pumpkinstrokemarrow

Stumped down the garden this morning to discover the first signs of life in the compost bin. To wit, some grey pin cushion mould on last week's potato peelings. Next to the bin we have one clump of daffodills well up and next to that the blue bells (Spanish variety, not the woodland sort favoured by the ecos) starting to poke through. In the hawthorne next to the pond there were two blue tits and one long tailed tit. One of the blue tits was singing away, maybe with the idea of impressing the other one. The long tailed tit was very pretty.

Thought to go and take a peek at the bulbs at Hampton Court this afternoon, but not much action yet. A few snowdrops and even fewer aconites in sheltered spots, a few daffodils starting to poke up. Must remember 1) to go and see the spiffing snowdrops at Nonsuch Park in a week or two and 2) to keep an eye on the even more spiffing bulbs at Hampton Court. They might be up for a month but it is easy enough to miss them.

Given that the baker at Cheam is still out of range and I am not that keen on the Waitrose offering, BH thought to buy me some bread from the market on Saturday. Man on the stall makes much of the fact that he cooks in stone rather than steam, which he alleges is the preferred method for the in-store bakers. I'm not sure about this: I would have thought that they use electric ovens like other small bakers. I would have thought a steam oven might be OK for a factory but not quite the thing for a kitchen operation. That being as it may be, I get one large white bloomer (with poppy seed) and something more wholemeal looking. The white bloomer looked good with the right sort of crackle about the crust. Good colour. But not all that fresh. Maybe made on Friday to sell on Saturday. But still a good deal better than the Waitrose offering. Best available until I am up and cycling again, hopefully in a week or so now.

Tried climbing on the thing yesterday. Managed to get on and off OK, but did not think it would be wise to try pedalling off quite yet. Not too sure how well the legs would stand up to being asked to do a bit of stabilizing quite yet, let alone a crash landing, which is a touch confidence sapping. Settled for oiling the chain for now. Maybe try a mount in the road tomorrow, rather than a mount in the garage. Advice from various sources is to take it easy at first so it looks as if the stone baker will be getting our trade for at least a few Saturdays.

Continued to tuck into 'The Way We Live Now', prompted by the review noticed on 12th October, and drawn from Epsom Library the other day, along with a map of Dartmoor. A rather lurid thing, the product of the end of Trollope's career. He seems to have decided that the world had gone to the dogs and that standards had slipped badly since the rosy days of his youth. Gets stuck into a flash swindler with all the zest of a Zola in La Curee - both presumably reacting to the dreadful capitalist excesses of the 1870's or thereabouts. And for the first time I catch Wikipedia out, it agreeing with Harraps in seeming to think that La Curee means the kill or quarry when hunting, while I think it means a lure used when hunting. Not quite the same thing at all. I will poke Mr G. a bit harder when I have done here. But he also gets stuck into the Jews with some pages reading rather badly, much worse than the odd jibe in Buchan. Fat greasy types in the city, speaking broken English and almost certainly up to no good. Now given that the book is a reasonably OTT bit of satire, it is faintly possible that he is satirising anti-semites. But I do not think so. A shame, as I had thought of Trollope as being quite civilised for a writer.

So for example, he makes the point that one gentleman (one Roger Carbury) makes the mistake of thinking that it is possible to tell nothing but the truth the whole time, to always behave decently and to never need to retract anything. That the word of an English gentleman rules, even in situations where people are not apt to insist on the point. Trollope, I think, is inclined to give his English gentlemen - a breed he appears to be rather attached to - a touch more lee-way. Or as someone else once put it to me - a propos of boning on about music - if one worried too much about talking rubbish, one would be able to say very little at all.