Culinary affairs

Yesterday started off harmlessly enough with my, having run out of breakfast labels of my own to read, reading the labels on the everyday-value marmalade. I was rather surprised to find that 100g of marmalade contained 20g of fruit and 60g of sugar, with the balance being water with with a touch of pectin (to make the stuff set). So marmalade was essentially sugar, moistened with water and flavoured with a spot of fruit.

Digging a jar of rather better class raspberry jam out of the cupboard, I found that that was 50g fruit and 50g sugar to the 100g of jam.

Going into the 'Radiation' cook book, I found these numbers broadly confirmed for home use, this despite my recollection of childhood jam making being that you started with maybe 70g of fruit, 50g of sugar, a touch of water to start the thing off and then boiling it down to 100g. A boiling down which left the copper preserving pan very shiny, suggesting a considerable ingestion of copper during my formative years - much being thereby explained.

I imagine that you can only buy such a pan now if it has had a large hole punched in the bottom to make sure that you do not try to use it.

We moved onto stuffing to go with our taste-the-difference black legged chicken, which did not turn out as well as that on the last occasion (see reference 1). Or the one before that, for that matter.

Postmortemising, we had various thoughts, listed below in descending order of prior likelihood.

The use of crumb from a sour dough loaf was a mistake. Wrong texture and wrong flavour.

There should have been a little less sage and it should have been more finely chopped. I had failed to make proper allowance for the strength of the freshly picked herb.

One egg rather than two meant that the stuffing did not bind properly.

It should have been cooked for a touch longer.

All this notwithstanding, the stuffing was half done by this morning. But we shall give it a dose in the microwave before moving onto the second sitting, thus addressing the fourth point. At least in so far as we can; second cooking is never as satisfactory as first - excepting here the special cases of beans and of chips, which are said to thrive on it.

PS 1: 'more finely chopped' does not sound well. I shall work on improvement.

PS 2: I forgot to mention the cherries bought from Epsom market on Saturday morning at £3 for a kilo or so. Large, dark, shiny red and looked sound enough. But back home it was clear that the shine was not the fresh, clear shine of an English July cherry, rather a slightly mottled appearance when light was reflected off one. And the flesh, while sound and ripe enough, had rather an odd flavour. Most of them ended up in a batter pudding, Probably chiller-freighted from a long way away and to be avoided in the future.

PS 3: stuffing rather better reheated than first time around. All done now.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/stuffing.html.

7 Up

From time to time I comment on the magical powers and ubiquity of the number seven. See for example reference 1.

I also associate this morning to the soft drink '7 Up', which, as a child coming from a household which did not approve of carbonated drinks, I thought great stuff when introduced to it on a visit to Canada.

And even earlier this morning, I came across another instance, illustrated left, in the technical literature, demonstrating once again that technicians are no more exempt from the magic than the rest of us. Perhaps even less so. And perhaps, given the present dearth of trolleys (see reference 2), I shall start to collect sevens instead.

With thanks to Hiroki Sayama and his institution SUNY, from whence this particular literature came.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-freudians-fight-back.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/trolley-34.html. Way back in June.

Hoekema

According to reference 1, just about a year ago I felt moved to do something about my ignorance of what JW's did. Or, indeed, of anything much about them at all. Movement which was clearly just passing through because, as I mentioned at reference 2, when I passed a pleasant & youngish lady outside Waterloo station offering tracts the other day, I felt the need for an update and took one.

A smartly covered booklet, a good deal smaller than our A5 format and about a quarter of an inch thick. 224 pages inside, smart enough, with plenty of colour pictures, mostly of wholesome people doing wholesome things, but clearly produced to a tight budget. Cheap paper and narrow margins.

I read that believing in God is not enough as even demons do that. I must do better.

They appear to share with Muslims a disapproval of the possession, never mind, use of images. Furthermore, no crosses - and presumably no prayer beads either.

Baptism by full immersion. Perhaps the elders of the Portsmouth congregation have an arrangement with the cathedral authorities for occasional use of the cathedral bath. See reference 3.

Re-birth, should you be lucky enough to qualify on Judgement Day, involves your dormant soul being taken out of escrow and being issued with a brand new body. I did not get to find out whether you had any choice about this. Did it have to be a replica of your body at some point in your time on earth, or were you allowed to start over? Were you, for example, allowed to be a Vulcan, or perhaps something else, yet to be discovered? What about intelligent life forms which did not happen to have gone in for human or even humanoid form? (See the 'Star Trek' official site at reference 4 for some samples. Ask the search button for aliens).

They disapprove of Christmas, not least because they believe that Jesus was born in October. I did not get to find out why this was thought to be so.

On the other hand, elephants are OK, because on page 190 there is a near full page colour picture of a happy family playing on and around one.

You should love and respect your fellow men and women and a wife does well to remember that in God's view, a quiet and mild spirit is of great value. All fair enough. You should respect human life, so no abortion or assisted dying. Triage probably OK, as that can be construed as being passive. You should respect blood of any sort, which appears to mean that you should not consume it by mouth or otherwise. Black puddings and transfusions are out. Presumably JW's who are champion cyclists or rowers have to get a special dispensation from the elders for the tricks that they need to get up to to win. Not sure about white puddings.

I did not get to find out what dispensations were granted to the extended family of Adam and Eve in respect of the rules about marrying within the prohibited degrees. I should say that I am grateful to Mr. F. O'Brien for drawing my attention to this particular problem.

And so to the paper recycling bin. I don't suppose that the Oxfam bin at Kiln Lane would want it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-man-from-grand-rapids.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/rosalind.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/we-were-little-early-for-our-ferry-so.html.

Reference 4: http://www.startrek.com/.

Family fame

For some reason which I have not been able to fully disentangle from my normal morning activities, my attention was drawn to an article written by my father more than half a century ago and which has now arrived on the internet. As a working dentist and life-long atheist, he would, I think, have been pleased by this sort of life after death.

Originally published in the May 1963 number of the British Journal of General Practice (see reference 1).

It looks as if somebody has been very busy with a scanner and the full text can be found at reference 2.

It also looks as if the paper includes some discussion of the gum disease to which older people are prone. Perhaps, given my recent visit to my dental hygienist and her stern words about the importance of cleaning one's teeth properly, I ought to read it.

Reference 1: http://bjgp.org/.

Reference 2:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612887/pdf/jcgprac00076-0066.pdf.

Strawberry Hill 4

Suburban villa, Strawberry Hill style. Suburban villa also being the description on the deeds of our own, much more modest establishment in the Chase Estate. We did not get to check at an estate agents, but a quick peek at google suggests £2.5m, perhaps double what a house of that size would cost here, not that there are many.

Pity about the rather threadbare front gardens. Perhaps the owners are too busy extracting money from the rest of the economy to trouble about such bourgeois niceties.

Extractive industry being the description of our financial services industry once offered by the member of the great and good (I think a one-time banker) who had been asked to take a look at it in the wake of the great disaster of 2009 or so.

Strawberry Hill 3

The second visit to the waiting room library at Raynes Park, mentioned in the post before last, yielded four year's worth of posh book auction records, 1993-1996, in three very substantial and handsomely bound volumes, as new from Dawson's. Heavy enough to warrant the help of a taxi from Epsom Station.

Each volume running to around 500 three column pages, recording all the posh books sold in all the posh auction houses for the year in question. I suppose that such works are no longer printed, it being more sensible to put them out over the internet. So a real historical treasure - although I wonder how long we will give them shelf space for.

Not for the first time, struck by the vagaries of the second hand book market. There were books from the 15th century going for a few hundred pounds. Inscribed editions of Fleming's 'Moonraker' going for a few thousand pounds. Fine editions of Proust going for a few hundred thousand francs.

With Joyce, with part of the entry for 'Ulysses' being illustrated left, being in the middle ground. The usually reliable scanner from HP did not do very well, with the usually reliable telephone from MS not doing much better, but I settled for this last.

Strawberry Hill 2

The substantial slabs of glass mentioned in the last post. Note the absence of gutters and the thick seals between the slabs. All tied together with substantial stainless steel fittings.

Strawberry Hill 1

For many years we have been thinking about and talking about visiting Strawberry Hill, a queer house not far from Epsom. Ambitions kept alive by extensive coverage in the press on the occasion of its fairly recent refurbishment and by our visits to Houghton Hall, one at least of which is recorded at reference 1. Then, earlier this week, we finally made it, in the margins of a visit to John Lewis to regulate a purchase of small clothes.

Elected to get to John Lewis (at Kingston) by train which meant that we were able to pay a quick visit to the waiting room library at Raynes Park where the usual collection of light fiction for ladies was augmented by what appeared to be a collection from an elderly relative and which contained a lot of calendars featuring rather good pictures of the alps, some from Korea, a lot of booklets about matters botanical and a rather smaller number of booklets about matters arty.

Onto to tea, coffee and cake in Fife Road, where my cake was a biscuit base take on an apple crumble pie. Warm and filling.

Amused at the otherwise very smart John Lewis by the trolley illustrated, looking very Co-op among all the usual finery. I might notice also that, unlike those from M&S, the receipts from John Lewis turn black all over if you attempt to iron them. I remember now that there once used to be small printers attached to computers which worked by touching the heat sensitive paper with small hot wires, a dot matrix of them, and I can only suppose that John Lewis are still using them.

Back on the train to Strawberry Hill to find that this last is one of those stations which turn out to be just a hole, as it were, in the side of a suburban street, a phenomenon I first discovered along the northern reaches of the Piccadilly Line. Arnos Grove comes to mind. It being a suburban street, the supply of restaurants and public houses was a bit uncertain, so we settled for bacon rolls at the café near the station. A café which was run by a cheerful lady with a slightly odd accent, which I took to be Australian but which turned out to be of Greek descent, via twenty years in South Africa before winding up in Strawberry Hill. Bacon quite good and plentiful, if a little salty to my taste.

The maps offered by Microsoft on my telephone turned out to be rather idiosyncratic in regard to their labeling of features with some of the labels seeming to come and go. And that downloaded from Ordnance Survey, while much better in that regard, a proper map rather than a town street map, did not, for some odd cartographic reason, include Strawberry Hill House. But we got there in the end.

The House turned out to be an improper National Trust offering, that is to say not a full member of the Trust family and with pretensions to independence in the way of, say, Painshill Park (see reference 2) and attracting a slightly better class of trusty. But they played the Trust game to the extent of having a shop and offering for sale a small but select selection of plants, including some large-leafed strawberries in hanging basket format.

The catch was that while they did not insist on guided tours, which I do not care for at all, they did do timed entry with a talk at entry. The first available slot was 1440, it then being 1330 and raining. We might have abandoned ship at that point but didn't, booking our tickets and sailing off to inspect the Thames from the nearby Radnor Gardens, from where we were able to tweet some green parakeets swinging about their home turf of Ham Lands Meadows. The rain reminded us that riverside cottages were all very well but apt to be damp and cold in the winter.

From there to the rather grand Young's public house and hotel called 'The Alexander Pope', an establishment probably built in the thirties of the last century and graced by the addition of a very grand glass extension out front more recently. Their web site at reference 3 does not do justice to the very decent selection of white wine by the glass, unusual for a public house. We sipped our wine and wondered about the longevity of the seals between the substantial slabs of glass making up the extension. No built in waterproofing in the way of tiles or slates.

And so back to Strawberry Hill at 1440 sharp for our introductory talk, short and rather better than I had feared. The house turned out to be a very odd place indeed, the creation of the youngest son of the Sir Robert Walpole of reference 1. Lots of stuff about the place on the internet, with reference 4 being just a sample, but I offer a few observations.

Lots of money been spent on the recreation of fancy wallpaper and fancy paint. All very heritagefull I dare say, but I am not sure about value for money. But, given that they are a trusty rather than a public operation, I suppose that that is up to the trustees.

I was surprised at the trompe l'oeil wallpaper up the main stairs, but then remembered the trompe l'oeil painting on some of the grand ceilings at Houghton Hall. Even Whig grandees were moved to cut corners at times. Indeed, such painting was quite common at the time and I think that the nearby Ham House is full of it.

Not impressed by the soft toys masquerading as art all over the place, the work of an artist now sedentary but of traveller stock. But while I was not impressed, I could see that the rooms would have seemed a bit cold and empty without, the original contents of the place having been long since dispersed.

The interior doors were of fancy shape, but otherwise rather shoddy looking pine doors. A bit incongruous amid all the fine wallpaper. There was also an element of work in progress and some of the floors had been a bit cut about over the years, rather like our own.

Lighting mainly by Ikea, with some rather clever imitation candles at one point, with the flames cleverly replaced by bits of flame shaped, fluttering foil.

Out to return to the station by a slightly different route on which we were very impressed by the size and appearance of some of the suburban villas. large red brick affairs, rather handsome if expensive to run and probably something more than 100 years old. Made those of our road in Epsom, and its vicinity, seem very lower middle class.

And a return visit to the waiting room library, of which more shortly.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/bob-of-lynn.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/kingfisher-time.html.

Reference 3: http://www.alexanderpope.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/.

It's a bossy world

Google Plus thought to draw this poster to my attention, reminding me to be irritated about the lack of magnanimity of the kill-the-smoker crew who, having won the battle, just can't pack up. Do they really have to go for e-cigarettes as well? Why can't they go and play golf like most of the rest of us?

For a more useful, if more ugly example, see reference 1.

And while we are on irritations, I am reminded that Amazon is reported to have paid £160m for 36 hours of Clarkson and son of Top Gear. He is clearly making a very good thing, a £4m an hour good thing, out of being sacked for boorish, not to say violent, behaviour while at work.

With my view being that the BBC should not get involved in programming with these sorts of costs. Let the Murdoch's and Amazon's throw money at this sort of thing and let the BBC back off & stick to stuff which is more worthy and which offers a bit more bang for buck. Maybe even the sort of stuff which is unlikely to make it to a commercial channel. Arty even. Or thoughtful.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/remainder-shelf-2.html.

Electric Avenue

After the visit of the last post, left Brixton via Electric Avenue, the first street market in London to be graced with electric light. Not now looking much like the picture offered by wikipedia.

I wonder if it looked anything like this when Brixton was the shopping town for MIL and FIL, when they were first married and when FIL was working the Maudsley? Say in the early fifties of the last century.

El Rancho De Lalo

It being Friday, off to Brixton for a a spot of fish last week, possibly the restaurant of the title of this post and probably tilapia, a fish of which I had not previously heard but which gets an extensive and mixed press on google.

Notable feature of the journey out was a middle aged and middle classed lady out with her four sons - from maybe six to sixteen - for a day in London, it being the school holidays. Three fat paperbacks between them, perhaps three books by the same author, to while away any longeurs. Quite enough when I saw them but I dare say she was tired by the end of the day.

Pulled a Bullingdon from Grant Road East, perhaps the first since 7th July. At least that is what the blog says, with TFL being stuck in somewhere called Symfony 2, which I suspect of being some kind of web development environment. The last IT symphony that I knew of being the late lamented Lotus version of MS Office, back from the days when there were several contenders for what has become the MC crown. The rump of the Lotus operation having been swallowed up by IBM. See reference 2. Uneventful ride to Vauxhall where I found that the tree labels noticed at reference 1 were not as effective as one might have hoped, with several labelled trees looking rather unhappy. The problem might have been that they were not outside anyone in particular's house so no-one was chucking a bucket of water at them from time to time. Not enough community spirit to go round.

From whence to Brixton Market, now transforming from an indoor market of the old sort (we even used to have one in Epsom when we first moved here more than twenty years ago) into a throbbing hive of young people looking for fashionable eats. Probably took lunch in the restaurant with which this post starts.

Fish soup, not spicy in the French way, so off to a good start. A grilled fish, very good, firm & white like I like my fish. Dab of salad, dab of boiled rice and what I think was a fried plantain. This last tasting rather like the sweet stewed fruit we might serve at home, but in banana format, Most odd, and even odder as part of the main course. Served with a cool brown fruit squash like quantity made from sugar cane. Rather good. In fact the whole meal was very good and very cheap. Crowded.

Out to wonder about the landlord arrangements for the extensive market area. Was it just the one landlord or a whole lot of them? What sort of least did they offer their tenants?

Also to be amused by the lengths to which a bright young thing went to lock up his bicycle (see above). A long piece of some kind of hard-core steel rope covered in black plastic. This was used to link up all the various parts of the bicycle with the bicycle stand. The two ends where then locked together with an equally hard-core looking U-lock. Rope and lock were rather bulky and rather inconvenient looking, certainly a lot more inconvenient than the very modest-by-comparison lock that I use, and were probably quite expensive. Fifty pounds or more at a guess, so a reasonable proportion of the cost of the bicycle. Perhaps Brixton is not quite as bright-young-thing-full at night as it was by day. Perhaps the old ways are not completely dead.

Enthusiasts will notice the caliper brakes and fixed wheel. Pity about the spectacle arm which leaked into the bottom left of the picture. Must be more careful in future.

Telephone research established that going home cross country from Brixton was going to take a long time and the Bullingdons have not made it to Brixton, so settled for the boring but efficient tube to Vauxhall.

PS: and while we are on tree care, we went through the recently & expensively landscaped Malden Rushett crossroads today, to find that the new trees planted on the western arm, while alive, are not very well. None of contractor, council (the GLC in this Chessington Peninsular. A relic of some special interest or other) or local residents (some of whom are very close by), thought to water them through the recently dry August. They will probably all pull through, but they will be set back. See reference 3. On the up side, the new junction layout seems to be working well.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/tree-care.html.

Reference 2: http://symfony.com/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/democracy-at-work.html.

There be monsters

Brought out onto the pavements in one of the bursts of rain we have had over the last few days.

Slugs around here seem to come in black, green and brown. This one, some two inches or so long, being rather beyond the limit of what the telephone can make a good job of.

Onwards and upwards

A quick search for the Mr. E. J. Upward of the last post revealed that he was almost certainly Mr. E. F. Upward, with a small, florid 'F' being previously misread as a 'J'.

His wikipedia entry says that he was a student at Cambridge at the right time. Furthermore, as was proper at that time, a serious leftie, later softening into a ban the bomber. Friends with Auden and Spender.

Furtherevenmore, in later life he lived at Sandown on the Isle of Wight, overlapping with the period when we holiday'd close by. It is possible that that is where I bought this copy of 'As you like it', although I have no recollection of same. Perhaps another gap in the google search armoury.

Reference 1: http://www.edwardupward.info/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=deighton. From which I am reminded that our copy of 'Hamlet', of the same vintage, also came from Upward,

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Upward.

Reference 4: http://www.maggs.com/. While I have almost certainly walked past this shop, I almost certainly did not buy these two Ardens there. Not my sort of shop at all, at least not for practical purposes.

Rosalind

Last week to the Globe, the first time for a while, to see 'As you like it', the first time since we saw it at the same place back in 2009. See reference 1. Last visits to the Globe itself, excluding introductory visits to the Playhouse, just about a year ago, with two Roman plays last August.

Tracking my review of the 2009 show down proved a bit tricky given that all the words in 'as you like it' are all common and blog search does not do quoted strings.

Tried a google search which is more cunning and I got an entry which claimed to be for 1st December 2006, but which actually & eventually turned out to be for the 5th December, and was, in any case about books rather than plays.

At which point I had a brain wave and I thought to try searching for rosalind and that turns up reference 1, a post for 2009 which google did not find at all. Clearly google is a bit sloppy about indexing my blog, this despite the fact that it runs it, blogger being a member of the google family, as they say at Walmart.

Anyway, back at the Globe, the show started off with an unscripted funeral, which was OK as it served to quieten the audience down, rather as the advertisements and credits do at the cinema.

Costume vaguely Jacobean, which was as I like it (no pun intended), although the court costumes for Rosalind and Celia were oddly unbecoming. The absence of swords jarred occasionally; one can only suppose that the Globe needed to economise on fight masters, health and safety and all that sort of thing.

Charles the wrestler affected a dim voice which jarred and which he kept when he doubled for another role later on. The chap playing both the dukes was not very ducal in either role, but that did not seem to matter. Jaques was well camped up, which I found rather tiresome. Corin a bit feeble. I liked Oliver better than Orlando, but then I suppose it is always easier to pull the bad guy off than the good guy. Phoebe (little) and Audrey (large) both very good. Rosalind and Celia generally good, but with an overdone tendency to girlish giggles and frolics. Not enough sense of their own importance for my taste.

The cast generally were rather keen on making speeches from spots dotted about the extremities of the stage and from the auditorium which I found rather irritating. I like the action on the stage where I can watch without having to keep moving my head about to track down the voice.

Rather more clapping than I like. Rather a lot of aeroplane and helicopter noise. One even suspected the helicopters making a point of showing their passengers the Globe in action. But two cushions (at only a pound a pop) rather than one was a very smart move, particularly as it turned out that our balustrade was near enough the heads of the groundlings not be suitable for much leaning on. For most of the balustrade this was not a problem, but it was for our bit.

Given the amount of song in the script and the wedding at the end, we had worried that the Globe, with its love of song, dance, clowns and pantomime would rather overdo all that sort of thing, But in the event, they did not, and the complicated antique instruments on display were rather fun, Which were followed up by a busker playing tunes on a modified rip saw on the way back to Waterloo,

Reading the Arden crib (1920, Methuen, 2nd edition, originally sold by Deighton Bell & Co. Ltd. of Cambridge and once the property of one E. J. Upward, a chap with a very small hand), I learned that much of the imagery used in this play was also to be found in Lear, where the scenes on the heath served a similar function to this play's scenes in the forest. A parallel which I found interesting in the flesh.

Reading the notes at reference 1, I wonder now whether they simply picked up that previous production, twiddled it a bit for variety, and used it again. No problem if they had, as I liked both shows - and, having been brought up to speed again, it will interesting to see what the National Theatre make of the play in November. All in all, a good outing to see a good play.

On the way to Waterloo, attracted by the flashy & florid window boxes, we stopped for refreshment at the 'Mad Hatter', where they did a very decent New Zealand sov. blonk.. Their gentlemen's rest room also saw fit to offer a communal sink for washing, the first time I have come across such a thing. See reference 2.

Entirely satisfactory supper at the Epsom branch of Ask, with our main course being a spaghetti Bolognese with rather soft spaghetti, soft as if it had been standing cooked for quite a while. I usually prefer my spaghetti a little firmer, but less firmer did not seem to matter on this occasion.

With thanks to wikipedia for the image, 'Jaques and the Wounded Stag' by one William Hodges.

PS 1: found an ancient text about networks by one Andrew Tanenbaum under a seat. A substantial book from 1988, but one which might serve one of my present interests rather well. Lots of stuff about seven layer models. Also a JW tract of which more in due course.

PS 2: very impressive rain as I correct the proofs.

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

Reference 2: http://madhatterhotel.co.uk/.

And then there was light

Walking the Horton Clockwise today I had intended to ponder constructively and informatively on the blood supplies mentioned in the last post. As it was I drifted off onto cameras, the sort of cameras that record everything you see, the sort of cameras used by some police forces to record tricky situations where there may well be disputes after the event about who exactly did what to whom, or who exactly said what to whom.

So I mount a camera on my head, connect it to a power source and off I go. Download it to Dropbox over night, every night.

But then I think it might be nice to stabilise the inbound image a bit and to have a spot in the recorded image which says what I am looking at, where the fovea (I think) is. Perhaps some arrows at the bottom of the image giving direction of head and direction of eyes in space. North, east, south or west. Up or down. We assume that both eyes point in the same direction for these purposes.

A date stamp and map reference for each frame as a matter of course. Perhaps a note feature so that I can make oral notes on the frames as I go along, for future reference. Although, thinking with my fingers, how would it know which frame you want to attach the note to? Would it just stick it wherever you were when you ended the note?

Getting more interactive, it might be nice to have a zoom feature so that I can say 'Cortana, zoom in' or 'Cortana, zoom out'. This might take one into the realm of one stream of images as they arrive at the camera and another stream of images as they are delivered to the eyes.

And moving into image processing mode, it might be nice to speed up the frame rate or slow it down, trading precision of movement detection for precision of feature detection. Or, at the extreme 'Cortana, stop recording' or 'Cortana, start recording'. Nicer still, if even when recording is off, Cortana still keeps a beady eye on things so that she can sometimes say 'Maybe it's time you started recording again, sir' or 'Don't you think you had better do something about the inbound drone at two o'clock, sir'.

Which all goes to show that a systems designer's lot is not an easy one. Maybe I had better talk to one of Kurzweil's chaps to see if it has all been done for me. See reference 1.

Reference 1: http://www.kurzweilai.net/.

Fluid dyanamics

Courtesy of reference 1, I have been thinking about what might be involved in suspending a working brain in some kind of vat. A working brain in or connected to some sort of life support system.

Which led me to think about blood supply, something which the brain, being rather a busy object, needs rather a lot of. A plentiful, steady and reliable supply. So we imagine some sort of blood engine, perhaps a bit like the gas boiler in our hot water system, supplying a tank and then some kind of blood pump, perhaps a bit like the pump in our airing cupboard which pumps the hot water around the radiators. Now, in the case of the hot water system, the only water property of interest is its temperature and we are quite comfortable with the idea that while the boiler and the pump do their best to keep the water at a uniformly high temperature throughout the system, in practice they are going to fail and the temperature of the water will vary - and in some outlying parts of the system the water will be quite cool.

So what about blood, rather more complicated from a chemical point of view than water, and with which the brain interacts, both taking stuff out and putting stuff in? A taking out and putting in that occurs throughout the brain, not just at one or two refuelling points. The water towers that you used to get at strategic points along the railway line.

So to what extent is the chemical composition of the blood going to be the same everywhere? Can we regard that composition as a given, at least from the point of view of thinking about how the brain works?

Clearly this composition is not going to be the same at all places and at all times; replenishment cannot be instantaneous. But do the considerations of scale touched on at reference 2 mean that we can neglect all these messy details? Sadly, I suspect that the answer is no and that the brain in the vat is unlikely to work very well. We cannot usefully detach the brain from the body, not even in a thought experiment.

Getting worse, maybe one should think of the blood system as being an information system in its own right, carrying chemical messages around both the brain and the body. Interacting with the presumably bigger and more complicated information system implemented by the billions of neurons. But who is in charge of that carrying? Who is in charge of reading and writing the messages?

Clearly time for breakfast.

Reference 1: https://evanthompsondotme.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/cosmelli-and-thompson-enaction.pdf.

Reference 2: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-freudians-fight-back.html.

Still clucking

The post at reference 1 is nearly a fortnight old now, so the chicken in question must be around that too. Looking a little tired and spattered but still there a couple of days ago.

If I had been a bit more careful with the camera angle, I might have been better able to judge whether it had got any bigger. As it is, I think not. Furthermore, while to my mind it is a good picture, it does not scale well: what you get by default is unimpressive, with both colours and colour mix a bit feeble. But when you click to enlarge, it looks much better.

Maybe time to downgrade it from poussin to broiler. Although I had difficulty getting one of these last for a stew last time I tried. While thirty years ago they were cheap and plentiful down Harringay Green Lanes. There was also a dog track, long gone.

Before reprising the chicken, I had been conducting an informal survey of driveways in West Ewell, a subject which may come to the boil in Epsom before too long.

Looking at materials first, we have: blacktop; concrete; sub-base or hardcore; chippings, gravel or pebbles; slabs; crazy paving; cobbles; setts; and, bricks. With various varieties of black top - which was more common in West Ewell than I had expected. Not much, if any, in our road at all. But why? Such a practical material. And various kinds of slabs: concrete (aka council slabs); igneous; metamorphic; or, sedimentary. Natural concrete (aka conglomerate) not generally being satisfactory.

Then concrete can come in strips or sheets. Then if sheets, one can cover the whole of the space available, more or less eliminating the need for maintenance, or one can leave a few tasteful and ornamental flower beds.

Then bricks, and to a lesser extent setts, can go down simple or complicated. One drive, not in West Ewell but down our own road, has gone in for interlocking arcs, involving different colours, shapes and sizes. The chap who did it said that it took a long longer and cost a lot more than a bog standard job.

Then there is the matter of edging.

Then there is the matter of lowering the kerb or not.

Not to mention foundations.

All in all a complicated subject which may well play into the long grass. In the meantime, I can ponder on what to do with the length of six core telephone cable that I turned up in some other long grass somewhere. And if that is too taxing, I can just ponder on why the telephone people need six cores. I thought they did twisted pairs.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/chicken-of-woods.html.

And another puzzle

I once read somewhere on an Amazon site that it is not the policy of the Amazon Corporation to pay a dividend. It has never paid a dividend and has given no clues as to whether or when it might do so.

Nothing wrong with that. They are quite open about it and if you continue to buy shares that is up to you. Also true, that the price of those shares rises, or at least has risen, so you make on capital value even though you don't get a divi.

But then I think that the founder of Amazon is very interested in space flight, has invested a lot of money in a space flight company and spends more time on shipping in space than he does on shipping consumer goods on earth. See reference 1.

So where does that money come from?

When Amazon floated, was he actually selling off some of his own shares, thus converting his own shares into his own money, which he could use for whatever he wanted?

Or does Amazon simply transfer a slug of dosh to Blue Origin from time to time? And if so, how does that appear in the Amazon balance sheet? Wouldn't the other shareholders get a bit cross? Wouldn't this be in contravention of whatever the Amazon articles of association might say?

Or does Mr. Bezos pay himself a sufficiently large salary to do it that way?

Maybe there is someone out there who knows the answer and who will save me the bother of further checking. Or perhaps the answer lies somewhere in reference 2, if I can bring myself to read it.

PS: Amazon are not alone in being a big and successful corporation which does not pay a dividend, although it is the third biggest such, after Google and the sage of Omaha (B).

Reference 1: https://www.blueorigin.com/. A rather unusual web site.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin.

Ants in the daffodils

We have what appears to be an ants' nest growing in the new daffodil bed. An ants' nest which resists the attentions of my telephone. If you try to snap it when the sun is out and behind you, you can't see what you are doing and the result is overexposed. If you try to snap it when the sun is in, you get the sort of washed out image I offer left. All most unsatisfactory.

For the moment I am not inclined to do anything about it, being interested to see how far the nest spreads. Presently about a foot wide, maybe a third of a square foot in extent and maybe two inches above ground level at its highest point.

Google suggests that ants are more likely to be into eating small animals, particularly other small invertebrates, seeds and nectar. No mention of roots, but I would not have thought a large underground nest did the roots on the spot much good. The ants might well harvest them for nest construction or for litter, even if they do not actually eat them. So I expect the ants to do a fair amount of damage to the plants in their immediate vicinity. Bulbs presumably come with various anti-bacterial and anti-grazial chemicals, intended to get them through the dormant season, maybe alkaloids of some sort, but maybe ants can cut through these defenses.

The odd thing is that while there is usually evidence of activity in the morning, with new earth thrown up onto the surface and with the appearance of various small exit holes, I never see any ants. Perhaps the birds are up early and eat the morning shift while I am eating my breakfast.

Watch this space.

Unimpressed

Prompted by the news that the Met Office has lost its £30m a year contract with the BBC, I wondered how big a chunk of their revenue that was.

After a bit of faffing around, I turn up an annual report for 2015-2015. See reference 1. From which I learn that the Office makes a modest profit and has annual revenue of the order of £200m of which more than 80% comes from elsewhere in government and more than half of that comes from something called the Public Weather Service. The report does not appear to contain the word BBC - so much for being a valued customer. Nor can I find any breakdown of sales by either product or customer.

Google also talks of plans to flog the office off. But if I was a potential buyer I think I would want to know a bit more about the revenue side of things than that. We might have a fancy annual report telling us lots of stuff about the pay & rations of the senior management team, the world reputation of their weather scientists and the insulation on the roof of the headquarters - but not all that much about the commercial side of the business. Not impressed.

Reference 1: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/d/b/AR1415_Revised.pdf.

A composition with hedgerow wine in the making

Despite the failure of the last attempt, I think around the time of posting reference 1, I was moved yesterday to another go at hedgerow wine. The occasion being happening to pass a couple of clumps of blackberries at the northern end of our road with an empty water bottle, empty because of the thirst brought on by the heat on the Horton Clockwise.

Filled the bottle with blackberries, added maybe a tablespoon of sugar, a few grains of bread yeast (Allinson's easy bake, the stuff that comes in a mainly green container, rather than the yellow one) and top up with water. Balance lid on top rather than screw it on. Place in blue bowl and await developments. Which was the merest hint of bubbly activity by close yesterday. but overflowed by the this morning. Left for the moment to see what happens next.

Blue bowl from the Denby Stoneware range, bought by my mother maybe sixty years ago. A brand which we are still buying, with the last occasion being only a week or so ago. See reference 2.

Red and cream tin from Gray Dunn & Co. Ltd., formerly a famous manufacturer of Christmas biscuits from Glasgow. Of the same vintage as the blue bowl. A quick peek at google fails to reveal whether they still exist, but I suspect not given that there was talk on YouTube of an abandoned factory.

Wooden contraption to the left, a carpenter's or painter's boat, still used occasionally.

White contraption below, a box used for many years to hold bicycle parts, most of which never get to be used and some of which get to be thinned out from time to time.

Work of art above, the most recent addition to the Epsom oeuvre. See reference 3 for some notes from the gallery.

With breeze blocks of the clinker variety as a backdrop. Vintage sixties home improvement.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=The+limitations+of+statistics.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/miscellaneous.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/content-free.html.

Artichoke

The remnants of my first artichoke for some time. Very satisfactory. See previous post.

Zanussi or bust

Sad to report, following the apparently successful effort at reference 1, the lower oven handle fell off its right hand screw again, the right hand screw, slight though it is, being the one that takes all the stick. Clearly a bad bit of design detailing. I could have just drilled right through and tied the thing up with a new nut and bolt, but this would have been unsightly and would probably have resulted in cuts to hands catching on the bolt head, so settled for a visit to John Lewis at Kingston instead. Not a terribly hopeful visit as perusal of the internet suggested that we were not going be able to replace the solid plate cooker and that we were probably going to have to get something a good deal more complicated than was necessary.

As it turned out, we did better than expected, as while there were indeed no solid plate cookers, we did find a Zanussi, halogen hobbed cooker with six knobs that turned and no added electical contrivances at all. ZCV66000WA. It also had the merit of being the cheapest cooker on the block. Sold to the couple from Epsom. To recover, a quick tea in the canteen overlooking the river, after which we decided to take a stroll on the other side of the river, heading towards Hampton Court and where we were able to take in various sights.

An old fashioned skiff with a rudder, and a rolled up awning on a spar running the length of the skiff. Perhaps three chaps out on an enactment of 'Three men in a boat'.

Then yellow boat illustrated, a boat which I think we have seen and snapped before, on the other side of the river, but not turned up by a quick search of the other place (http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/), which is where I would expect to have found it. Yellow, river and submarine failed to do the business, but I may think of a more cunning search term later. A helpful chap in the next boat explained that it was the sort of life raft used on container ships, with launch being down a slip way, presumably built into or hung off the side of the ship in some way. He thought that there were several of them dotted along the river. We thought that with the hatch down they might well be proof against bands of cheerful young males wandering about after the pubs shut, unlike the boat of our informant.

A shut up & empty river side building site sporting a fence well grown with convolvulus and such like. Presumably an ongoing planning dispute about the fate of this most desirable site.

A party of females dressed in nautical gear, a cheerful hen party having a picnic. They had started drinking about noon and we wondered what plans they had for the rest of the day.

Back to Kingston Bridge to find a Waitrose trolley abandoned on the bank leading up to the roadway. Collection vetoed on this occasion.

Along the other side of the river to inspect all the eateries which seem to have sprung up to replace the French flavoured restaurant - Frère Jacques - which we had used occasionally in the past and settled for lunch in a quiet pub. Entirely satisfactory.

Back through the busy market, enlarged by a foodie fest, where we bought some Spanish plums masquerading as Victoria plums, some Frenchified bread (irritating how solid French bread is all over the place but it is difficult, if not impossible, to get hold of a decent bloomer) and some artichokes. Declined some elderly looking comte despite the stall claiming that it came from Borough Market, from where I have bought some very good comté in the past. See reference 2.

Home to find that the plums were some way off being fit to eat, but they did stew rather well.

PS: some days later, we were phoned up by an anxious lady from John Lewis who sparked off a panic about whether we need airspace round our new cooker. She was talking of 150mm clearance on both sides - which we certainly did not have. And she got even more anxious when I mentioned the nearby boiler. However, this all turned out to be twaddle and the cheerful fitter (who turned up, as advertised, just after 0700 one fine morning) had the thing in in no time. It has now turned out one satisfactory cake and is about, I hope, to turn out two satisfactory loaves.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/show-time.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/five-day.html. 

The Freudians fight back!

Once upon a time, there was the seven layer model for open systems interconnection, a model which has been very successful in bringing order to a once messy world, no doubt in part because of its leveraging of the properties of the magic number seven. Also known, for example, for the seven hills of Rome and the seven deadly sins. Even the evolution of the human brain has paid its dues with seven being the number of things that one can hold in working memory at any one time. There is a long list of such at the wikipedia article for the number seven. And for the very curious there is reference 1.

In other fields of endeavour, not just systems interconnection, it is well known that scale can be important. Lots of things are visible at one scale but not another. So in the animal kingdom we have all kinds of microscopic things going on in the eukaryotic cell, the building block of larger life. Moving up a bit we have the vascular system of capillaries irrigating those cells. Moving up a bit more we have the standard ground plan of a vertebrate. Different kinds of things are explained at the different scales. And layers is just another way of looking at scale.

So all in all, it seems entirely appropriate to continue the theme with the seven layer model of the brain illustrated above left.

But my focus today is not with layers, but with clouds, first here mentioned at reference 2. Clouds which might be thought of as being the traces or products of systems, systems which combine process and data more intimately than is thought proper in a normal computer system. The idea now being that there is not just one cloud, but a number of clouds, a regular menagerie of clouds fighting for their niche, for their space in the brain. For the moment, in line with the field idea, we suppose the clouds to be disjoint; at most one cloud in any one place at any one time.

We allow each cloud its own base, a base in which it can do rest and recreation and from which it can sally forth when the time is right. A base which implements various critical functions. A base which gives the cloud some continuity, some continuing life, getting it over the periods when it is not particularly active or important. With one cloud being consciousness, perhaps the cloud with its base in some special part of the brain stem.

It might then be that there are others clouds which implement some of the structures invented by the Freudians, if not by Freud himself. The ego, the id and the superego. With subordinate systems doing things like transference, projection, repression and sublimation. And with cathexis being a measure of the power with which certain clumps of neurons are endowed. For example, in an anxious female, perhaps a failure from the great bake, the clump of neurons which is home to the concept 'pecan tart' might have a lot of cathexis. And in an anxious male, the clump of neurons which is home to the concept ‘castration’ might have. And I am not in jest here. I do believe that, despite the disfavour into which the Freudians have presently fallen, in part because of dubious science and dubious behaviour of some of the founding fathers, they were onto something. The brain is a very complicated bag of tricks and if we are going to succeed in reaching some accessible & shared understanding of how it all works, we need some structure, something which is not hidden in layers of statistical or electrical reasoning, far beyond the reach of the common mortal. And something like the ego strikes me as an object at about the right level. Maybe it will regain its explanatory pre-eminence.

Furthermore the time is right. While until now the theories of the Freudians could be dismissed as the unverifiable dreams cooked up by shrinks from the burblings of their patients, we are not that far off the time when we will be able to look and see. To test and perhaps to verify some of those theories.

I close with a quote from Flann O’Brien, from p167 of the Everyman edition of the complete novels: ‘the tense of the body is present indicative; but the soul has a memory and a past and a future’. Maybe the Jesuits (from which I assume this comes) were onto something too – and it is certainly no coincidence that the Freudians thrived in the countries of the Catholics. Still do, I believe, in the countries of South America.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=seven. With a further selection to be found at http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=seven. There is clearly a lot of it about.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-dogs-life.html.

Gift

The gift of a young neighbour, celebrating the arrival of their plums, small yellow variety. Tart a variety of clafoutis and very nice it was too.

Something that we have made, with some success, in the past. See reference 1.

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

Chain saw bandits

Tractor mounted flail alternative.

Maybe someone will get around to telling the council's contractors that if you flail a hedge to within two or three inches of the primary shoots the result is unsightly and apt to be lethal. Hedges do not like being cut back this hard, they need room to grow.

It is not as if there is not plenty of space at the corner of Horton Lane and Chessington Road (gmaps 51.355497, -0.273357).

But then again, having been told to contract all this sort of work out, perhaps the council has washed its hands of the whole business. Let the contractor get on with it. Far too busy with other more important stuff (like cycle tracks) to supervise this lot.

Corby crimmy

The newspapers are putting all kinds of stuff onto the Corbyn charge sheet, including anti-Semitism.

Leaving aside the merits, or not, of the charge, I am struck this morning by the meaning of the phrase, given the roots of its second word, with Semite to my mind including the Arabs, amongst others. The Arabs who are on the spot and who are most closely interested in and engaged with Israel.

Consulting my rather out of date Chambers Encylopaedia, I find that Semitic is most commonly used to name a family of languages, rooted in the shores of the eastern Mediterranean and which includes both Hebrew and Arabic, not to mention Aramaic, the mother tongue of Christ. But also to name a family of peoples, or races, covering much the same ground.

It seems that back in the mid twenties of the last century there were two main ways of classifying races. One was based on type of hair followed by skin colour with Semites getting a mention and the other on type of head followed by skin colour with Semites hidden away among the dolichocephals. Perhaps the interest in head shape was a relic of the fashion for phrenology. But I dare say things have moved on since the article on race in Chambers, and for head shape you should now read genome.

PS: I forbear from adding Hemites to the discussion.

Wetherspoons Library

Short visit to the Wetherspoons Library at Tooting last week.

Started off by admiring what I took to be a hop plant climbing all over a tree across the rails from the Waterloo platform. It was a lot more vigorous than those which we saw at Ventnor last month (see reference 1) and I wondered how high a mature hop plant could climb. Would one top a mature oak? There would be the problem of access as first there would not be enough sun around the trunk and second the trunk itself might not be very climbable - but assuming that the hop made it to the foliage in the sun, how far would it go then?

Smart but wet, folding umbrella found in the train. Red in colour. Pricks of conscience about not handing it in to lost property smoothed over by thinking that it was most unlikely that the owner, probably a young lady, would bother to try to get it back from British Rail lost property, efficient though they were. Pricks of conscience about the offensive advertisements posted from time to time by the maker - Benetton - overruled. BH quite pleased as it seems that while wet, the umbrella was of a better quality than the last one we found on a train.

Lots of foreign language books in the library on this occasion, particularly German, including one with a very nice red binding. I almost took it for its binding, but that seemed a bit silly given my complete lack of German, and settled instead for a light novel, perhaps a ladies romance, from Duhamel, 'Cécile parmi nous'. Subtitled with a quote from Racine 'Êtes-vous, parmi nous, à ce point étrangère'. The seventh, and at that time last, in the 'Chronique des Pasquier' series, from what appeared to be a popular and successful author, member of the Académie Française, but one of whom I had never heard. First owned by one S. V. G. Lay in December 1938.

A book which looks as if it was printed in France for sale in France, but with 'The French Book of the Month Club' printed in English across the bottom of the original front cover. The original front cover now being obscured by a second binding. But, oddly, with the original spine being preserved inside the second back cover. Not clear from when this second binding dates, beyond it being some time ago. Perhaps the custom was to make the book with soft covers in the first instance, but then to bind a proportion for the better class of trade. In any event, further evidence that the French book trade is not run on quite the same lines as our own.

After all this, I was made to feel my age on the way home by a couple of young girls getting off the bus, on their way to something very important. Just old enough to be allowed out for such purposes, just leaving childhood for the big wide world. For some reason they made me feel old.

PS 1: I find this morning that the book rates an entry in the French version of wikipedia, the first of the google results for the quote from Racine - which turns out to be from Athalie. See reference 2. The second google result is from an online version of the French version of OED (Littré) in which the quote is used to illustrate the meaning of the word 'parmi'. I dare say if I look a bit harder there will be the odd result from the master himself. A further example of the fascinating intricacies of the world of search engines, dictionaries and encyclopedias.

PS 2: and a further sign of age being my decaying typing skills. One example of this decay being 'over a' for 'of a' in an earlier draft of the foregoing.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/botanic-1.html.

Reference 2: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_parmi_nous.

Pig foot

Readers who do not read the 'New Scientist' may be interested to know that, during the economic downturn caused some 3,000 years ago by the long term, indeed terminal, decline of the bronze trade, the ancients of Glamorgan went in for bizarre pigfests which seemed to be almost exclusively focused on the front right feet of said animals.

Apart from speculating on what these pigfests might have been about, one can only wonder at the dedication of the staff of the National Museum of Wales who had near 75,000 bone fragments to sort out.

Readers who want more than is to be found at reference 1 below will be invited by the Syndics of the University Press of Cambridge to cough up £15. Click on the illustration for all the grisly details. But you can feast on the grand title of the paper there advertised for free.

Reference 1: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28024-iron-age-britons-engaged-in-mysterious-pig-trotter-festivals/.

Chamonix

A few days ago I noticed the odd appearance of a field off Horton Lane, as seen from the air. See reference 1.

Today I was moved to investigate and found a couple of chaps outside a van called chamonix who were only too happy to explain to me that the field had been turned into allotments for the use of the people living on the housing estate which had been built on what was West Park Hospital, presumably part of the package which the developer had signed up to with the council. He said that he thought that around 30 of the 60 plots had been taken, although he had not seen any gardening activity to date - just an older gentleman taking a couple of hours to pick himself some grass seeds. Presumably a chap with cage birds, careful enough with his money to prefer spending time picking rather than spending money in a pet shop. Unless, that is, he was a former resident of the hospital paying a sentimental visit to one of his old haunts.

He also seemed to think that not being a resident was no disqualification and that if I got in touch with the chamonix people at reference 2, maybe they would sign me up. I was rather tempted, the plots looking quite small, a lot smaller than that I used to have next to Stamford Green School. Much more suitable for the older gardener. Maybe the hour a day I try to spend walking could be spent gardening instead? Quite enthusiastic for the remainder of my walk, which I spent thinking about low maintenance gardening. Would there be rules about what could be grown? Would I, for example, be allowed to grow pampas grass, bamboos and big aloe-ish succulents - all things which I rather like, which do not need much attention once established, and which are too big for my part of our garden proper? What about trees and huts? Garden benches? Who would be responsible for dealing with the deer problem - it only being  few weeks since I last saw a couple of deer in a nearby field? Quite a lot of stuff about my previous experiences with deer at reference 3.

Calmed down a bit now - but I shall reflect further.

PS: I had thought to include this fascinating stuff in a comment to the original post at reference 1. But a couple of experiments with comments containing the search term 'beelzebub1' (of which there are now two) suggest that the blog search offered at the top of the blog does not look at comments, reducing the value of comments as text of record. Which I why I have opted, on this occasion, for a whole new post.

It is possible that it takes a while for the blog indexes to be updated with stuff from comments, but I am not sure that there are any indexes, that it would be worth indexing the blog at all. The blog is quite small by the standards of modern search engines and a scan without the support of indexes would probably be quite fast enough.

And if I get really bored I can start testing the performance, if any, of blog search on word roots, capitals and plurals, all that good stuff which google itself is quite good at. Also the supplier of the picture from chamonix included above.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/long-grove-park.html.

Reference 2: http://www.chamonixgroup.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=deer+fence.

Pills

The other day to the surgery to collect my prescription. Oh no sir, you don't collect them any more. We send the signed prescription to pharmacy A and you collect your medicines from there. I dimly recall signing some form at pharmacy A authorising this arrangement.

So off I go to pharmacy A where they say yes sir, certainly sir, we got your prescription through yesterday and we made it up last night. Thinking of some poor shop assistant toiling away on minimum wage, I hope they meant early evening. Just hang on while we get it out for you.

Maybe 15 minutes later they were still getting it out for me and I suspect that in the end they gave up and made it up again. The lady behind me was on the same case, in her case for stuff for diabetes which she had asked for about 10 days previously, and I wondered how much storage space this not very big pharmacy had for all the ladies like her. As it turned out, she got out before me, having waited for around 10 minutes - 10 minutes being about how long you walked around the block for in the olden days when you walked the prescription in yourself. No doubt it will all settle down and the new service will indeed come to serve.

While I waited for the IT pill distribution system to kick in, to distribute, I pondered about how IT might better support consumption - assuming for these purposes that I can be relied on to be near my telephone at all times. The IT pill consumption system.

First thought was that I could tell Cortana (the helpful person who lives inside my telephone) about needing to take pills each morning and evening and could she remind me please. This would take just a few seconds to set up. Second thought was that this would be rather tiresome since I usually remembered without a reminder, but might not remember and certainly would not want to bother to cancel the reminder on each occasion.

Third thought was that I needed to internet enable the little plastic box I have between the supply in the drawer and me. A little plastic box holding seven smaller boxes, one for each day, and with each smaller box having two compartments, one for morning and one for evening. (As one gets older there are more elaborate versions with more compartments, catering for more complex states of the world). The little plastic box that I use cost a couple of pounds or so from Boots and has served very well, with my only rarely missing a dose, usually much less often than once a month.

But one could do better, Firstly, rich & ostentatious people, would like something more flashy than a little plastic box. Maybe the Mick Jaggers, the Damien Hirsts and other celebrities of that sort would like to have a gold pill box, encrusted with diamonds and sapphires. Perhaps I should pop into Aspreys to make sure that they have such things. Secondly, coming back to the third thought, the box should be internet enabled.

It would know when each compartment should be emptied and whether it had been emptied. After a suitable interval it could send a message to Cortana who could make my telephone ring or vibrate or something. And she would do that every so many minutes until the compartment said that it had been emptied.

The next level would not be to bother with the little plastic box at all, rather to have a rather grander contraption simply dispense the pills needed at any particular time, directly from the main supply, into a small, jewelled container. This container would then start to send out alerts if it was not emptied at about the right time. This would eliminate the weekly ritual of box filling. But would have the disadvantage of not being so portable. Need to think a bit more about that side of things.

And then, from time to time, it could send an email to the surgery requesting further supplies. And so on and so forth.

An even further level would be pills that were IT enabled. Each pill would include a microchip which could tell the fat controller when it had been ingested and by whom. This would provide a useful extra check that a pill removed from my pill container had in fact been consumed by me.

Green planet

The other day I came across a smartly decorated white van at the end of our road - otherwise a transit-type van as used by jobbing builders - called green planet water supply division. I didn't like to take a picture of it but I did wonder what on earth it was all about. Houses in the suburbs of London mostly get their water from Thames Water, a well known outfit now headquartered in Australia and with the Macquarie Group lurking behind the throne. A group which packs a bigger punch than its fifty or so years would suggest.

Was the van into conjuring water out of the ground using solar panels or something, so that you could dispense with the chlorine & fluorine polluted stuff which you might otherwise get our of your tap?

But a short consultation with google, discarding all the eco stuff about saving the planet, reveals that this green planet outfit is really into offering household utility services of the sort that we buy from British Gas. Their core business is looking after getting utilities into and out of your house. To which end they are pretty nifty when it comes to digging large holes in your garden, particularly your front garden. See reference 1.

Essentially a bunch of navvies, Murphy's men as it were, in eco-clothes. Mystery solved.

Reference 1: http://www.greenplanetwaterconservation.co.uk/.

A puzzle for aficionados

A selection of screen shots from a computer package with which I have a family connection. The test, for which the reward is fame rather than fortune, is to work out what that connection might be. Persons not resident in the UK are not eligible.

These particular shots caught my eye because they mention Laguna Beach, a place which I once had the opportunity to visit, in the margins of some very important meeting. See gmaps 33.545987, -117.793684. An odd place, with houses built out on wooden piles over the beach, complete with a chap going around with a special contraption, a bit like a metal detector, but for detecting whether giant ants were eating the piles. Also the place where I bought my first copy of 'Into Thin Air', a tale of strange & tragic goings-on on the top of Mount Everest. A book which, as it happened, introduced me to the rather different style of book production prevalent in the US. One very visible difference being the way the pages were cut, with the US liking ragged-cut rather than straight-cut. No idea how it is done. Another was the inclusion of a number of small wood-cuts, more or less dropped from books over here for a very long time.

Garbo

Having noticed a biography of Queen Christina of Sweden at reference 1, and following the interest in Greta Garbo noticed more generally at reference 2, I got a biography of Garbo for 50p from a lady at a Hook Road car boot sale. It was a rather a hot day and the lady, no longer young, had her head wrapped in a white towel in an effort to keep the sun off.

A 1955 biography by the late John Bainbridge of the US (not to be confused with the English writer and footpath campaigner of the same name), which while a little superficial at times, eschewed probing the more private parts of this rather private lady's life. A star who contrived to make a virtue out of not behaving like your regular star and a writer with old-fashioned manners.

I share just one snippet. In reference 1 I talk of early retirement. This turns out to be not quite right. She might have packed up early, but this was the result of a mauling over a bad film called 'Two-face Woman', released & censored in 1941. She retired hurt from the scene, but continued to look at and think over projects for films for years to come, sometimes coming close to action but not, in the event, making it. The project coming closest being perhaps that to have her star in a film of the life of George Sand, yet another strange bird, who as well as having an affair with Chopin, liked to wear male attire instead of the complicated female attire of her day.

Anyone wishing to share the experience can do so for 1p plus £2.67 postage, rather more if you want a dust jacket (which I did not get), from amazon. I continue to puzzle about why people would bother to sell a book for this price - a practice which seems to be quite common on booky web sites. Wanting to find a good home for your old books is all very well, but it is a lot of bother.

The illustration, from google, illustrates the sort of thing she had to put up from studio publicity departments before she had became famous enough to put a stop to it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/christina.html.

Reference 2: or for the whole lot, http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=garbo&max-results=20&by-date=true.

Leaves

A small tree, which I took for some kind of eucalyptus. Snapped near the northern exit of Long Grove Park.

The point of interest being that there seemed to be two sorts of leaves on the one tree, with one sort being the ordinary sort, top right, and the other sort being rather odd. Roughly circular leaves growing around the stem, rather than from the stem on a stalk, and which can be seen in the lower part of the picture.

Circular leaves some of which also seem to be host to some kind of small, central flower.

What would the leaf identifier I came across the other day have made of it all? See reference 1. I remember being irritated that the identifier did not work on Lumia telephones, but now I am irritated by not being able to recover the context in which I found out about the identifier in the first place, beyond it being via Professor Jacobs of Maryland University. There seems to be no record, here or anywhere else, despite my being sure that there is a record somewhere. Maybe it will come back to me over breakfast.

Reference 1: http://leafsnap.com/.

Long Grove Park

Certainly on or near the site of Long Grove Hospital but also known as Southfield Park, from the school at the top of it. In any event, I took a turn around it the other day to find the skate park looking a bit bare.

The banks were turfed getting on for two years ago (see reference 1) and have looked OK, but they were not looking OK on this occasion. Now I have never seen people running up and down the banks, even when the place is busy, so I don't put their condition down to that. Rather that, if you turf steep banks like these, then strim them down close in dry weather, the grass is going to snuff it. Maybe the grass never put much of the way of roots down into the clay under the turfs. Perhaps the skate park contractors knew all about the slide & ramp side of things but were not so hot when it came to grass. Will the grass come back or will the banks just gradually wash away?

Maybe they should have got a grass consultant in from Wisley who could have told them about what grass to use. Rather harder would be trying to tell the grass mowing contractor to calm his strimmers down a bit. I associated to the prophecies of doom of my childhood to the effect that if you strip all the decent people out of the working class with education & opportunities, what is left is going to be rather a rough lot, unconstrained by the presence of decent & intelligent elders. The sort of elders who were still around in my days on building sites; they might have been labourers, classified as unskilled by the Ministry of Labour of the time, but they were decent, highly skilled, hard working and they knew a lot about the world and the people in it. A problem which the Indians used to avoid with their caste system: it didn't matter how good you were, if you were born into a bricklaying family or a grave digging family that is what you did. And a problem to which I do not see any easy solution - beyond the process and procedure which dominate many once pleasant walks of life.

I also associated to the gang of strimmers I saw working on the anti-gypsy banks on the other side of Horton Lane, around gmaps 51.338134, -0.293141. The banks were overgrown with tall, rank weeds and I am sure that it was taking a lot longer to strim them down than it would have taken with a scythe, or even a sickle. But maybe, brought up on Xbox rather the physical jerks, the strimmer operators would not be able to swing a scythe for more than a few minutes at a time, assuming, that is, that one cared to trust them with such things at all.

Exiting the park, I came across some strange leaves, but I shall leave them for the next post.

And then, back in Manor Green Road there was more grass. Grass which had been sown a couple of weeks or so ago in the front garden of a house which has just been more or less rebuilt. Sown when it was hot & dry and which has done well, despite my dismal expectations. A bit thin yet and with something of a bare patch in the middle, but doing pretty well, maybe a couple of inches high now. They have been lucky with the weather as it turned out and they have helped their luck along with regular watering. Hopefully the Poles on this case do not know about strimmers and it will look like a lawn by the autumn.

PS: the google maps satellite picture at 51.338134, -0.293141 shows a lot of rectangles rather than a banked field. Are these rectangles the traces of allotments of former times, perhaps war time endeavours to grow more grub? Occupational therapy for mental patients? Or is it something much more recent and banal like land drains? Or are they laying out some new allotments for the inhabitants of the new estates? Now I come to think about it, they have been doing something with lots of little marker posts in the field in question. When did google take their picture? A closer look is clearly called for in the margins of the next blackberry hunt.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/inspection-day.html.