The Dresser'.

Not impressed by the quality of the tickets we had been sent by ATG - the outfit which owns a good chunk of theatrical London, not to mention elsewhere. Which I now know to be the property of one Sir Harold Panter, a stage manager made good, just a few months older than myself. Which is all fine and dandy, but they do not seem to be able to afford to keep the ink topped up in their ticket printer. The phrase about watching pennies and pounds minding themselves comes to mind.

Pretty much a full house, at least downstairs where we were. Nice to be in a proper West End theatre again; the likes of the Barbican and the National work well enough but they don't smell of greasepaint in quite the same way. Some of the audience were of working age and most of them clapped enthusiastically at the end. Even the odd bravo. And the front bar even ran to a real bell to be rung at the end of the interval, although we did not stay to see it rung.

Excellent stage, with rotation. Mainly set in the principal dressing room of a provincial theatre during the second world war. What looked like a Beryl cup in Woods Ware (hospitals and railways used to own lots of the stuff and we still own a fair bit. See reference 2). What looked very like a sideboard we once had in my childhood family home. Set around the occasion of a performance of 'King Lear' put on by a touring repertory company with a matinée idol well past his prime. Terminally past his prime as it turned out. Not sure about the wisdom of all the smoking around all the woodwork; perhaps the wood had been treated with fire retardant.

Lots of entertaining glimpses and vignettes of life in repertory. Which struck me as a rather squalid sort of life, good training for aspirant actors (and stage managers) though it may have been. Living in digs - or diggings as they were known to Agatha Christie. Anti-social hours. Haggling about contracts. Goings on, backbiting and intrigues within the company. Incessant travelling. Low grade audiences. Also the business of how easy it would be, in repertory, to flip into the wrong play. See reference 3 for a musical parallel.

I was struck by the parallel between the matinée idol and his faithful dresser and the aristocrat with his faithful valet, a parallel brought on by the idol on this particular occasion playing a king - an idol who, as it happened, was keen on getting gongs. Hence his moniker of 'sir'. One angle on which being that to be a king is to play a role, a role for which one needs good support from one's attendants. So kings aspire to be actors and actors aspire to be kings; each role feeds off the other. A little later: I now associate to a science fiction story that I once read, a story in which the aristocrats were so bored with their official duties that they hired actors to carry them out for them. So clearly, by no means the first on this particular scene.

The actor playing the dresser was pretty good, apart from his tendency to shout. A tendency which I am advised results from not having been trained to project one's voice properly. The actor playing the actor was great fun - very convincing.

In the round, pretty good. Only a little too long, only the occasional longueur.

Touched on exit by buckets being shaken for the Decayed Actors' Benevolent Fund. From where I associate to our holiday in mid August taken in a cottage just up from Watermouth Castle in north Devon, a cottage which used to be the holiday home of Terry-Thomas, whom I had not previously heard of, but who turned out to be a once-famous actor who ended up dying in rather straightened circumstances. He may have been helped by this very gang. See reference 1 for a holiday which appears to have been taken before the advent of internet enabled holiday destinations. And well before the advent of proper cameras in one's telephones.

Out on the streets, we were treated to quite a lot of a rather different kind of dressing up. I thought maybe loud lipstick is back in fashion.

One aeroplane from the train at Earlsfield. Standard of books at the Raynes Park platform library poor: third class ladies' fiction.

PS: it will be good to see Lear again, having seen Lear from the backstage here. A National Treasure will be treading the boards for me at the Barbican, just before Christmas.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/2012_08_01_archive.html.

Reference 2: http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/woods-ware-beryl.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/preludes.html. Where I notice that another senior moment had crept into my fingers, with installation for installment. Also evidence of my sloppy proof-reading.

Trolley 56

Trolley 56 turned up in Epsom High Street, just past Pullingers, heading east; a Sainsbury's trolley in good clean condition, jammed between the railings there and a lamp post. As it happened Kiln Lane was on the planned route, so return was not a problem.

I passed a small person on the way who thought that my suggestion that she should ride in the trolley was extremely silly. But she was very cute and had a very nice smile.

No security device on any of the wheels and when I got to Kiln Lane, of the two of the same size that were already in the trolley shelter nearest the entrance, just one had such a device. The people noticed at reference 1 never replied to my email, so perhaps their security contract with Sainsbury's was not a great success and has now been discontinued.

No proper picture of evidence either as, as noticed yesterday, I managed to drop my telephone a little while later. Google is awash with people eager to help, so hopefully it can be recovered in due course, but in the meantime google offers this picture of a shopping trolley from a patent application. Was it a rip-roaring success?

PS: later on I tried asking google to search for this very same image, not using the PC from which I had got it in the first place and not using a filename that it would recognise. Although I was using my own name, my own Microsoft account and Chrome and it may have been able to check my recent browsing history for clues, although my bet is that it didn't. In any event, it turned up half a dozen or more copies of the very same picture, all from the patents world. Probably clever stuff!

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/security.html.

Networking

Personal best today in that I had three notifications by email about stuff on Facebook which was to do with people whom I really knew - as opposed to stuff to do with people who were Facebook friends. Maybe there is hope yet.

On the other hand, for the first time since I have owned a pocket camera, more than ten years now, I have dropped the thing to such effect that I am now disconnected from the O2 network. Reduced to borrowing the BH standby camera which is not the same at all. Reduced to standing in line in the O2 shop in the Ashley Centre on a Saturday morning. Awful.

Gallery

A view of the gallery mentioned previously. It does not give much of an idea of the height, but it will serve as an aide-memoire to those who already have it.

Tall windows onto a courtyard, right.

I forget now what the ceiling was made of. Not at all clear from this snap.

Group search key: hce.

Pomegranate

I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that they grew pomegranates at Hampton Court. Do they ripen to the point of edibility?

Group search key: hce.

Tall dahlia

A taller dahlia than I ever recall seeing. Very handsome.

Note the discrete black and white label. The sort of label that such places ought to have, rather than the florid educational panels which are popping up all over. All part of the same dumbing down which, in a different context, has afflicted what used to be the Halifax Building Society, where we are treated to children's cartoons while we wait our turn. And what used to be British Gas is at it big time.

Group search key: hce.

Noli me tangere

The strange Holbein noticed in the last post, with thanks to some branch of the wikipedia empire. Not like his portraits at all. Original kept behind glass, along with a Duccio triptych,

Group search key: hce.

Autumn court

First visit to Hampton Court last weekend for a bit, since early July in fact. See reference 1.

Pleased that we were still spared the tawdry ice skating set-up sprawled all over the front lawn and pleased with the state of the royal cabbage patch, with the fennel looking well, see left. No idea why it has turned out so pallid, but all half dozen attempts were the same in that regard.. At least I think that is what it is - never grew the stuff myself. The chard, noticed last time, still looking good.

As were the dahlias in the big herbaceous border running down to the river. A little past their best perhaps, but still pretty good. Said by some to be a bit showy, but I like them.

While the two sunken gardens had been stripped, presumably ready for the planting of something or other. Bulbs or some kind of winter bedding plants? Both?

The fish in the round pond in the privy garden, gregariously clustered together, were demonstrating the clockwise tendency noticed at reference 3, albeit a bit weakly. There were some defaulters.

Such aeroplanes as there were to be seen this Saturday morning were flying in the wrong direction. Score zero.

In between the chard and the dahlias, we took in the Cumberland gallery, to inspect the strange Holbein resurrection, 'Noli me tangere', first noticed at reference 2, the unusual Gainborough, and the Canalettos. These last, a series of 12 of scenes along the grand canal at Venice, rather growing on me. They make one see some point in being rich enough to have been able to buy such things! Also rather struck by a Ruisdael windmill - rather like, but not I think the same picture, a very small reproduction which used to hang in my bedroom as a child. And by a very intricate painting of a very expensive dress by someone who was not very good at painting people. I forget to note the name of the painter and google, for once, does not oblige, so I shall have to remember to do that next time.

Somewhere nearby we visited a striking brown gallery, presumably used for taking exercise when it was raining. Dark brown, fancy paneling to the walls, light brown, pine planking to the floors. Very wide planking, much wider than modern tongue & groove planking, with some cheating going on in the sense that some of the planks appeared to have been assembled, very neatly, from two or more narrower planks. I can only suppose that it is too wasteful to insist on wider planks only; tree trunks just can't hack it. While heritage & aesthetic considerations did dictate wider.

Lunch in what used, I think, to be part of the royal kitchen suite, taking its now usual form of chicken pies and mushy peas. Just the ticket for a not very warm day. Only let down by the absence of King Henry's favourite cake, the maid of honour. See reference 4 - or google, who knows all about them.

Out onto the bridge to be greeted by a young lady who was in a lather about a forthcoming cull of the deer in the park. She clearly did not understand that animals like deer, when kept in a confined space without the benefit of predators, even a large confined space, will soon outgrow it, but we made no attempt to show her the error of her ways.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/chard.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/royal-cabbage-patch.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/the-art-of-fielding-two.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/folding-2.html. Pies not so good on this occasion.

Group search key: hce.

Lino tiles

I think I first started commenting on the yellow lino tiles which are replacing the bumpy yellow stones used to highlight pavement events for the blind at reference 1 - and have commented several times since on sloppy installation and their rapid deterioration. See, for example, reference 2.

It now seems that the headmistress of Stamford Green School - presumably devoting much quality time to matters maintenance & builders, now that such functions have been dumped by local education authorities - has ruled that she is not having lino tiles outside her school, and a pile of yellow stones has appeared in the roadway outside.

Since all this started I have been keeping an eye on both stones and lino, and in defense of the lino crew, I should say that the stones are not as strong as they look and will crack up if carelessly laid - which seems, all too often, to be the case. Slopes seem to be a particular problem.

I suspect that all the yellow paint added to the mix used to make these stones is doing nothing for their strength and that, in that regard, they are not a patch on regular council slabs.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/golf-bores.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/poor-detailing.html.

Vibration

When I was at work my mobile phone bleeped in a discrete way when there was an incoming call, a bleep which was quite loud enough to be heard in most work environments without irritating colleagues. The bleep even worked pretty well on trains.

Some years on, I have a more up to date mobile phone - a Lumia 950 - and I have, after some flapdoodle, managed to get it to bleep in a discrete way, although I have not managed to control the more exuberant noises it can make in some circumstances.

However, as noticed at reference 1, I am now having a go at Descriptive Experience Sampling, using my mobile phone as a bleeper when outdoors, and have now clocked up a little more than 600 sample points - a lot more points than telephone calls, texts or anything else. Analysis is ongoing.

Then this morning, I suddenly thought that maybe having vibration on would be helpful when walking on noisy streets, such as East Street here in Epsom. An obvious enough thought once one has had it, but I had not had it before. So I go to the phone to find out how to turn vibration on.

Before the advent of Windows 10, I am fairly sure there used to be something in settings which you turned on or off, with a little slider telling you the current setting, a little slider which you still seem to get for on or off for wifi networking. So I used the usually helpful search settings feature to be told that there is nothing in settings for either vibrate or vibration. I then tried Cortana, my personal assistant, and she was of no assistance in this matter at all, with the best she could offer being something to do with something called touch, which did not seem to be right at all. I gave up at this point, deciding that it might be better to wait until I got home and had to proper computer to play with. Once there, I pop 'lumia 950 vibrate help' into google and up comes the answer at reference 2 - and above. Vibrate is nothing to do with settings and lives at the bottom of volume control, a place where I had never noticed it, despite using volume control quite frequently. And with various other web sites offering more or less complicated solutions to the problem.

It seems that vibrate is much more tricky than just on or off these days and can cope with all kinds of geeky requirements - so I look forward to tomorrow when I shall test whether and how the (H)MS Clock talks to (H)MS Vibrate.

I now have a little more sympathy for the friend who got very cross when MS moved the print function in Word from wherever it had been for years into hiding inside the file function, where he did not, for some hours, think to look for it. Whereas when I had hit the same problem, I was lucky enough to take a peek in file after minutes rather than hours.

PS: later, Wednesday morning: geeks one, amateurs nil. Turning vibrate on did not result in vibration.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/descriptive-experience-sampled.html.

Reference 2: http://devicehelp.optus.com.au/web/.

Cheese

Last Thursday was another fruit and veg. day, so off to Waterloo. Carrying a folding umbrella just in case.

Despite Waterloo station being quiet, no working Bullingdons on the ramp, so I was reduced to getting over to Concert Hall Approach No.2 where I was suited and was able to set off to the Finsbury Leisure Centre. In the course of which I am sorry to say that I noticed that bicycle manners had fallen off a bit since my last outing, the week before. Pedestrians bad also in that I got shouted at by a gent. with a beard who thought to cross the road, through more or less stationary traffic, without waiting to see whether I was stopping or not - which I wasn't. So I got expletived.

There seemed to be a lot of waiting at lights, but I should add, in fairness, that once I was over Blackfriars Bridge, the new cycleway seemed to come with cycle friendly streaming.

The irritating lady from Radio 3 was still at it, but she did get one bit right. We had Robin Tritschler (tenor) accompanied by Ian Burnside (piano) giving us a selection of Mozart and Tchaikovsky songs, never before heard by me (this despite Tritschler claiming that we were bound to know some of the Tchaikovsky tunes, even if we did not know who had written them), with the form being that the lady from Radio 3 gave us a very short summary of the songs, in groups of three or four, before each group was sung. This meant that one had some idea of what was going on without having to read the text given in the programme at the same time as paying attention to the stage - which last does not work very well for me. Another way of achieving this might be to flash the summary up on a screen at the back for a few seconds before each song, but turning projector and screen off for the songs themselves. Perhaps I should suggest this to the people at the Wigmore Hall; much better than having the full text competing with the music for your attention.

I also wondered how many of the people in the audience would have preferred to have the Russian versions of the Tchaikovsky songs given in Cyrillics, rather than Romans. I suppose the argument for Romans was that some people like to follow the words, even if they don't know what they mean. I then wondered what the singer sang from. Did he have Russian up his sleeve? He certainly had a good voice.

Some humour, not least in the song illustrated above. I knew the Viennese were a bit louche, but I had not thought that the great Mozart would have put his pen to this sort of stuff. Very entertainingly sung by Tritschler - much better live than YouTube can manage. I was reminded, in a similar context but from another continent, of locker room talk of fresh vegetables.

Out to tea and bacon sandwich in the Market Café, much quieter after the concert than it would have been before, then pulled a second Bullingdon at Roscoe Street and headed off for London Bridge, thinking that I could manage by heading through the middle of the city. With the result that I got lost on a Bullingdon with badly slipping gears and a possibility that it would rain. The Tower of London loomed up ahead and I chickened out, abandoning the Bullingdon at somewhere called Crosswall, Tower. But I did manage to tell the system that the Bullingdon was faulty, wondering the while how long it would take a mechanic to find out what was wrong - given all that he would know would be that something was wrong. Probably not detectable unless you actually tried to ride the thing for a few hundred yards.

Picked up the third Bullingdon of the day at Great Tower Street and made it to the Hop Exchange at London Bridge without further incident.

Into Borough Market to buy my cheese from the big branch of Neal's Yard Dairy there, a large piece of Poacher and a small piece of something called Riseley. A small round cheese, with a reddish rind and a soft white interior, a young cheese, from England but of the Brie type. Very good. Reference 1 looks to know all about it - except there is nothing reddish about the rind in their picture. So not sure about them. Is there a confusion between Riseley the place (in Berkshire) and Riseley the cheese?

Rounded off my shopping with some Santana apples (also never before heard of) from the Chegworth people mentioned last week and to be found at reference 2. Very good again, so the Chegworth record so far this season is good.

Wanting to get to Tooting, I thought about pedaling across to Stockwell, but decided against and caught the tube - climbing the steps out at Tooting by way of a bit of compensatory exercise.  Took refreshment there and headed back west for a spot of aeroplane spotting at Earlsfield to round off the day. This proved to be interesting with the planes dropping out of the cloud at around 1300-1400 (with straight down the line to London being 1200) and dipping into the trees at around 2100. There was a steady procession of aeroplanes coming in and it should have been just about possible to get a two, but the best I could do in the 15 minutes I had, just having missed a train, was a couple of near misses, One very near. The force was not with me.

On the train two bits of entertainment. A pair of ladies, one looking to be local and one perhaps from the Phillipines, talking a language which I could not place at all, but eventually settled for Scandinavian not otherwise specified, with the train being a bit too crowded for me to be able to decently ask. Then a gent. taking his cute toddler home from play group. While it was not clear that that was what he was, I decided that I would not have been much cop at being a house husband.

Reference 1: http://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/wigmore/.

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

The art of fielding three

The book first mentioned at reference 1 and itemised at reference 2 has now been finished, all 512 pages of it.

Despite the occasional longueur and the occasional rather tiresomely graphic description of sex, a good read, interesting for its description of serious sport at a university in the US, of campus life and of the contemporary scene there more generally. Not so unlike that to be found in Franzen, who gets to puff this book on the front cover. See references 3 and 4.

At the end, despite, perhaps because of the gripping end, the whole plot seems a bit contrived and unlikely. But that does not really matter, it does not take much away: the plot is just a bit of scaffolding on which to hang the story.

One might also quibble with the choice of model for the picture on the front cover, who does not fit with my idea of the hero at all.

As far as baseball is concerned, the fielding in question being fielding shortstop at baseball, I come away wondering how getting to be a professional baseball player can be worth the candle. You have to devote maybe fifteen years of your young life to the game, perhaps taking a fair amount of physical and mental damage on the way, perhaps to find out that you do not make the cut, leaving you high and dry. I suppose it is not that different to our Premier Division football, but I cannot imagine being so keen on any such a game as to take such a punt. But then, I find it hard to imagine being keen enough on anything to take such a punt: I think I was cut out for the easy life, easy in the sense that it should be relatively low risk and not require sustained, extreme endeavour. Hard work is one thing; extreme endeavour with a high risk of failure is quite another. There is also the consideration that athletic heroes generally have a rather short working life, rather like the warrior heroes of ancient Greece.

A next step might be to take a peek at the wikipedia take on baseball and then take another look at the book. Knowing the way the game is played is not essential, but I suspect that it would help. As things stand, I may have moved on from my prejudice, acquired from a lover of cricket, that baseball is a rather crude and simple-minded game by comparison, but it would be nice to be able to make a more informed judgement. I dare say I should have done this much earlier in this particular game.

PS: the obscure reference to a brother in the post at reference 3, is probably a reference to Andrew Balls, the brother of the late Chancellor, now aspirant ballroom dancer, Ed Balls. While Andrew Balls was described by the Guardian, at about the time of that post, as 'emerging as one of the multimillionaire financiers pulling the levers at the heart of the eurozone crisis', so the reference might not then have been as obscure as it is now. And I hold to my views on puddings, various honourable exceptions aside.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/the-art-of-fielding-one.html.

Reference 2: The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach - Fourth Estate 2012.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=franzen.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=franzen.

Cuffs

I noticed a shirt hunt back in September, at reference 1. Unfortunately, back home, it turned out that one of the two shirts laboriously selected from the heap at John Lewis had no buttons, rather than one button per sleeve. Perhaps we had got tired. Perhaps an example of the accidents mentioned at reference 3.

However, rather go through the business of returning the wrong shirt, I decided that I would have a go with cuff-links, something I have not worn for many a year, probably not in the regular way of things for more than forty years. My recollection is that they were commonly worn in the 1970's, but not that much since.

As it happens, it is not that long ago that I came across my cuff-links from that time, rather large and clumsy looking affairs now, possibly suitable for someone much younger, and chucked them out, only retaining the rather more discrete gold pair left me by FIL.

So this morning, the offending shirt came to the top of the heap and I put the cuff-links on. A putting on which lasted for some minutes, my fingers having more or less forgotten how to do this. However, while the fingers might have forgotten, the brain seemed to have stored away some of the necessary programs and after a while it got them down from their shelf and gave them a go, after which the fingers seemed to start remembering how to do it. Maybe if I work at it, I will come to be able to do it without thinking.

I have to say, the result looked quite smart. Smart in the sense that a prominent linked cuff on the end of a sleeve looked finished and satisfying, in a way that a buttoned one, by comparison did not. Finished and satisfying in the way that a wall is finished off with some coping stones, a door is finished off with some architrave or a picture on your wall with a picture frame. These things do usually have some more prosaic function, for example throwing the water off, but they also serve aesthetic ends. With the only catch in this case being that the cuff-links were not to be seen once I had put my winter cardigan on, on top. Obviously designed for use in buildings with more powerful central heating than our house.

The illustration, lifted from the interesting site at reference 2, gives roughly the idea. But FIL's are rather thinner and one face of each pair has been engraved with a rather florid version of his initials.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/danish-bacon.html.

Reference 2: http://2queens.ru/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/the-art-of-fielding-one.html.

Trolley 55

Trolley 55 was picked up this morning in East Street (aka the A24), between the turning  for Ewell Village and Kiln Lane. I was heading towards Epsom, towards M&S as it happens, provisioned with an important 20% off coupon.

As well as an M&S trolley, I got three bonus points for the basket within, without label, but with Sainsbury's coloured plastic on the handles. Popped it in at Kiln Lane, to make a perfect fit in the top of the pile of baskets already there. So I think it probably was one of theirs - and so evidence of some cross over between the customers of the two shops.

Note the absence of security device from the wheels of this M&S trolley, perhaps reflecting their better class of shopper, perhaps reflecting their town centre location. Even bog-standards might feel a touch embarrassed about wheeling a full trolley through town. They might even think that we would think that they could not afford a car, let along respectable trainers and iPhone.

As it happened, I got to M&S in the nick of time. They were down to their last trolley in this size.

PS: the orange fleck which can be seen on the leftmost wheel is a bit of sweet wrapper, not a security device. Removed before delivery.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/trolley-54.html.

Getting to use it

Regular readers may have noticed a tendency to pick up things in the road, or to hang onto things which might come in handy, at some point. With one such being noticed at reference 1, maybe five months ago.

For once in a while, this strap did come in useful, for aiding and abetting the removal of a role of underlay from the roof space and getting in down the stairs, single handed. Bearing in mind that I am getting a bit old to be humping such a thing about without taking a bit of care and attention about it.

I am pleased to report that the strap did very well, possibly being easier on the hands than the blue agricultural, possibly British Telecom rope. See reference 2. I was also quite pleased with the hitching arrangement, illustrated.

The only regret is that I did not think to get it out when volunteering to lift one end of a neighbour's heritage style radiator, from lying flat on the ground, which must have weighed well over a hundredweight and which might easily have had untoward consequences.

PS: a cynic might think that all this was the main reason for getting the new carpet, noticed among the trivia at reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/a-mixed-day.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/rope-1.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/nostalgias.html.

Nostalgias

Being the record of a bright fine day in London - as it turned out - we had take our folding umbrellas by way of a talisman - with plenty of nostalgia, none of which, strange to say pressed any buttons with BH.

First, we had a piece of home made ironmongery on a bicycle parked up in Cavendish Square, a tubular steel version of the wooden contraption I had on my bicycle some forty years ago now. Very useful for carrying a full load of vegetables - cabbages and suchlike - it was too.

Second, over lunch, we were able to observe a concrete skip going up and down on a building site across the road. Which took me back to the days when I knew about concrete and skips were containers used to crane lift wet concrete from mixer lorry to mould. Tapered containers hung by a hook from the top and with a trap door at the narrow bottom end. The days when skip meant concrete, not a container to be parked on one's front drive while one's neighbours filled it up with their household rubbish.

Third, on the way back, we were able to take a look at the outside of Treasury Chambers, home to my labours for many years, mostly, I am pleased to be able to say, before it was refreshed and converted to open plan, complete with a cafeteria which did salads, quinoa and vegetarian options. There was even a happy few months during which I was able to take impressed visitors out onto the roof - a wheeze sadly rumbled and barred by the premises people.

In between, we fitted in a Wigmore Hall lunchtime concert. A very young looking Vilde Frang on the violin and a more mature Aleksandar Madžar on the piano, giving us Bartók's Violin Sonata No, 1 and Schubert's Fantasy in C, D934. Both unknown to both of us, but which turned out to be two of the most powerful and emotional pieces we had heard for a while. Helped along by Ms. Frang's excellent stage manners.

Out to lunch at the nearby ASK, an entirely satisfactory middle-of-the-road establishment, complete with the friendly and efficient young staff from continental Europe which one has come to expect. Plus entirely satisfactory Sauvignon Blanc from somewhere in Italy. Lightweight pizza good. My only down comment would be on the bread which came with the olives, bread which, while fresh enough, was rather salty and rather undercooked, at least for my taste.

Out to wander down towards Green Park, popping into Nain Carpets on the way, where we were able to find something to replace our ageing dining room carpet. We also heard tales of woe from an independent carpet seller, up against exorbitant rents, unreasonable business rates and the big stores: a hard life it seems. So hard that he had even thought of emigrating to one of the vacant premises at Epsom, near the not long opened Metro Bank. But there were some very nice carpets, some of them way out of our class.

Across the Park and into St. James Park, spotting on the way what looked to be a couple of buzzards high over the Charles residence. But they vanished before I could be very confident about the tweet - not ever having seen such over central London before. Tavistock yes, Corfe yes, but not London. Lots of coots but no pelicans.

Down the large & flashy steel & concrete hole onto the Jubilee line, from where we made it to Earlsfield for a round of the aeroplane game. Plenty of cloud, mostly above the flight path, but the best I could do was a couple of ones. A disappointing finish to a good day.

PS: a factlet from Nain Carpets: Saudis are not into carpets. They like flashy cars and flashy bathroom furniture but resent paying good money for carpets. This despite my recollection from the 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' that the arabs from Al-Hejaz at least, now part of Saudi Arabia, were keen on rugs, not least for praying on.

Book fare

Epsom Library had one of their clearance sales on today, trawling up all kinds of stuff from the darker corners of the Surrey Libraries book repository - perhaps earmarked for redevelopment for affordable housing. Where, for what I think is the first time ever, I found a substantial collection of books from the standard edition of Freud. Rather battered, suggesting much use in the hey-day of the psycho-analysts, and at £6 a pop I might once have been tempted, but today, with a pdf of the complete works sitting on my computer - and used occasionally - not least because Acrobat comes with a search facility, I was not.

Odd that I have not come across any of them before in a second-hand book store. Indeed, the last time I saw them in significant numbers was in the days when Foyles sold them, with a small bookcase devoted to them, on the right, as I recall, as you went down the little flight of steps into the room which housed the psychology department. No doubt long swept away, along with the little wooden booths which once took one's money.

The sale also included lots of theatrical books with lots of obscure plays which one had not heard of, but mostly written by people whom one had heard of, like Synge and Yeats. Collected editions of the works of various French masters, in French, including a handsome 10 volume set of the works of Feydeau, never before heard of, but presumably a big cheese in the 19th century, the set being published in 1896 or so by Calman-Lévy. At least a quick google suggests Feydeau, my only being certain about the initial 'F', with the catch with him being that while most of his stuff was out by 1896, he was still in production until around 1916.

Last but not least, all sorts of obscure books about religion and spiritualism, these last presumably dating from the period between the two world wars when spiritualism boomed.

I managed to escape with just one book, very modestly priced at £1. Slightly puzzled by how the library pricing crew had let me off so lightly, with the book including original theatrical designs by no less an eminence than Topolski, the chap who until recently had a gallery under the arches at Waterloo, now a themed bar of some sort. And also including a full set of library paraphernalia, down to and including the little brown cardboard slip which used to be transferred into one's ticket, fashioned as a slip holder, when you borrowed the book. From the days when card board & card indexes did the work of transistors.

Second childhood

I have just learned about a marketing phenomenon called 'Hello Kitty', a Japanese invention from around 1975 which mainly consists in selling strongly branded merchandise to young girls. A very successful invention with millions if not billions of pounds turning over every year.

A learning from reference 3 prompted again by the Susan Greenfield of references 1 and 2. Very much, I would have thought, the sort of lady who would pop up to give a Friday discourse at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street (in London), the street where they also sell sheets of off-white textured cardboard, very tastefully packaged up as art and sold for very fancy prices.

We got as far last night as watching part of a DVD which involved Kitty paying a visit to 'Alice in Wonderland', with Kitty herself being a very elemental creation, nothing much to her at all, just a bit up from a telly-tubby. Tellingly, amazon was a bit confused when I asked for a 'Hello Kitty' DVD, being much more interested in selling me something from a huge range of Kitty themed merchandise.

While this morning, feeling the need for something more adult, I spent the breakfast period pondering about whether it would be a good idea if we had a statute of limitations, setting time limits beyond which it would not be possible to bring someone to court, criminal or otherwise, this prompted by yet another media person being convicted for sexual offences which took place many years ago. I can see pros and cons, but twenty years sprang to mind as a reasonable limit in this sort of case. Such limits might also be usefully applied to Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday. While, I guess, going to war in Iraq is going to be inside any such limit, at least for a while yet.

I associated to the olden days, when a year and a day was often the magic period. If you got away with whatever it was for that long, you were away, clear and free.

PS: I shall now check our Argos catalogue, perhaps even go so far as to visit the Ashley Centre to see if they are on-message.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/the-staff-of-life.html.

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

Reference 3: Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound - Martin Lindstrom - 2005.

Reference 4: https://www.sanrio.com/.

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

Memory lanes

This morning, conversation turned to family matters and a place called Brize Norton. From where, after twists and turns too complicated to record here, we got to a similar place called Lyneham, once the home to RAF Lyneham, the twin of RAF Brize Norton, and home to a fleet of Hercules transports known to those in the know as 'Fat Alberts'. See references 1 and 2.

I offer two puzzles.

First, what is the plural form of the noun 'Hercules'? The best google can offer is herculeses, which while possibly correct, sounds rather clumsy. But I can't presently think of any other noun with the singular form ending in 'es' for comparison.

Second, give me the name of any town in the United Kingdom, which, when correctly spelled, contains no fewer than four doubles, other, that is than the very important town near Lyneham, Royal Wootton Bassett. Very important, in part, because it once included a grocer's shop owned and run by one of BH's paternal relatives, with a wall-named picture of the shop making it to heritage booklets about the place.

And one observation. Reference 2 contains a reference to reference 1, a reference in the form of a date rather than a proper link, like those below. Armed with just the date, I found it easier to track reference 1 down in my MS Word archive copy of the blog than in the blog itself. Word even picks out all the dates in the navigation panel which pops up on the left when the copy is opened, whereas neither blogger nor the search that comes with it is very good at dates.

Lastly, I offer a rather better picture of the aircraft in question than that at reference 2. Albeit an aircraft of the RCAF rather than the RAF proper. One supposes that what looks like a washing line strung between the tail and the cockpit is actually some kind of radio aerial. Electronical counter measure? A cheese cutter which, with pilot trickery, can be used to slice up inbound missiles?

PS: for the curious, the odd form of reference 2 is the result of forgetting to title the post when first posting. In this event, blogger uses the first line of the post itself to give the thing its reference, a reference which it declines to subsequently change.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/thames-valley.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/for-anyone-curious-following-post-of.html.

Chart skills or not

Today being a baking day, I thought I would take a peek at the trend line, a peek which I thought would be a trivial matter with the power of Excel 365 at my elbow.

Click on the date column of the breadsheet, click on insert line graph and I get a chart which is rubbish. Do it again, same result. Maybe I need to include a column for the serial number, and select two columns rather than just the one. Still rubbish. What on earth is going on? This is a chart which I have produced several times before, and I must have produced hundreds of line charts over the years.

Has there been some cunning change in the charts part of the Excel world?

Should I try help? I do try help, but it is not very helpful. Google does turn up anything of use either.

This is now more than half an hour since I started and I am starting to get a bit irritated.

When, all of a sudden, for no particular reason, I notice that there is an error in the date at around row 350. I have tried to make the day in the month 45, with the result that Excel does not recognise this date as a date, knocking on all the way to the rubbish I started out with, without any kind of warning that maybe sir overlooked a little problem at row 350. Maybe Cortana is not as bright as she is cracked up to be.

Correct the date, having to guess between 4 and 5 at this remove in time, and all is well.

I now try to recover my poise by being clever. Is the line I get a straight line? Is the rate of baking steady over time, or does it speed up and slow down with the phases of the moon, the ambient temperature or whatever?

At which point I discover that I have no idea how to do this on a chart, short of taking half a day to write some visual basic code which does something complicated with date fields and computes intervals in days between dates, something that the visual basic DateDiff function is actually quite good at. And as I type this, I start to come clear on how to write the code, at least on one way to write it, and to get it down to maybe an hour or so. But it is not going to happen. I shall stick with being irritated.

Circus three

We made it to Circus Fantasia over the weekend, walking to the arena despite the uncertain weather, the first time we have walked there for some time.

Arrived a little early which gave us plenty to time to spend a little extra money, on a programme, on toys and on refreshments. We decided on a progamme, the back cover of which is scanned left. Audience seemed a little thin when we arrived, but swelled to something over the hundred for the off. An audience which looked to represent the various surrounding estates quite well. BH even thought that some travelers had turned out in solidarity, but I was not so sure.

While we waited, I wondered about the business proposition, allowing £250,000 for the big tent, £250,000 for the vehicles & machinery and maybe twenty mouths to feed. Didn't get very far with the sums, beyond thinking that if one sold one's suburban house, one would maybe have enough to make a start. We also wondered about the size of the ring: was it bigger or smaller than those of our childhood? A time when they had a band in a box above the plush curtained entrance used for artists and animals, opposite the entrance for punters. Whereas now they have loudspeakers. When you had a ringmaster with a top hat and tails. Didn't get very far with this one either, although the consensus was that today's ring was probably rather smaller than that of old, after allowing for the fact that we were definitely rather bigger.

The show lasted about two hours, with an interval, with maybe five numbers to each half. Plus a certain amount of continuity provided by clowns and showgirls. Were these last graduates of our Laine Theatre Arts? Did Laine Theatre Arts put in for work experience slots? I associated to the district in central Las Vegas, which I failed to pin down when I was in town, called Naked City for the density of show girls rooming there.

Most of the acts were fairly muscular, with even the seemingly softer options of throwing balls about in a cunning way requiring considerable strength and dexterity in the hands, arms and shoulders. No animals, so the only pain involved was that of consenting humans, about half of whom were shapely young females and at least one of whom came from the UK.

All in all, very good value, I don't think it would have worked on television, but up close and personal very good indeed.

Home through the high density part of the Longmead housing estate. Houses rather than blocks and decent enough, but the place had a slightly down-at-heel feel about it, despite not being that old. Maybe 1960's or 1970's. Not sure that I would have cared to be there after dark - although I dare say that, like Belfast during most of the troubles, it is much worse in the newspapers than it is on the ground..

PS: no web site for the circus, but there is web presence, although you need to take care not to confuse them with Circus Funtasia, who do have a web site and who appear to be something to do with performing motor cycles.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/circus-one.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/circus-two.html.

Never mind the runway feel the backland

Snapped today somewhere in Ewell Village.

A visit to the site in question (reference 1) reveals a dispute about backlands. That is to say, one or more the the houses encircling a couple of acres of gardens are trying to sell up to a developer who want to put eight new houses on some of them. All the houses who are not selling up are profoundly shocked and hurt.

The sort of dispute that I am a bit uncomfortable about. The density of the older housing estates around here is quite low by the standards of modern estates and we quite clearly need more housing, which has to go somewhere. I think I prefer upping the density to taking over more green belt land - with memories of other places where houses have been allowed to sprawl all over the place - for example the Isle of Skye (houses which may well have been built with EU money for all I know) and the hinterlands to French beach resorts. I also have memories of new build estates on the north Norfolk coast - which are all fine and dandy, at least when the sun is shining, but where on earth are the jobs for the people who live in them? Round here we have the jobs.

On the other hand, I live on such an estate and the quality of my life would be diminished if a couple of next door neighbours sold up in this way. Diminished quite a lot in the short term while building was going on, somewhat in the long term when I would have more people and fewer trees overlooking our garden.

All said and done though, I think that, left to myself, I would not go to war about it. I would be sorry and that would be about it, and I would do my best to get on with my new neighbours.

PS: note the heritage ironmongery on what is probably a not very old gate. I think it can be bought in places like Homebase or Chessington Garden Centre.

Reference 1: http://www.saveourgardens.org/.

The staff of life

A new-to-me aperçu into the social history of recreational drugs, brought to me from our Science Museum, via a mention in a book by Susan Greenfield.

As usual, a click to enlarge will reveal all.

Priestley

Last week to a Priestley farce - When we are Married - at the Rose at Kingston, brought there by Mr. Rutter and his Northern Broadsides. Appropriately, a play set among the now-lost mills of their northern home.

Another bad start, with a big queue onto the Portsmouth Road at Kingston. Due to roadworks, but I think not those to do with the fine new cycle lane which has been given a good third of the road. A reminder that Kingston was a western outpost of the land of Boris, lately the clowning mayor and now our Foreign Secretary, charged with navigating our fine country through the presently murky waters of the big wide world.

But I did well at the car park, not hitting any kerbs on our way to the top. I can't remember when I last managed to pull this one off.

We also did well with the fishes, scoring two behind the county court and a lot from our usual spotting post on the bridge (over the Hogsmill). Odd how the fish so seem to like that particular spot. Does it have something to do with it being where the fresh water of the Hogsmill meets the salt water of the Thames?

Boasting about seat numbers at reference 2 was quite premature as it turned out, as we got into almost as much of a muddle on this occasion. Some consolation from the lady in front of us who explained that one had to learn the row numbering afresh on every visit. I had even got the leg room wrong, with that in row A, where we were sitting, being adequate if not plentiful. On the other hand, some quirk of the layout meant that I had the luxury of my own seat, rather than sharing a two seater - who might or might not be one's companion - being fairly sure that the seating diagram you get when you book does not show the pairing arrangements. One supposes that paired seats come a lot cheaper than singles.

Reasonably full house for this matinée performance, at least downstairs. Clever set, while remaining mobile for this touring production. Clever also in that one had the sense that the play was taking place in an appropriately small inner space, despite the size of the space actually being used. Play good, but better in the second half than the first and I thought it needed a bit more work to make it a bit more slick. Too often in the first half I had the sense that the play had stopped for a few seconds: farces are supposed to be brisk without such gaps, such longueurs. Play all the better for having a happy ending with the topsy-turvy world being put back together again. Some nice touches about the servant difficulties of the times in which the play was set, the very beginning of the twentieth century, some years before the world was turned upside down by the first war. And a wonderful description of the elaborate, off-stage high tea with which the action starts.

Some exercise of smoking privileges, with some of the cast being keener on their cigars than others. I wondered at the time whether they reused them, despite the unpleasant flavour that cigars so acquire - while I wonder this morning whether one actually enjoys this kind of smoking at all, when one is at work, as it were. Perhaps that is how the Harriet Harman's justified allowing this so-gross exemption from the rules to themselves: the actors might be allowed to smoke on the stage, but it doesn't matter because they won't enjoy it.

Out to find a trio of coaches outside: one regular, one small and one very small, perhaps a people carrier rather than a coach. And BH lost the car park game by clipping several kerbs on the way down.

Quite a lot of traffic on the way home, it now being around 1700 on a Thursday, but once clear of Ruxley Lane we were able to speed along to the new-to-us fish and chip shop at Horton Retail, to find them doing a roaring trade. We carried our fish and chips back home to find that they were very good: best fried cod that I have had for a while and even the chips managed not to taste stale by the time that I had got to the end of them. There was a lot of stainless steel in the shop, which made me think that one needed a fair bit of capital to start such a place, with my understanding being that in a new build such as this was, the first tenant pays for all the specialised fittings, in this case stainless steel frying gear, Landlord just supplies the basics: at least that was the story at the Manor Green Road butcher when he moved into his new shop.

PS: more senior moment: I started off this morning quite sure that we had seen another Priestley play at the Rose, probably Northern Broadsides again. But careful inspection of the record reveals nothing but reference 1. Very irritating.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/an-inspector-calls.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/good-canary.html.

A senior moment in depth

A senior moment which took place while drying the breakfast dishes this morning, it now being early evening.

I am facing the kitchen window, looking out vaguely at the patio and back garden beyond, drying up a wine glass from the night before. I go to put it on the shelf above the hatchway to my left – hatchways between the kitchen and dining room being a feature of suburban houses of a certain age – when actually the glass in question belongs in the glass cupboard in the extension out the back. The shelf above the hatchway, to be fair, is for glassware of various shapes and sizes, including drinking water tumblers, but nothing which is much used for alcoholic beverages. On this occasion, I stop myself as I turn to the left and the right hand – holding the wine glass – is reaching towards the shelf. Maybe less than a foot away.

So what is happening here?

I offer below what I think is a plausible story.

I am doing the drying up, without much thinking about it. I am probably having a fairly low key conversation – or perhaps ‘interchange’ would better describe the activity – with BH, who is doing the washing up piece. Maybe about the chances of it raining during the day to come.

But the subconscious knows that drying up is associated with putting away and wants to be helpful. So, on the side, it is casting about for somewhere suitable to put the item in hand.

It uses a generalised process for the purpose, a process which scans the visual field, looking for an object which is associated, in some way or other, any old how, with the phrase ‘putting away’. It may even go so far as to move the head about a bit to widen the search area, while being careful to stay in the background, for the activity to be subconscious.

When it gets a match, it does two things in parallel, the brain having plenty of capacity for parallelism.

First, it initiates more careful checking and second it initiates motor action, so as to have things in hand should the checks come through OK. That is to say that it sets off the complicated train of neural activity which results in a cunning sequence of signals being sent to the muscles of my right arm. See reference 1 for a previous excursion down this road.

A setting up which certainly does not involve setting up the program from scratch – one does that sort of thing as a baby – but which might include moving chunks of program which had been used in the past in the same or similar activities to a holding area for final assembly there. Assembly then dispatch. An inclusion which will involve some kind of a search or searches through the motor program library.

Motor activity is quite slow so, at least in a younger person, there is plenty of time to do the checks and abort the action should that prove necessary, abort the action before it makes it to consciousness.

The more careful checking might include checking what is already on the shelf for similarities with the glass in hand. Or thinking about other candidates, other places around the kitchen, around the house at large, where glasses might be kept.

Checking which would no doubt include a quick virtual visit to the roof-space, where various heaps of old glasses (mostly brilliant bargains picked up from car boot sales) wait for disposal, as they have been for years, but heaps which the subconscious can put aside quite quickly. No match there with washing up, for breakfast, lunch or tea.

But checks which, in the older person, might be quite slow. Motor actions have become fast relative to mental actions; maybe ageing has hit the mental areas harder than the motor areas. Maybe the cerebellum gets off lightly. In any event, the synchronisation process which used to look after things, does so no longer. And the checks may well get even slower as the still unconscious motor activity gets under way and vision systems are engaged in close support of the motor systems. One needs to pay at least some attention to the movement of one’s arm and hand.

With the result that by the time that I have worked out that the shelf above the hatch is the wrong place, the hand is already on the move, and has been on the moved plenty long enough to be clocked consciously.

No doubt, had I been thirty or forty years younger than I actually am, I could have spent happy days devising cunning experiments to explore all this sort of thing, to sort out fact from fiction.

In the meantime, I am reasonably sure that the framework is right. Motor action is initiated before we are sure that we have got the right action. Most of the time, certainly in young people, this works fine, works most of the time. Old people not so good.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/senior-to-elephantine-moments.html.

Reference 2: http://www.clearcutcrystal.co.uk/ - the owners of the illustration.

Perchance to dream

I read somewhere recently that if one was not sure whether one was dreaming or not, there were certain tests you could do to find out. You could get yourself to do things in your mind or in your dream that dreams were not very good at - and then, if whatever it was did not work out, you knew that you were dreaming. I think one of these tests may have involved turning the pages of a book, when the pages, while looking page like, do not update.

While this morning, I have just woken up from a dream which contained various elements which had not been computed properly.

The house had been broken into and while some of the boxes to do with the supply of electricity and communications had been visibly interfered with, nothing appeared to have been stolen. I thought to report this rather odd matter to the police, so off down to the local police station, in Epsom. First point of interest, Epsom has not had a police station for some years and we are now served from far-away Staines.

I get there to wait my turn, a wait which looked to be of some hours, in a large rectangular waiting area, not unlike that in a hospital or an airport, complete with a desk, refreshments, chairs and tables. Or, indeed, the one in the US embassy at Grosvenor Square where you wait when you are getting your visa. See reference 2.

For some reason I had our wooden step ladder with me, a family heritage item, complete with a modest amount of wood worm damage, and part of the dream was about finding somewhere to put it while I waited. No idea why it was there, as I have not used it for a couple of weeks or more and it had no speaking lines, as it were, in the dream at all. But the feel of the thing as I carried it along in my right hand, hanging down by my side, was very vivid, distinctive and realistic; spot on. And thinking aloud, the hand part of the dream may have been a product of seeing artists in the circus a couple of days ago doing very clever things with their forearms, wrists and hands; the ladder might just been a prop for a bit of hand action more appropriate to me than a circus turn. More of that in due course.

The second point of interest, was an announcement over the public address system for one Florian Eustace (which name I use in place of that of a real acquaintance), but the announcement asked for Florian, plain and simple. And while hospital staff who do not know you from Adam have an irritating habit of using your first name in a matey way, an irritating habit which has become less irritating over the years of frequenting such places, first name was not right in this context. The announcement would have been for Florian Eustace or for Mr. Eustace - while in the family we do talk of Florian plain and simple.

The point of the announcement was that Mr. Eustace had a visitor, whom I knew without being properly told to be from Amnesty International. I tried to catch Mr. Eustace's eye, but failed; he was lost, together with his visitor, in the throng. I think knowing without being told is OK, certainly in a dream: one can't expect all the loose ends to be tidied up.

After various other goings on, I realised that I was going to be very late for lunch, without prior notice I was going to be in trouble, and I abandoned reporting the break-in in favour of getting a bus home. I worried in the dream about how to get home quickly from Epsom Town where the bus would probably drop me off. I tried to phone in, but for some reason which I no longer remember, I did not get very far with that.

Third point, I had forgotten to pick up the step ladder.

Fourth point, I seemed to be getting the bus from half way to Epsom Downs, a long way beyond where the police station used to be.

PS: small prize for the reader who knows where Florian really comes from. There are some clues to be found by careful reading in the other place, at reference 1.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=eustace.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=consular+officer.

An honour

I am pleased to be able to report that His Royal Highness, the Earl of Wessex, did visit Brading Roman Villa, Friday just past. See reference 1.

He is clearly well advised. I wonder if he had time to try any of the excellent cakes to be had there? Did they bake a royal special for the occasion? Will we be able to inspect a commemorative plaque next time we visit?

PS: wikipedia reminds me that the last holder of this title was a companion of the Conqueror and the one before that was the conquered King Harold.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/roman-villa.html.