Miscarriage of justice

Back at reference 1, I complained that Maigret never made a mistake, was never involved in a miscarriage of justice.

I can now report that it could happen, and may have happened in 'Une Confidence de Maigret'. A story of a brutal murder with plenty of salicious bits and bobs in the margins, quite enough to get both the press and the public going. With the result that the examining magistrate takes charge rather too early, Maigret can't do his job properly and, quite possibly, the wrong chap is sent to the guillotine.

However, Simenon does not go so far as to put any of the blame on Maigret. The whole point of the story being that while his conscience might be pricking a bit, he did what could be done, given the system in which he worked. Not his fault that the examining magistrate, the product of a comfortable middle class background from where you did not learn how most people ticked, could not wait until Maigret had got his confession, had got his 'fair cop, bang to rights', before he stuck his oar in.

Class envy on the part of Simenon, a rich man from a poor background who, perhaps, was never quite accepted by said comfortable middle classes as one of them, more than usually visible.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/maigret-samuse-fin.html.

Reference 2: Une Confidence de Maigret - Simenon - 1959. Volume XXI of the collected works. Not many to go.

Trolley 111

Captured somewhere not very far from base, that is to say Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane.

But, both curiously and irritatingly, I cannot not work out where. I had remembered East Street, but the road in the picture does not seem quite wide enough and the road markings are wrong, at least according to Street View. On the other hand, all the other likely roads in the vicinity are too narrow. All very puzzling, but at least the trolley was real. The camera never lies.

A trolley which was new enough to have an advertisement for Argos-in-Sainsbury's attached to it, the other side of the purple patch visible, but old enough for the side up against the lamp post to be fairly rusty. For which to happen, one supposes that the chrome finish must have been scraped off at some point. Returned to the special needs section by Timpson's.

Furthermore, we have got to trolley 111 and we never made the centenary lunch, now some weeks over due. Moment passed, so we will now have to wait until the bicentenary, which might turn up before Christmas 2018. We shall see.

PS: some hours later, having had breakfast and shaved, the brain is now in better working order, and I have tracked the trolley down to the top of Victoria Place, just off East Street, with the Hakim Fry car park top right. In mitigation I can plead that the Street View picture of the same scene was taken in the summer and top right is mostly green there rather than house. Plus some trick of the light is making a brown house look yellow.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/trolley-100.html.

The house

The house, snapped on the way back from the red trees which were the subject of the previous few posts.

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Tree - close up

The trunk from a few inches away.

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Tree - trunk

The trunk.

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Tree - general view

Part of a stand of handsome conifers with distinctive red trunks. But no idea what they were.

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Festive fare

Following the visit to Polesden Lacey noticed at reference 1, we returned last week to partake of their festive fare.

We arrived at around 1230 to find the cafeteria busy, so settled for an early lunch and walk after, rather than the other way around.

For £9.99 or so we got a perfectly respectable canteen style lunch, built around two or three slices of very thinly and very neatly cut slices of turkey. As is our wont, we wondered about the form in which the turkey had arrived on the premises, with me arguing that it was most unlikely to have arrived in the form of turkeys. But very likely that the turkeys had been through the stage called turkey roll, which meant that it could be very neatly sliced. Possibly the drill is to buy a suitable number of such rolls, cook them, put them through a slicer when cold and then freeze for use in due course. At the point of consumption all that needs to be done is to pour a thin gravy over the slices and warm them up in oven or microwave, au choix.

A variation would be to buy the stuff in in vacuum packs, ready cooked and sliced. In the way that you buy cooked meats in places like Sainsbury's.

Add a dab of a red cabbage confection. Some small pieces of roast parsnip and roast carrot. Some roast potatoes. A thick slice of rather superior sausage, taken from a roll about an inch and a half thick. Much better than your average real sausage. The rather quaintly named 'pig in blanket', otherwise a cocktail sausage wrapped up in a sliver of streaky bacon.

All quite eatable and quite reasonable value. Entirely suited to the pensioner pocket and digestion. Topped out with a warm mince pie.

Out to inspect the grounds, rather than the gardens, which we have not done for a while. I had forgotten about the fine walks, views and trees. Mrs. Greville had done herself proud.

Only slightly marred by one of those posters printed on some kind of plastic sheet which you see all over the place these days, illustrated above. A pity that the managers of the estate found such a thing necessary, that something more tasteful, something more in keeping with the nicely heritage gates would not have done.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/christmas-grotto.html.

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