Apple

While we were admiring the cordon apples mentioned in the last post, one dropped gently to the ground. It had previously been slightly damaged by something or other, but generally it was in pretty good shape, so BH slipped it into her bag when no-one was looking.

It proved to be rather good. A light, crisp early apple, eaten maybe just a day or so after its prime. But a reminder of what a wonderful thing a really fresh apple can be, something which one cannot get from a shop. I suppose the nearest one can get is the apple grower who picks his own apples first thing in the morning and then brings them along to market. But not many of them about these days, reference 1 notwithstanding.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/aquamarine.html.

Group search key: pld.

Polseden

Last week saw a visit to Polesden Lacey, seemingly last visited as long ago as early June. See reference 1.

Fox gloves long gone, but the first flowers to catch the eye were the substantial plantings of a new rose, Rosa ‘Margaret Greville’, launched at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. A fine rose, but which, contrariwise, led to thoughts about how odd it was that we have made Polesden Lacey into a shrine to a rich parvenue, who made her inherited beer money come good by marrying it to a good name who was also an officer in a smart regiment, that is to say the Life Guards. He had the tact to die relatively young, leaving her the space she needed to flourish as a fashionable hostess - and now all the trusties go weak at the knees at the mere mention of dear Margaret's name. All that said, it was a fine rose which photographs well. Further evidence that my longstanding aversion to pink roses is wearing off.

The herbaceous border running along the formal gardens to the west of the house was in very good form, as was the thyme and lavender enclosure we had noticed on our last visit. Such good form that we took our picnic there, which had the interesting effect of keeping out all but the most intrepid wanderers. Most people just peeped in, saw our picnic and then peeped out again, perhaps not wanting to disturb what they took to be a private moment.

Then, beyond the cold frames we came across some flower and vegetable beds we had not really noticed before. Flower beds particularly good, despite looking as if they were intended more for cut flowers than anything else.

Quite a lot of fruit trees, including some interesting low rise cordon apples, with a lot of fruit which looked pretty much ready to go. We wondered what was going to happen to it - thinking that a lot of it was likely to go to waste. Perhaps the volunteer gardeners were allowed to help themselves - which would be fair enough.

Last stop, the triple fenced hen house, noticed on previous occasions.

We passed on the second hand bookshop in a corner of the house and passed on the posh wet fish shop in nearby Great Bookham, not being in the mood for the superior tones of the fish men there.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/flowers.html.

Group search key: pld.

Mystery shrub

A striking but unknown shrub growing over the fence of the Old Moat Garden Centre, a centre which provides a modest amount of sheltered employment.

Not the largest or fanciest such place in the area, but quick and convenient from where we are.

As it happens, I have read within the last few days that there is still lots of slavery in the world. I did not get as far as reading quite what this involved, given that slavery is illegal nearly everywhere, but I suppose the numbers include a fair proportion of people who are working in circumstances which amount to slavery, without perhaps being slaves in any legal sense. No public buying and selling. No fugitive property acts. Or confiscation in settlement of unpaid debts.

While just now, I find that the parent organisation (reference 2) of this very garden centre (reference 1) finds it necessary to include a statement of its policy in regard to slavery and human trafficking on their web site. I was not altogether clear, but I don't suppose that this was about their not abusing the people that they are supposed to be helping, accusations of a sort which might well have been flying about in the 1970's when trade unions worked hard to get the occupational therapy units - quite a lot of them commercially productive - of mental hospitals shut down on the grounds that they were run on cheap labour, taking the bread out of the mouths of their members. One result of which was that the people who once did occupational therapy, perhaps on a farm, then did little or nothing.

All ancient history, given that we don't have the sort of mental hospitals which could carry a farm any more. But I do wonder what all the people who used to work on them are doing now.

Reference 1: http://www.theoldmoatgardencentre.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.richmondfellowship.org.uk/.

Knotweed

The knotweed last mentioned at reference 1 continues to be dead.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/knotweed.html.

Second campaign

This afternoon saw the second campaign of the blackberry season, conducted on the Common side of Christchurch Road, as one approaches the turn into Horton Lane.

About four pounds on this occasion, the haul of about an hour's picking. Very mixed as to size, so I suspect there were several varieties of blackberry in this particular stretch.

No-one else was at it, and the only intervention was a passing cyclist who asked whether I was OK - in his world a cycle by the road usually being a cycle in trouble. The solidarity of the cyclists fraternity.

Blackberries presently en-route to the freezer.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/new-crop.html.

Progress

I generally think of the Daily Mail as being a rather irresponsible newspaper, pandering to the prejudices of both its large readership and its owner. But there is the odd gleam of light.

This morning my attention was drawn to a piece in their surprisingly lurid online edition which appeared, without reading it properly, to be generally in favour of changing the law to allow death with dignity when that is what is wanted and needed.

To quote from the end of the piece: 'Over the next year, Isobel had six weeks of daily chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment before undergoing another six months of chemo, which shrunk her tumour by 30 per cent.

But by August last year she was unable to walk. Even then she did not give up and was awarded this year's Sue Ryder Southern Woman of Courage Award for her bravery.

In March she went into Reading's Sue Ryder Hospice where she was given days to live. But she suffered for another seven weeks before dying in May at the age of 34.

'Isobel was the bravest girl imaginable,' said Mrs Eeley. 'She was born with cerebral palsy and was paralysed down the left side of her body but she lived life to the full, always pushing herself beyond her physical limits.

She never ever complained about what life had thrown at her and, even as a child and after many operations to help her mobility, she just smiled her way through life.

She certainly didn't deserve to die in the manner in which she did. I don't think she ever imagined that she would suffer so much or that it would get worse. It was just horrific. She begged us to end her life.

We talk about people living with cancer but we never talk about people dying with cancer.

That's why I feel so strongly that people should have the choice of how to end their lives.'

PS: the Daily Mail seems to know that we shop online with both Cotton Traders and Millets.

Reference 1: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4754526/Kate-Middleton-s-friend-dies-utmost-pain-tumour.html#ixzz4owoqkz4Q.

Cherries

We thought yesterday to inspect the new Waitrose opposite what used to be the Thorndike Theatre at Leatherhead, a theatre which used to do theatre, as can be seen at reference 1, but now rarely rises above cinema and am-dram.

On one famous occasion, we even saw the great Sir Peter Hall, a product of my own secondary school, come on stage to apologise for a pre-west-end version of Hamlet. The one and only time that we have seen a naked Hamlet. And we have never seen a naked Ophelia, which would be slightly more plausible. A down side used to be the very uncomfortable concrete seats.

The Waitrose turned out to be quite small, but with a much less intensive use of space that at, say the Tesco's at Horton Retail, which made the place seem small, but comfortable. We emerged with the cherries illustrated and a bottle of the Fleurie discovered at reference 2. A bottle which was grand enough to include a cork, something of a rarity, at least with the sort of wine which we usually buy. Mildly inconvenient even. Read all about it at reference 3 - a website which does not seem to include the bottle we bought. Perhaps they do special stuff for export, rather like we used to export very strange bottled beer to the continent, all dressed up in the clothes of old England for the consumption of ignorant foreigners. Will this Fleurie be as successful as the first go at the stuff? I shall report further in due course.

The cherries were a little dear at £3.50 for 375g but were much better quality than those reported at reference 4 and which probably weighed in at £6 for 1,000g. So Waitrose did indeed have the better product, consistent with the image they like to cultivate.

Reference 1: https://theatricalia.com/place/fz/thorndike-theatre-leatherhead.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/fragonard-fail-aka-yaverland-five.html.

Reference 3: http://www.bouchard-aine.fr/fr/.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/trolley-82.html.