pumpkinstrokemarrow

Short piece in yesterday's Evening Standard which caught my eye about a fancy new computer control system for our Fire and Rescue Service. (Noting in passing that government has caught that irritating bug from the likes of M&S and talks about 'Our fire and rescue service'. I suppose it could have been worse with 'Your fire and rescue service'). It is claimed that we have spent some £400m on this system, presently some way off working. I then started to wonder about how many millions of pounds you need to spend to control each fire engine. Can't be that many to the county. Trundle off to the appropriate part of the government net to find lots of statistics about fire men and fire women. Their age, sex, colour, orientation, marital condition and first aid certification. All that sort of thing. Quite a lot of statistics about fires. But nothing that I could find about fire engines. Does the government not know that all the boys are interested in is their toys? So I am unable to report how many millions of pounds it costs not to control a fire engine.

Yesterday to Salisbury, with the day starting off with two coincidences. First coincidence was that the girl friend of the personable young man who drove the refreshment trolley on the train came from the same Devon village where BH spent her formative years. We also got to learn something about the refreshment trolley industry. Outsourced, of course. Second coincidence was that the pub to which we were headed for lunch - http://www.haunchofvenison.uk.com/ - featured in that very day's DT. It seems that someone had pinched their famous mummified hand of card sharp the day before. Good lunch though, not much spoilt by absence of mummy.

On the way, pleased to be able to view one of those facilities where they manufacture woodland reared chicken eggs. The sort of thing you pay a modest premium for in the better class of supermarket. This one consisted of a medium sized, single story shed, maybe 30 yards by 10 yards. Hard to be sure from above, from a train. To one side there was a yard containing some chickens. To the side of the yard was a more extensive area containing some more chickens. Along the boundary of this second area there were a few trees, with a few chickens grubbing around underneath. One would have to visit the place to be sure, but the general impression was that the great majority of chickens preferred to stay in the shed. But they did have access to the outside world. Perhaps they drew lots for who was to be allowed out into it today.

Second hand shops found to be massively cheaper than those of London. So I acquire an Arden 'Measure for Measure' for the princely sum of £1. Good news is that on return to base, I found that I had not acquired a duplicate. Bad news is that the book appeared to have been lifted from Salisbury Library at some point. At least, there was no 'withdrawn from stock' or some such stamp across the title page. Which libraries are usually fairly careful about when selling stuff off. Don't think there is much point in posting it back though as I imagine they would drop it straight in the skip. Then I acquire a boxed set of Beethoven Piano Concertos for 50p a disc, which made a total of £2. With Ashkenazy playing too. This one, however, did turn out to be a duplicate, so I will be able to play spot the difference between Ashkenazy and Brendal. Which I expect I will be very bad at. Perhaps one needs some gadget to play the two wave forms in parallel on the screen so that you can spot the difference visually. Would the two wave forms be close enough for spot the difference to have any meaning? Must consult serious geek to see whether such a thing can be organised.

Visited the cathedral. Outside most impressive in the cold mid afternoon light. Inside impressive, very sculptural but also rather cold. Perhaps having been built more or less in one go it did not have the homely clutter and mess of a cathedral which had been messed around with over the centuries. None of the florid carving you get at Ely. Cold in the way that a smart hotel bar is compared with a scruffy pub bar. Came across a very impressive monument, several stories high, apparently to a Duke of Somerset. Not clear if it was one of the those who died in his bed. Sufficiently impressive that the thing gets a rather confusing mention in Defoe's notice of his visit to the place.

Closed with the purchase of some lower grade kabanos in a Polish grocery. The shop girls seemed rather amused at the suggestion that their kabanos might contain chicken but they did inspect the ingredients to find that some of their kabanos did indeed contain chicken. They laughed off the idea of cheese and I don't think they understood my explaining that we had come across some Austrian imitation kabanos which did contain cheese. The 100% pork ones we did get were very cheap - maybe £4 for 10 of the things - but were not much good. Damp and fatty. They might improve if we leave them in the fridge to dry off for a week or two.