pumpkinstrokemarrow

To deal with the second matter first, the various councils around here seem to have got the bus stop bug. At least three of them are being dug up between here and the baker at Cheam. Not at all clear what is prompting this endeavour which seems in all three cases to involve relaying the kerb stones. Maybe it is like the council grass butchers - they are paid to dig up so many bus stops a year and so that is what they will do. There is also an interesting hole right in the middle of the Epsom side of Howell hill. This appears to involve doing something underneath a cover so presumably something was wrong underneath - but you never know.

If we put aside the rather unsatisfactory leaf beet from last year, today is a day of last fruits and first fruits. That it to say I have pulled the last of the leeks and the first of the rhubarb. The first will serve to accompany the kedgeree and the second to follow it. Have been back to the Epsom fish man again today - but his haddock looked a bit pink which not a good sign and his undyed smoked haddock was streaked with something yellow. So we thought kedgeree was a better bet that baked (white) haddock which really needs good gear to work well. Kedgeree is more forgiving. He also had a strange fish with a spotted pink skin and with a name which I can't remember but which apparently came from Australia. So we are freighting frozen fish from Australia and fresh flowers from central America: one wouldn't think that either activity was terribly green.

Finishing off the second half of the second potato ridge I was struck by the power of the smell of damp fire - now cold from yesterday - even if one does not disturb it. The active ingredient of said smell presumably being carried into the air with the evaporating water.

Been reading about another turn of the last century pop-star like figure, this time one Nansen from Norway. Very talented chap and not just in the snow and ice department - although he certainly did well there - more or less inventing skiing and polar travel in their modern forms. Also managed to survive in very dodgy circumstances for years at a time - a proceeding which included paddling around in the Artic Ocean in kayaks which were pretty leaky (and carrying all their wordly possessions, including two sledges) before a wandering walrus decided to stick his tusks through the skin. But he was also a very strange bird - not in the same way as Scott - and neither were leaders of men. That was where Shackelton and Amundsen scored. Although to be fair, Nansen did get all his men home on his two big expeditions to the snow - although one had become a heroin addict and another became an alcoholic. Presumably one has to be a bit unusual to be attracted to the idea of camping in the snow for two or three years, with contact with neither man nor beast for most of the duration. Modern adventurers don't know what they are missing! Two other factlets. First, Nansen was conducting a brief affair with Scott's wife in Berlin at about the time that Scott reached the South Pole. Something which got left out of the various books about him that I have read so far. Second, notwithstanding what I might have written about Ireland in a Pakenham context above, I now learn that Norway, not Ireland, was the first country to break away from the European settlement forged in the aftermath of the Nap0leonic wars. It made the great powers rather twitchy: if one small country starts playing the national card what about all the others? And unlike Ireland the whole affair was managed in a more or less civilised way. To the extent of Norway flying their flags at half mast when the king of Sweden, previously the dual monarch, died a year or two after independance. A Hungarian friend of Nansen, the subject of another dual monarch was very jealous.