Following the dead fly report of 7th February, I have now had two communications from Waitrose. The first, hand addressed and hand stamped , was the pro-forma acknowledgement that my complaint had arrived at customer support and that I might expect a further letter within 28 working days. The second, arriving almost exactly 14 working days later, with different quality paper, different letterhead but the same postcode, admitted that there were sometimes problems with black flies in red lentils, despite their best efforts. As a gesture of goodwill they made me a present of some vouchers, adding up to enough to buy quite a lot more lentils. A much better effort than either Sainsbury's or Tesco's: I actually got a reply which acknowledged that dead flies could happen. But what I did not get was any words of wisdom about how the flies get there. The sort of thing that the old Foyles might have carried expensive textbooks about and which I am fairly sure they carry no longer; such books make little sense in the age of the Internet, sales are just not big enough. And Professor Google does indeed pull up lots of stuff, including both recent research into lentil infestations in ancient Egypt and the observation that: 'this is an important branch of forensic entomology because consumers who find contaminated products may choose to take legal action against the producers'. So maybe it is more or less impossible to eradicate the black flies and the big shops are wary of energetic pensioners like myself taking them to court, or at least to the trading standards people. But they can rest assured that I have no such intention; I am just curious about the entomology.
Following the visit to the empty skatepark on 10th February, we thought to take another look this morning and were pleased to find activity: various youngsters were doing improbable things on small bicycles, demonstrating considerable application and skill, while a couple of older chaps were carefully drying the skating surface before getting going with their boards. They said that they had been going for about an hour having brought a hot air blower, or perhaps just a leaf blower, from home for the purpose. It seems that while one might cycle over wet patches OK, they were not OK for boards; perhaps the harder and smaller wheels are what make the difference. Overall, their view was that that council had employed a cheapskate contractor who, amongst other offences, had not finished the skating surface to the standard that they expected and they gave the whole a grudging 4 out of 10. Serious people will always find something to moan about!
Following the Hampton Court post of 16th February, we have now tried one of the two bottles of gewürztraminer bought on that occasion, the one with date 2011, title 'Steinert' and subtitle 'Les Roches Calcaires. It cost about the same as the stuff I have been buying from Waitrose and tasted, to our uneducated palettes, much the same. Maybe this particular sort of grape has a strong flavour which masks the noses, finishes, bouquets and so forth for all but the cognoscenti.
Following the post of 17th February, I can now report that there is indeed a pair of goldfinches in and around the back garden, getting a clear and present view of one of them this morning before breakfast. There were also a couple of redwings and a lady blackbird.
And lastly, following the post of 28th February, I have now finished the Gutenburg version of the Mérimée story. To find that the Carmen story is embedded in a rather larger story about searching for the true battlefield of Munda, the origins and languages of gypsies and other matters and is rather darker than the Russian production of the derived opera would suggest. Much darker and bloodier and no spurned village maiden either. Perhaps an ENO production would pick up the bit about the several hundred cigar rollers stripping down to their petticoats, the rolling hall getting rather hot in the summer. Men forbidden without the express permission of the town magistrate. But impressed enough to take a quick look at Seville and Córdoba (not the one in Alaska) on Google Streetview. No need to actually visit the places any more!
I also find that the Gutenburg kindlisation does not work very well in this instance, making a bit of a mess of the extensive footnotes in the version of the text from which they worked. I now await a paid-for version from Amazon France.
No comments:
Post a Comment