Not salt

We were moved last week to visit the Mole at Leatherhead and after some thought, decided to park in the Swan Centre as usual, where I was interested to come across the bags illustrated, which I assumed to contain some fancy version of salt for use in the winter.

Checking this morning, I find that it is actually a widely used fertiliser, which just happens to be quite a good de-icer, good in part because it is not corrosive in the way that salt is, and so popular in multi-storey car parks. One of the places you can buy the stuff from is Saudi Arabia (you were wrong if you thought that this place was just a huge tank of petrol with some rather odd people living on top of it), as can be seen at reference 1. Which tells us, inter alia, that the stuff is reasonably stable, but that ,when it decomposes, it gives off hydogen cyanide, aka prussic acid, aka zyklon-b and once used for executions in the US. I wonder what the operators of the Swan Centre car park would make of all this.

Or if you prefer to buy British, see reference 2.

The Mole turned out to be fairly quiet, so we divided our time between the many charity shops on the High Street and the (very old) church, unexpectedly open. The one with the large dormer windows to let light into the nave. Plus a two inch trilogy from Cormac McCarthy for 99p. See reference 3 for this author's last mention here.

The High Street had plenty of bars and restaurants, but the retail side looked a bit sad, with, for example, the ancient old-style hardware store having shut since our last visit. The Swan Centre seemed to lack the life of our Ashley Centre. All in all, the whole place, people included, seemed a bit run down, odd given that the area includes some of the most expensive housing in the land. Awash with celebrities and bankers. Some of which was visible on the bluffs above the river, just south of the church.

All of which caused me to wonder about talking heads like Mary Portas, a former window dresser for Harrods and of whom we were hearing a good deal not so long ago. Talking heads which I usually find rather tiresome: who are they to pontificate about how we should run our towns?Almost as bad as celebrity chefs. But wondering because it had occurred to me that if I was the owner of a moribund Swan Centre, I might well be prepared to bet a few thousand pounds on a few days of Mary's time if I thought she could wave some magic wand and bring some profit back into my investment.

Next thought was that conversion of the Centre into housing would be rather expensive, even supposing that the council would allow such a thing.

Thus concluding our visit to the town of the tanners.

Reference 1: http://www.sabic.com/me/en/productsandservices/fertilizers/prilled-rea-granular-rea.

Reference 2: http://www.rocksaltshop.co.uk/info/prilled-urea.html?gclid=CLDCpentw8gCFROdGwodmPwB9w.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/fat-stamps.html.

Cigars

At some point in the last 48 hours or so a cigar dream. I woke up this morning thinking about it, but was not at all clear when it had been. Perhaps a going to sleep dream from the night before, rather than a waking up dream this morning.

I had, early this particular evening, smoked two cigars, in company, outside, perhaps in a suburban garden, perhaps coronas, perhaps (taking a peek at google) Romeo y Julieta Cedros De Luxe No. 2, a brand I used to get on with, although perhaps not that particular model number.

A not entirely satisfactory smoke. Partly because I smoked the second too soon after smoking the first. These are substantial cigars and one should not really be smoking more than one of them at a sitting. Partly because the smokes were not quite right. Maybe the cigars were flawed (as these sort of cigars often are, not like cigarettes in that way), maybe I was not smoking them right.

I associate now to bicycles, another sort of thing which is never quite right. There is always some nagging flaw. Maybe the brakes are a bit worn, maybe the gears need to be adjusted, maybe the tape on the handlebars is getting a bit ragged. Or maybe the leather of the saddle has been scraped along a wall at some point and the untreated scrape irritates every time one take the thing out.

Associating now on the combination of perfection and yesterday's post, I think of those Renaissance artists who prided themselves on being able to draw a near perfect circle freehand. Not drawing around something and not using a compass. And of those lesser mortals who prided themselves on being able to draw a near perfect straight line freehand. One might admire such a circle, take pleasure in its perfection, in the knowledge of the love, care and skill which had gone into its construction. Construction by someone who really cared about being able to translate his concept of a circle, a perfect circle, through his arm & hand and onto a piece of paper. A rather different experience to looking at a circle drawn by Powerpoint - a complicated business itself, but a different sort of complication. The love and care has gone into building the (inorganic) machine, rather than in the guiding of the (organic) hand and arm. Love and care which is probably the product of many people, rather than just one, and with the person who, at the end of the chain, asks Powerpoint to do its thing, not really counting at all.

Then if you are really bored, you can examine the pixels of the Powerpoint image and see how the perfect circle maps, in the rather messy way that it does, onto the small rectangular pixels of a screen. Or if a screen is not available, onto the small coloured dots of a picture on an advertising hoarding.

So the free hand circle is example of an artefact which has merit for me because of my knowledge of how it was done. A second artefact might be identical in itself to the first, but be of quite different provenance and so be quite without merit.

Returning to the dream, another source of dissatisfaction was the knowledge that I could not have another cigar whenever I might feel like it. Smoking was bad, and if one was to do it at all, it had to be strictly rationed. Maybe one a week, one a month or perhaps freely on bank holidays. The knowledge that such rationing usually broke down and that perhaps it was better not to do it at all. In some obscure way, the knowledge that I could not indulge freely in the future, tainted the pleasure of the present.

Clearly time for a bit of fresh air.

A new sort of rubbish 2

Readers will be interested to know that the Hiram Butler gallery at reference 1, first noticed here at reference 2, is offering a limited edition Powerpoint from Damien Hirst, illustrated left. You can have the red spot with mount but without frame for $750 or with both for $800. Plus postage and packing. And for double your money you can have it signed on the back.

The Powerpoint has been encrypted using a bit of special software sold by Norton and will self destruct after 500 prints have been taken. The cunning software defeats attempts to cheat by downloading a digital copy or by using the MS snipping tool. So, in case you were wondering, the use of the phrase 'limited edition' is entirely kosher. Or perhaps halal.

Now we have a number of woodcuts on our walls here at Epsom, mostly the work of an uncle. For example, 'Fenland River', of which we have numbers 31 and 47 from an edition of 75, one of a small number of well-beloved works of which we have more than one copy about the place. The uncle was a part-timer as far as wood cutting was involved, so, guessing, this woodcut was the work of a month; a month up close and personal with a block of box wood (probably made of more than one piece), maybe 8 inches by 6. The drill with the revenue people was that you did not have to charge your customers VAT provided that the edition was limited to less than some magic number - a magic number which I remember as being less than 75, but not being invented until after this particular cutting - and that the block was defaced by a deep diagonal cut after that number of prints had been pulled. Thinking about it this morning, I thought that defacing one's work in this way must have caused a bit of a twinge. Perhaps in the same way that a sculptor in bronze might have had a bit of a twinge when required by his client to break the mould after he had finished a commission.

Hard to imagine Hirst having any such pangs after a few seconds with Powerpoint. Perhaps just a quiet chuckle at the gullibility of the art buying public. Perhaps he doesn't even have to bother with the Powerpoint - and he just gets his assistant to knock them out and post them to him. No great loss if he has to can half of them as not being up to his usual snuff.

PS: I did think about whether it would be right to give air time to Hirst in this way, but decided that I could mount a plausible public interest defense.

Reference 1: http://hirambutler.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/kejserens-nye-klder.html.

A new sort of rubbish 1

I came across this new way to fly-tip the other day, towards the Christchurch Road end of Horton Lane, quite near the not very tidy traveller horses' field. Judging by the bits of slaty stuff leaking out of the bottom, I would say builders' waste. So perhaps the work of some low grade builder who either missed the tip opening times, didn't want to pay the tip charges or was just lazy. Perhaps the customer was pleased not to have had to pay VAT.

And then, later on the same outing, quite a lot of mess down Blenheim Road, between the entrance to the tip and the caravan which has settled down about 200m north northeast of Screwfix. Burst plastic bags, household junk, all rather messy. Again, probably the leavings of the lazy or feckless. I hope not the sort of people that live in our road, although one can never be sure.

The caravan itself looks to me as if someone, probably just one person, is living in it, with various stuff accumulating outside. It also looks if the local yuff have taken to knocking it around in the evening, with the windows now being patched up with brown packing tape. I imagine that they are perspex rather than glass as they are still hanging in there. But what sort of a person would you be, or what sort of state would you be in to want to live in such a way?

If reference 1 is to be believed, whoever it is has been there for getting on for four months now. Or is it really a sort of transit point for illegals on their way to the sugar beet fields of Lincolnshire? With a winter of weeding the frozen fields to look forward to. Or whatever it is that one does to sugar beet in the winter.

PS: must remember to keep my spectacles out of view (bottom, center right) in telephone snaps. Glasses off so that I can better see what I am doing, but clearly not well enough.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/trolley-34.html.

Trolley 35

After a long wait, noticed only a couple of days ago at reference 1, we move up from trolley 34 to trolley 35. This one recovered from East Street, quite near the building there which was damaged by fire and recently demolished. There was at least one trolley on the site and it is possible that trolley 35 was one of them, the the people clearing the site simply moving it off-site rather than returning it. I note in passing that they are still advertising for a site manager there.

I score a further half point on the grounds that having returned this trolley, I collected another from the perimeter of the car park and returned it to the collection point. Possibly whoever left it had taken notice of the perimeter signs about trolleys being equipped with electronic devices to deter removal. Not that I have ever seen such a device or heard one go off. Would it know whether you were wheeling a trolley in across the boundary or out?

At some point, trolley 35 had had its front right hand wheel replaced and I noticed that, at the collection point, maybe half the trolleys of this size had had one or other front wheels replaced. Given that it is quite awkward to tilt a trolley, I dare say the front wheels get well bashed by people just bumping into obstacles like kerbs and hoping that the front wheels lift over them - which they usually don't. Perhaps something to be fed into the next trolley contract that the Sainsbury's stores' supplies buying team let.

PS: I read the other day that Corby collects pictures of man-hole covers. Perhaps I ought to write to him about trolleys.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/trolley-34.html.

Part one of three

Last week to the first part of the revival of the 'Wars of the Roses' at the Rose of Kingston - having elected to do the three parts in three successive weeks, rather than attempting all three in one day. See reference1.

Lots of people there for a weekday matineé, with the stalls more or less full. Some ladies wearing a good deal of jewellery, quite a lot of eccentric looking ladies and some gents. who might have been resting or retired luvvies. One school party.

A stage similar in tone to that for Romeo (see reference 2), but with less scaffolding. Center stage occupied by the council table which popped up and down according to the scene. Flashing white lights and smoke. Generally effective - and may well have been influenced by the original staging back in the sixties of the last century. Costumes good, that is to say vaguely Tudor, with swords - which I much prefer to anything else.

Part one running from the funeral of Henry V to the execution - lynching by the mob in this version - of Suffolk. That is to say the whole of Part I and around half of Part II of the bardic original - my copy of which, as it happens, was once the property of Lochaber High School and was bought by me from a second hand book shop at the back of Fort William, in the course of a visit during a mild January, probably more than ten years ago now. See reference 3. A quick peek at Part II this morning suggests that the adaptor took quite a lot of liberties with the original, presumably with the virtuous intention of making the thing more presentable for a modern performance.

Casting generally good, with the warring lords far more convincing than those usually fielded by the Globe. Bishop of Winchester splendidly evil. The one exception was Suffolk, whom I found far too modern in style. He would not have been out of place as the compère of one of those hugging courses that HR people were so keen on at the time I left the world of work, around ten years ago now. But a far more serious weakness was Henry VI himself, very much on-message with the current fashion for playing Richard II as a pantomime twat. I found this rather tiresome: he may not have been a successful war lord, but he was not without merit. I shall consult the original on this matter.

Duchess of Gloucester splendidly silly. Queen Margaret adequate; a bit too tarty (not quite the right word, but I can't put my finger on a better) to be convincing as someone who gets her hands on the reins of power. Joan of Arc rather good, rather in the way of quaint Irene in the television adaptation of Mapp & Lucia. Burgundy a bit feeble.

The discrete colour coding of the two sides with neat white and red badges was helpful rather than irritating - unlike the rather louder colour coding often deployed by the Globe.

I started a little apprehensive of the length, three hours. In the event the first half seemed a little long but the second half was fine. Overall, a good show. Wound down with a refreshment at the nearby 'Ram', but returned to our own 'Shy Horse' for feeding - where, for once, I took a veggie burger. Good flavour and texture, despite a tendency to fall apart, only marred by an excessively crunchy exterior, possibly part of the attempt to hold the thing together without the assistance of egg, meat or fat.

Reference 1: http://www.rosetheatrekingston.org/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/romeo-alpha.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=fort+william.

Breadsheet

Having reached the 327th batch of bread today, and having upgraded to Windows 10/Office 365 (Office 2016), I decided that it was time to move the breadsheet out of Excel 97 compatibility mode. And I updated the name while I was at it. Maybe the new format will make all kinds of whizzy new features available.

Reference 1: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8152054/Bread-20151011.xlsx.