Trolley 60

Trolley 60 was captured just to the Ewell side of the downstream end of Longmead Road, more or less opposite the parade of shops there.

In a rather dirty condition, suggesting it had been out for a while, perhaps chucked underneath a hedge somewhere, perhaps even the trolley in the stream noted at reference 1, but not seen since.

I do not score the second trolley, captured just before the end of the alley leading up the side of the Sainsbury's shop into the car park, on the grounds that it was fully in view of the security camera posted at the corner of the shop and would probably have been recovered by one of their trolley jockeys before too long.

I pondered about the morality of doing stuff for free which Sainbury's might otherwise have paid someone else to do, passing on to the question of driverless cars, on which subject yesterday's Guardian held forth, without having come to any conclusion about the trolleys. I got as far as being uneasy about driverless cars, not because they are unsafe, believing as I do that they will probably be safer than driven cars before long, but because they will be destroying jobs here by spending money with Asian manufacturers and Californian technology companies, not least google. And spending more money to prop up the people who no longer have jobs - money that we as a country do not have. But all right for all the financial and legal services types who make the necessary arrangements. On the plus side, I note that they might make deliveries to rural areas possible in a way they are not now. Far too expensive to send vans and drivers out into the wilds of the far north with a few groceries - but a van without a driver might be a proposition.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/trolley-59.html.

Tweet

First chaffinch in Epsom for a while tweeted this morning down Longmead Road.

I can also now report that the Arbroath Smokie turned out much better than the ordinarily smoked haddock (reference 1) which came with it.

The committee ruled in favour of hot, so I heated enough water to cover the haddock in the fish kettle and then simmered it for three minutes just below boiling. Which our meat thermometer read at 94C, so perhaps just as well that I have rarely, if ever, used it for meat.

Half each, taken off the bone off the plate, taken with brown bread. Very good it was too, with one Smokie being quite enough for the two of us for breakfast. We wondered whether they could be obtained from Harrods or Selfridges; perhaps I will get to find out next week in the course of Christmas shopping.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/titbits.html.

Maigret's teeth

I mentioned the day before yesterday varying our Agatha diet on television with Sharpe, which was a little economical with the truth as we also take in a spot of Grenada's excellent adaptation of some of the Maigret stories, adaptations with Michael Gambon in the chair. Yesterday's story involved a mad dentist, who in a moment of lucidity called himself a stomatologist.

Which, coming from a dental family, caught my eye. My French dictionary helps by telling me that the English for stomatologist is stomatologist. Next stop OED, which explains that stoma is close to the ancient Greek for mouth, with a stomatologist being a doctor of the mouth. The same root at that for stomach, which as well as being stretched a bit has shifted a short way down the alimentary canal from the oral opening.

I think some of the grander dentists still call themselves oral surgeons which amounts to much the same thing - but their nurses are not called stoma nurses, which is something quite different.

Granada had gone to the trouble of making up a suitably battered looking brass plate for the dentist. Unless that is, in Budapest, where much of the filming was done, they still call dentists stomatologists. It might not just be the buildings which are suitably old-fashioned.

PS: I wonder if Sir Robert Armstrong (if he is still with us) is amused or cross that he is now best known for inventing the phrase economical with the truth? He was, after all, an eminent public servant, the Sir Jeremy Heywood of his day.

Titbits

In the margins of a visit to Polesden Lacey earlier in the week, we thought to pay a visit to Ron Fowler, the wet fish man in the country, to be more precise in Great Bookham. Must be very special people to run to a wet fish shop around there, given that we have not had one in much bigger Epsom for a long time.

We took a piece of natural smoked haddock and an Arbroath Smokie. I had the former for lunch yesterday, simmered in water for a bit and served with boiled white rice and boiled crinkly cabbage. With the result that, while this smoked haddock was nothing like as good as that which I used to get from the fish stall in the market in Upper Tachbrook Street in Pimlico, from an Irish gent. now long retired, it is also true that I may have lost my taste for the stuff, at least served neat. It was just as well that I could stir it into the rice a bit and eat it that way, which suited much better. See reference 1 for the view in 2008. We will see how we get on with the Smokie. Jury still out on whether to take it hot or cold.

Second titbit, was a stalk of brussels sprouts from Epsom Market this morning, a stalk holding around 45 good looking, even sized brussels sprouts for just £2. All about an inch in diameter. Virtually no preparation needed and nothing like the rather scraggy and bug infested things that I once grew. Maybe they were not very organic - but they cooked up very well this lunchtime.

Third titbit, having been denied breakfast this morning for medical reasons, I took a bacon sandwich from Los Amigos. Very good it was too, despite the people there looking rather sideways at the brussels sprouts. Maybe they don't do sprouts in Portugal, just bacon sandwiches. Very good ones too - despite which it is not a place I visit very often and reference 2 seems to be the last notice, just over two years ago. Perhaps they had been pushed out of the frame by the people in Whitecross Street - with the search at reference 3 turning up lots of stuff - this without including whatever there might be on the present blog.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=fishy+days+pimlico.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=los+amigos+kurzweil.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bacon+whitecross.

Fingers and toes

Now on my second pass of the Maigret story noticed at reference 1. A story, incidentally, involving the newly retired Maigret, the last story in the first of three cycles of such stories, a total I think of around 75 of them. I will find out in due course how he gets back into business: I suppose that Simenon had got fed up with his creation and tried to kill him off, but either shortage of funds or clamor of fans persuaded him to bring him back from the dead. I think Conan Doyle did something of the sort with Sherlock Holmes. Also that Ian Fleming got fed up with being joined at the hip to James Bond.

Shortly after the ether episode noticed at reference 1, we have Maigret back at Fernande's flat, where she get undressed but he does not, during which undressing she pauses to take a good look at her toes. I had not noticed first time around that toes is 'doigts de pied', with French having no separate words for fingers and toes in the way that we do. I think their arrangement is that 'doigt' is finger unless qualified.

Off to the OED where I am reminded that the corresponding word in English is digit, once similar in usage to that noted above. Plus it was also a unit of length, the thickness of a finger, about an inch. Plus a digit is also the sort of number that you can count on your fingers or toes, at least approximately - as we don't count zero and ten has more than one digit. Confusingly, the twelfth part of the diameter of a planet is also called a digit, the unit of magnitude of an eclipse.

PS: along the way, I find that the nearby 'dight' get a much longer entry, a very common word in old England, related to the Latin 'dictare', to dicate, compose, order or proscribe. With the word, its various meanings (for example, to engage in sexual activity, possibly preliminary rather than consumatory) and its relatives getting more than five columns, a lot more than that accorded to digit and its relatives.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/maigret.html.

David

Not far from Buller we have the church of St. David, which has given its name both to one of the two nearby railway stations and to the area generally.

Built at the end of the nineteenth century after a fire had destroyed the previous incumbent and described as a gem of Victoriana by His Eminence, Sir John Betjeman - but presently in the throes of a transformation project - so the gem remains, for us, a hidden gem.

From the outside, distinctive, unusual even, unlike anything else that I have seen recently: Romanesque rather than Gothic, but not quite that either. So it would be interesting to take a look inside.

Reference 1: http://stdavidschurchexeter.org.uk/.

Group search key: exa.

Buller

Snapped on the northern outskirts of Exeter city centre, without, as they used to say, the city wall. See reference 1.

A rich and well-born landowner with substantial estates in Devon and Cornwall, who saw  much service in Africa. Firstly against the Zulus, whose land we coveted, and in the course of which he got his VC, and secondly against the Boers, whose independence was obnoxious to us. More obnoxious, if anything, than that of the Irish.

But a reminder that some generals did actually do some fighting, before they took up residence in well appointed chateaux behind the front lines of the first world war.

Reference 1: http://www.hymnary.org/text/there_is_a_green_hill_far_away.

Group search key: exa.