Trolley 114

Another M&S food hall trolley, captured in passage to the station, probably the last of the season. Learned that M&S still operate a pound deposit, this being the white blob at the right hand end of the handle (click to enlarge), so I am now the proud owner of a natty little token which does the job of a pound. Easy enough to get hold of according to the M&S trolley jockeys on the stand - with mine coming from BUPA.

Thought about fancy white wine for the New Year and desisted.

Popped into the Works to find another remaindered book by Barney White-Spunner, this one about the partition of what was British India in 1947. I rather enjoyed my last book of his, about the Household Cavalry, sourced from the branch of the Works in Exeter. I associate to an observation in some learned magazine about how professional historians have disappeared up their statistical orifices, leaving the field of history for the general reader to the amateurs. With this particular amateur having actually been a general.

Popped into O2 to inquire about the jittering focus on the camera on my Microsoft telephone, a telephone on which I am about to make the last HP payment. Jittering, accompanied by a sound of grinding gears (perhaps generated for effect, by software, rather than there actually being any lens moving gears that could grind), but which usually settles down after a second or so. Jittering which might be some aftershock of my breaking the screen by dropping a year or so ago.

Well sir, they said, you can send it off to the menders who might be able to do something. It will take about five days for them to give an opinion on the matter. Can I phone them up and ask if there is any likelihood of their being able to mend it? No. A pain, but I can see that they might spend a lot of unprofitable time on the phone if such calls were allowed.

Then it transpired that MS have given up on mobile phones, having failed to make significant inroads into the market, leaving me high and dry. I have been pleased with my Lumia phone, but it is now starting to go wrong and I am looking at all the bother of change. All the bother of, for example, moving to a new calendar. So I shall carry on for the time being, in the hope that these jitters do not become terminal.

Tweeted some redwings down Longmead Road, redwings which have largely spurned our garden this year.

And on into Costcutter to be greeted by headlines about the dastardly Russians interfering with our Brexit referendum. On which I make two points. First, the exit people had it by 52% to 48%. I would be very surprised if this interference amounted to more than a small fraction - say more than a quarter - of that difference. So it made no difference to the outcome, given the rules of the game, as set by the careless Cameron. Second, it was OK when the UK and the US beamed radio propaganda (and Bibles and spies) into what was then the Soviet Union, during the cold war. Or cheered so loudly when the said Soviet Union fell apart, with the pieces being gobbled up by oligarchs and gangsters. Less consultancy fees to all kinds of consultants from the likes of Price Waterhouse, Ernst & Young and the late lamented Arthur Anderson. So who are we to get so touchy now about a bit of dirty work on Facebook?

End of faits divers.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=barney.