pumpkinstrokemarrow

At least, as reported in our free newspaper, the Epsom Guardian, always on the look out for cheap copy to place between the advertisements.

The first item was the continuing library wars (see April 9), with this issue containing a letter from a library volunteer who takes her volunteering seriously and is seriously annoyed that some other correspondent, a library employee rather than a volunteer, has been knocking the library volunteers. Knocking which included complaining about their coffee cup behaviour - this being one of the few things that could get a teachers' staff room going back in the days when BH was a teacher. Far more important that the tiresome business of educating our future movers and shakers. I suppose it is not surprising that library staff are not pleased about being displaced by volunteers, but one hopes that displacement can be accommodated by natural wastage rather than by compulsory redundancies and that leaving packs can include an application form so that those leaving to spend more time with their families can reapply for their old jobs as volunteers, it being a pity to throw all those skills away. It is also true the volunteers can be a pain: one cannot enforce work discipline in the way that you can with employees and from time to time one will be lumbered with a volunteer who is a real pain but who is also real hard to dislodge. Maybe the wheeze of having a paid manager to supervise the volunteers utilised by some charities strikes the right balance. At least you can then insist that the paid manager checks the coffee cup situation before he or she leaves at night.

Not clear though how the coffee cup business arises. If a library is entirely run by volunteers, how do staff coffee cups get into the story? While one might want to indoctrinate new volunteers in a proper library, I imagine segregation is best. Keep staff and volunteers well away from each other.

I am also reminded of a German story I heard some years ago. To the effect that it is wrong that white collar workers expect their salaries to go on going up throughout their careers. First, our needs are greater in the middle of our careers that at the end. Second, our output is greater in the middle of our careers than at the end. Third, not affordable if we are to carry on working until we are seventy - and I might say I am very glad that I did not have to.

The second item was the mayoral family team continuing to bang on about the neglected state of a small cemetery on the edge of what used to be one of our mental hospitals. Last resting place for, amongst others, some of the unmarried mothers who had been incarcerated in said hospitals on grounds of moral turpitude and various servicemen who wound up in one of them during one of the world wars. I think the graves are unmarked and I do not suppose that there are any living relatives who know or care about them. And while it is right that we should show some respect for the dead, I also think that it might be more sensible if we had some ceremony for desecrating such a cemetery so that the land can revert to normal use. The desecration ceremony - perhaps conducted by the mayor to avoid the problem of what brand of parson was appropriate - would show proper respect while allowing the world to move on.

Something not very healthy about clinging to the past in this way. Perhaps reflecting, in this case, our guilt about our treatment of the dead and dying. Hopefully not a craving for publicity.

PS: visit to the Epsom Il Ponte (see October 4th) for Sunday lunch yesterday. Lots of well behaved children, large portions and a disabled toilet. Our main course was a cod version of Sunday roast, this Italian restaurant feeling the need to go in for them, perhaps to keep up with Wetherspoons. The piece of cod was large, a bit tired, covered in a rather bland sauce and served with the sort of vegetables which might have gone down better with roast beef. Nothing like as good as the rather simpler cod we had baked at home on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the starter (pizza light) and pudding (tiramisu) were good and the bill was very reasonable. A very pleasant occasion.

The third first involved jigsaw 8, a 500 piece Falcon Venture Deluxe, which turns out to a lot less deluxe than the sort without the Venture, back in fact to the standard of jigsaw 3 (see April 7th). The first being the fact that it is the first jigsaw I have bought from a charity shop to have a piece missing, the corresponding hole being visible in the middle of the illustration, with the piece from some other jigsaw next to it. Presumably this other jigsaw has my piece. Luckily the missingness did not cause much additional confusion, quite enough having been caused by the coarse texture of the painting from which the jigsaw was taken, it taking me some time to get the measure of the thing.

Having done the edge, for some reason I thought that the fence would be a good place to start. Gave that up after a while and moved onto the train, it being obvious enough after the event that this was the place to start. Then the rails, then where the hills & trees meet the sky, then the two boys and only then the fence. After that it was a relatively routine matter of filling in the gaps.

The second first was my first drive of the car. Which all went well enough once I had worked out how to wear the seat belt with both some comfort and some safety.

The first first was my first two visits to public houses for the purposes of drinking, rather than eating. With the 'Half Way House' at Earlsfield being awarded a red star on two counts. First, having bought a bottle of their best vino, I asked for some still water. I was asked whether tap water would do, upon which I was presented with a large bottle of the stuff and a couple of glasses, without charge. Which I thought decent of them; they could easily have sold me a chargeable bottle. Wine OK too. Second count was the presence of a decent disabled toilet. It has been quite a pleasant surprise how many places sport such things these days. The second public house was TB, into which I had popped to remind them of my existence. No hard feelings there and the warm Newcastle Brown was on the bar before I reached it - just in time to stop them opening it and to explain that I had become a wino since my last visit. Not quite ready to sit in such a place with a glass of orangeade - although there are people who do.

The bad news is that I have an error to report. On December 12th last, and probably on a couple of other occasions too, I was smug about the English record of colonial non-violence, at least when compared with the brutality of the French in Indo-China and Algeria. A couple of days ago, Mr. Monbiot reminded me, in a piece in the Guardian, prompted by I know not what (maybe it was one of those articles one keeps by for a day when one has nothing to say), about Kenya. Where our end-of-empire record was pretty dreadful, so by way of penance I have got myself a copy of the full story by one Caroline Elkins from Harvard. The tone is a bit irritating, a regular bash the brits fest. But I suppose it is as irritating to them when we do the same thing in reverse. And, given the story and the way we have drawn a veil over it, with the veil drawing apparently including much destruction of records, deserved.

I also notice another piece in the Guardian, about the plight of the 4,000 or so women languishing in our jails. Perhaps another filler for a rainy day, in any event notable for its vacuity and ending with a plea for an approach which identified the importance of preventive and support services. No problem about identifying the importance of something. But what are we to do about it?

I have commented from time to time on the poor quality of kippers from fishmongers operating out of stalls & vans at markets compared with those from Waitrose, so pleased to report that the fishmonger operating at Kingston market sells kippers described as Manx, which while not as good as those from Waitrose  (the flesh was a little damp and soggy, despite being cooked by simmering in just the same way) were a good deal better than those of most of his colleagues. About the same price as Waitrose.

Fired up by all the omega lispid oils in the kippers, BH was moved to make us a Linzer Torte, a move which had the added advantage of eating into our home made jam supplies - it being very easy to make a lot more of the stuff than one uses. Which moved me in turn to check that this was indeed a cake designed by the home town of Hitler. When I also found out that it was also home town to the Nibelungenbrücke, the current version of which bridge over the Danube was built by Hitler to celebrate the passage of the Nibelungs through the area on their way to their fatal visit to the Huns, a thousand years or so previous. It seems that there are quite a number of bridges of this name along the supposed route. According to Wikipedia there were to have been grand statues of the heroic Nibelungs to adorn this bridge but the project ran out of puff before they could be sculpted. See June 29th 2010.

I then got onto the TLS, a magazine which has been a bit thin in recent weeks. Far too much literary about it. This week not much better but I did glean a couple of interesting bits of natural history. First, there is a kind of lobster which lives in the Caribbean which does not like it when the water in which it lives gets churned up in the hurricane season. So they hoof it to deeper water. The interesting bit being that they do it in single file, with the antenna of the one behind resting on the back plate of the one in front, in crocodiles which might extend fifty miles. But how do they know? Second, we now have a name for the odd red spikes we have noticed on leaves on some of the bushes opposite the entrance to Stamford Green School. They are called lime nail galls and are home to the eggs of a certain sort of mite. The gall being both a deviant part of the host plant (a lime tree for choice) and under the control of the mite. A rather interesting variant on the tumour theme.

And I close with a last interesting bit which was a saying of one Anacharsis to the effect that written law - at the time, two and a half thousand years ago, a novelty - would resemble a spider's web; a constraint which ensnares the weak, while the strong burst through it. Prescient chaps these Scythians, although that did not stop this particular one from being executed for trying to introduce an orgiastic form of worship to his home town.

Quite a lot of media ink has been spilled on the two related topics of what one is allowed to do on the Internet and what governments are allowed to know about what you do.

Hampton Court now completed, only let down, for once, by the quality of the image provided by Nokia. It usually deals with bright light OK; clearly not so good in poor light. Unfortunately, by the time I found this out, the puzzle had been deconstructed.

A puzzle which was regular in the first way but not in the second, this last probably reflecting the large proportion of pieces which did not exhibit the nicely tiling prong-hole-prong-hole configuration. The largest proportion that I recall coming across, which leads one to wonder how many jigcutters an outfit like Falcon has. Do they, for example, use the same jigcutter for all the jigsaws of a given image? All the jigsaws of a given genre? In any event, it made assembly considerably easier. For most sections it was worth while to sort the pieces by configuration then play spot the prong or hole of interesting shape.

Started with the bottom edge, then the fence across the top of the grass. Then the daffodils, then the grass. Then the remainder of the edge, then the skyline. By the time the skyline was finished I had made several vertical inroads into the frontage proper and was able to finish that off quite quickly. Then right hand tree, then left hand tree, of quite different texture from that on the right hand. Then sky between white and blue, then fill in the remaining holes. The combination of sky colouring and piece irregularity making the sky a good deal easier than is sometimes the case.

This out the way, felt the need to raise my game, so started on the LRB. Bought on the strength of the rather good penultimate issue and the not so good ultimate issue. Perhaps a mistake as there was not much of interest to yours truly. Quite a lot of pages given over to a translation of a book by Carlo Ginzburg, of whom I had not previously heard. So far the number of pages and the impression of the content one gets from a metre away have discouraged me from getting started. A notice of a biography of Aung San Suu Kyi which I shall read given the family connection. Another of a biography of Henry VII, the reviewer of which gets a brownie point because he shares my dislike of people slipping into estuary vernacular in what are supposed to be serious books, presumably either in the interests of accessibility or street cred.. Not sure about the first and the second is certainly not a proper aspiration for a historian. Followed by a longish piece about Ms. M.Monroe, mainly concerned to tell us that the lady was a serious actress who got cheezed by always being treated as a bimbo. I believe that Sigourney Weaver is also sometimes cheezed for the same reason - but with the difference that she went to a posh school while Ms. M was a gutter job. Then down hill all the way.

Which led me on to wonder about the morals of Mr. Gotcha Loophole, QC, a barrister who specialises in getting rich people off offences they have clearly committed in spirit. Gotcha points out that all laws are written by humans and that humans err: so there will be lacunae, infelicities and loopholes. Which is certainly true, not least because our esteemed governments have become far keener on pushing through shed loads of legislation than on bothering to get it right. So apart from getting rich, his mission is to contribute to public welfare by carrying out fighting patrols on the obscurer frontiers of the law; a legal version of the badlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And given that he is patrolling from the legal side, we can hardly stop the man. But I do not care for him or what he does and I would not care to earn a crust in such a way myself. Once in a while for a lark perhaps, to liven up the dull procession of open and shut motoring cases, but not for a living.

Today we were scheduled to go and hear Mitsuko Uchida (last heard by us about a year ago on 28th March) do Schubert piano sonatas at the Royal Festival Hall. Not altogether sure either that I was ready for an outing of this sort, which involves getting home towards midnight, or that sitting in the middle of a row in a full Festival Hall was very clever quite yet. The seating plan on their web site, or at least the only one that I could find, was not detailed enough to tell me whether we had aisle seats or not but the gent. behind the phone at the booking office was able to tell me that the concert was sold out and it was unlikely that I could swap for an exit friendly seat. He suggested that I turn up at the booking office in person today to see what they could do.

This involved the first challenge of the day, which I am pleased to say I rose to. Without support from BH, I made it all the way to the river, a long way past Worcester Park which was the furthest north I had made it hitherto. Bit of a blunder on the way though, as when buying my senior off peak day return to London, I managed to get one which was only good for Southern Rail. An error made quite easy by the ticket machines installed at Epsom Station. But I carried on, expecting the guards at Waterloo to let me off. But no, I got a very careful guard. No, I couldn't just buy a ticket from Clapham Junction, where the South West Trains and Southern Trains divide, because it was all too clear that I had made the whole journey with South West Trains. Sir would have to buy and entirely new ticket and maybe the people at Epsom would give me a refund on the first one when I got back. Sir also learned that our European friends are busily privatising their railways, some of them even thinking of chopping them up in the way that we have, the chopping up which made my mistake possible. My informant also thought that there were Tory hopes to do even more chopping here in the UK, with there now being plans to chop up Network Rail. Happy days! The unions involved are getting a bit restive. That being as it may be, armed with new tickets I emerged onto the concourse to be greeted by two policemen in body armour clutching at port what looked like assault rifles. I wonder if our police go in for the same Kalashnikovs which are favoured by our various enemies? Kalashnikov are very good value for money and might well win an open competition.

Onto the Festival Hall and managed to find the box office - moved from the lower regions where it was living last time I used it - to find that the concert was still sold out and that a swap was not an option. On the other hand I  turned out to be holding aisle seats - with the catch being that it was the centre aisle at the front of the hall. I wavered but decided that discretion was the better part of valour and opted for return. An option which was rather less friendly than that at the Wigmore Hall. When I had to return tickets there for a similar reason, they were content to do it over the phone and to do an instant refund whereas at the Festival Hall they wait until they have actually sold the return again and then post me a credit note, valid for a year, rather than credit my credit card account. We will see what turns up. Hopefully somebody will get better use out of them than I was going to. So failed the second challenge.

Back home, decided to visit the newly reopened tunnel under the railway line behind the Linton Centre, a late running compensation for the demolition of a foot bridge last year. A tunnel which, being slightly off the beaten track, is already decorated with various graffiti. Sundry rubbish scattered around the environs. The oddest feature is the lights where the sequence down one side is light, light, light, gap, gap, light, gasp, gap, light - while the other side is the other way around with light, gap, gap, light, gap and so on. What sort of design is that? At least the glass over the lights is now flush to the concrete. The first version had bulbous glass, with the bulbs standing out maybe six inches from the face of the concrete, a far too inviting target for the gents. who do graffiti. But a good thing nevertheless. It provides me with a middle version of the town walk, a bit longer than going back down Hook Road but not as far as going back through Ewell Village. More options must be good.

Having missed one concert at Dorking Halls, we made it to what will be the last concert for this season for us last night. A concert for two violins from Jack Liebeck and Victora Sayles, who turned out to be a husband and wife team. The first time we have been to such a thing, certainly for a long time. One wonders what is odder, performing at a concert with one's partner or watching one partner performing in a duet with someone else of the opposite sex? After all, Tolstoy did have a point in the otherwise rather unpleasant story about the Kreutzer sonata. For me, the answer would be not to have a partner in the same trade as oneself.

We got a Bach sonata for solo violin in G minor. We were very close to the performer (Sayles in parade uniform) and the sound was impressive. One small instrument filling quite a large hall. Followed by something modern, a sonata for solo violin, apparently inspired by the Bach we had just heard, from Eugène Ysaÿe. Lots of good passages, but for me the thing completely missed out on the form and grandeur of the Bach. Which may well not have been an accident but meant for me that I would sooner have the Bach. Followed by a Spanish piece, usually used as an encore, of a violin pretending to be a guitar. Very clever it was too, including a back drop of what sounded like plucked notes although I could not see any plucking. Perhaps one can get a plucking noise by banging the bow on a string in the right way.

During the interval the two older ladies behind us regaled each other with stories about colonoscopies and related procedures & operations that they had known. Perhaps topical but we could have done without it. Nevertheless, we managed to refrain from interrupting them.

Followed by what was for me a novelty, a Mozart violin sonata for violin and piano transcribed for two violins by the master himself. Perhaps in days when I imagine that pianos were a lot more expensive than violins, there was a much bigger market for music for two violins than for violin and piano. A very good novelty it was too. Followed by a Prokofiev duo sonata. With another transcribed movement from Mozart as an encore.

My vote rested with the Bach and the Mozart. Familiar stuff!

I close with a factlet which I owe to Ian Hacking. He claims that a pupil of Pavlov was able to hypnotise a wide variety of mammals. And I had thought that hypnotism depended on the human style of speech. A touch obscure, even for Google, but there was confirmation, or at least corroboration, at http://www.danielolson.com.

Another deluxe 500 piece puzzle from Falcon - the brand which seems to crop up most often in the charity shops hereabouts. This one a photograph of a pub which I have certainly passed quite often - it being well within both lunch time and after work range of both Home Office and Treasury - and which I have probably used. Next week I plan to make sure that it is still there and still bears some resemblance to its puzzling image.

Sufficiently puzzling that I made a serious mistake at the beginning. Having knocked off the edge pieces in fairly short order, I thought that the next step was to attack the pot plants which march across the middle of the image. A step which proved quite hopeless: far too many pieces and far too little gross structure to be able to link one piece with another. Abandon ship and do the name and awning above the pot plants. This went much better. Then the three windows, then the drain pipes, then the chairs (lots of gross structure so this was the easy step) and more or less last the pot plants. By which time there was enough surrounding support to move things along. Knocking off the brickwork in dribs and drabs along the way.

The item at the top right of the illustration was bought from the cooperative antique shop at the junction of Bridge Road and Creek Road, just across the road from Hampton Court Railway Station. I think that they (there are two of them) started life as lights on restaurant tables. Soft, glittering candle light to help to provide the right ambience for romantic evenings for two. Generally speaking, a rather more expensive class of restaurant than I can afford. And as it happens, the next falcon is of Hampton Court Palace. A snip at 99p from Oxfam in Ewell Village.

I close with another offering from 'Death on the Nile' where someone was described as 'fey', a word which for both the BH and I was applicable to ladies of chaseable age, associating to words like light, fairy, birdlike, unworldly and ethereal. A word with a positive tone. But, moved to look it up, it turns out to be a Scottish word, as was alleged by Agatha, of obscure northern European origins, but with central meaning of someone who is marked for death. Perhaps someone dying of consumption or even Richard III when he mislays his horse at Bosworth. Generalising to unfortunate, unlucky, feeble, timid and so on and so forth. So while our understanding connected through unworldly to the correct understanding, we were both rather wide of the mark.

Just to be sure the word had not moved on since our copy of the OED was printed (in 1901) we checked in our rather more recent Concise Oxford. Meaning just the same, if expressed with the expected concision. Two lines instead of half a column.

A few days ago we chanced to see what is described in the 'Time Out' film guide as 'this woeful adaptation of Stella Gibbon's pastoral parody' and thought it rather fun. A pleasant change from our normal evening eye-candy from ITV3. It is not the first time that we have found this guide a bit sniffy about things we liked; perhaps a consequence of the guide's reviewers being rather younger than our good selves.

Followed the viewing up by rereading, for the first time in some years, the book itself. I note in passing that our rather dusty copy has retained its blue dust jacket all the way from the mid seventies. The book was quite shallow but fun, although it was hard to see how the film was supposed to better capture its pastiche of other writings of its day and I had forgotten, or not previously noticed, its having fun at the expense of D. H. Lawrence, recently dead at the time of writing but presumably still one of the men of the literary moment. And the blurb to the book suggests that there were plenty of other aspirants to his loins filled prose around at the time, so a worthy target.

Next step, take another look at the film, which I think will have been improved by study of the source.

A few days before that we chanced to see 'Death on the Nile' once again. Didn't have a copy of this one but chanced across one in a charity shop the next day and have now read it. Quite a decent adaptation, especially considering that the story is rather fantastic and one in which most of the interest lies in trying to spot the significant clues and sort out the kippers from the red herrings before Agatha does it for you. Not like the similarly successful and even more prolific Simenon at all. But I did come across an interesting phrase - 'horse coper' - and was moved to look 'coper' up in OED. Where it occupies the best part of a page and turns out to have collected all kinds of odd meanings. Starting with the cape derived meaning, from which we get the cope now only worn by priests. Then a bargain, then to strike or come to blows with someone. To meet with or be a match for. To buy, exchange or barter. To trim the claws of a goshawk. Lastly, to sew up the mouth of a ferret. From all of which we get 'horse coper', a sort of low grade horse dealer.

PS: if you are really bored you can try reporting a fault on the telephone you rent from BT, starting from scratch at their web site. I needed to talk with four different people, make two telephone calls and take about an hour. Plenty of chargeable options and fancy technology scattered along the way. The outcome will probably be satisfactory, but the process by which one gets there is not.

The other day we pushed out beyond Stoneleigh, all the way to Worcester Park, not a place that we visit terribly often, with a blog search revealing various mentions of Worcester but nothing relevant. I remember perhaps four visits in the 25 years or so that we have lived in Epsom: say once every 5 years - for a place only two or three miles up the road. Once when the morning train got stuck and I elected to get off and make my way to Morden and catch the tube. Once when I wanted to visit the offices of the Epsom Guardian. Once to have a meal at 'La Mamma' and lastly to buy a new three piece suite in a clearance sale at Goslett's, an establishment which closed a year later, in 2009.

The kind of high street which one used to see all over the suburbs of London at one time, a lot of this one having been built between the wars. One supposes it had all the usual day-to-day stuff - butchers, bakers and candlestick makers - plus, being big enough, undertakers, builders, clothes shops and jewellers, to name a few. Some of it still survives, for example a gents. outfitter which still has one of those old style shop fronts designed to maximise the size of the display at the front of the shops. Not something one sees very often these days, with virtually all shop fronts being a simple sheet of glass, so much cheaper than fancy. When did I last see a shop front with glass cunningly curved to eliminate reflection and, in consequence, to be more or less invisible? The sort of thing that a fancy department store might have run to and which might well have been included in the optics part of the O level physics syllabus. At least it was in mine. Lots of gaps in this high street, with at least eight of them plugged with charity shops. But, given that none of these last had anything suitable, I was pleased to be able to buy a replacement for the bent wood walking stick left on a train (see April 14). £15 rather than the £10 estimate.

Lunch at Pizza Express. Usual contemporary format with cheerful (foreign) staff. Slightly non-plussed to find that all the pizzas seemed to involve lots of meat or spice or both but eventually worked out that regular pizzas had survived the menu refurb. down at the bottom right. Which seemed to be fine but I suspect that the pizza that I had had been cooked some time previous and reheated. Eatable but not great, the first time I have noticed such a thing in the usually reliable Pizza Express - but then it was also the first time that I had been in one at the end of a quiet lunch time. Good tiramisu though, the firm, factory made variety which I prefer. None of your soggy home made stuff awash with sherry or some such.

Then this morning amused to read a Jenkins piece in the Guardian about the refurb. of local democracy which would flow from the direct election of mayors. From the removal of powers from faceless and arthritic central bureaucracies. Which occasioned two thoughts. First, I wondered what the foot soldiers' take on local democracy is in the National Trust, of which Jenkins is chair. Does the trust go in for a faceless and arthritic central bureaucracy? Second, I got to thinking about how those other big institutions, the mental hospitals, used to look after people before they invented care in the community. Mental hospitals which were in themselves communities, with laundries, ball rooms, farms, workshops and all the rest of it. Or at least the better ones had these sorts of facilities. And there was a career for the staff who wanted one, social clubs for those that didn't. How many of the suburban houses from which retired nurses offer care in the community can match it?

Now completed the fifth jigsaw of the season. Sticking with the 500 piece format but, on this occasion upgraded from Falcon regular to Falcon deluxe, which means that the jigsaw is cut out of much heavier card and the pieces are much pleasanter to handle.

Order of attack was edge, bottom right green, plough team, boundary of field across the middle, sky meets trees, sky, trees, unploughed field and ploughed field. Of these, rather to my surprise, the trees took the longest to get a grip on. Odd how it takes a while for the brain to lock onto the features of any particular chunk of jigsaw which are helpful in matching one piece with another. Perhaps I will get better at this as the season progresses. And the ploughed field was easier than the trees once I had worked out that the relevant puzzle unlocking features in this case were colour and the strong grain running up and to the right.

To vary the diet had a bash at 'The Economist' for the first time in a very long time. The feature of this magazine that had stuck with me from the past was the cocky, know-all tone which had come to be rather irritating. Which seemed to be missing on this occasion, but maybe it will return if I make a habit of reading the thing. Lots of good stuff with an amusing line in advertisements. You could be Director General of the BBC. Lots of opportunities at lots of levels in worthy international organisations. You could consult, for example, for ASARECA, which, in case it had slipped your mind, is into agricultural research in eastern Africa. You could even buy 400ha of prime development land from (adm@) epicurius.com.br. And aiming a touch lower, pots of advertisements for expensive looking MBAs and such like.

Reminded today of the difficulty of getting one's error handling 100% water tight.

So working away on the HSBC online service, a service which sometimes comes across as being careful to the point of pedantry, when I got stuck. Filled in all the boxes and clicked next to get a message about transaction codes."What...", I think to myself. "I have filled in the transaction code box - a text field - so what is the matter with the thing?" Click on next again to get taken back to the original screen, with some of the stuff that I had entered thoughtfully removed in the interests of online security. Put the stuff back in again and try again. Same result. Maybe another couple more tries. BH suggests letting the thing cool down and trying again later. Eventually it occurs to me that maybe the underscore in the transaction code field is not allowed. Remove the underscore, put the missing stuff back in again and try again. This time it works.

But it could all have taken a lot longer. And not the sort of thing that one would want to ask the helpful BT help service about as that would be deeply insecure. But how long would it have taken the less well equipped HSBC online help service to track down the offending underscore?

Readers wondering about how things might be improved need to grapple with two issues. Firstly, how better to code all the zillions of errors a user might make in such a way that said user sees what the problem is and can fix it. Secondly, how to arrange things so that said code can be passed from somewhere deep in the back end system to the front end system which is actually doing the talking to the user. Neither thing as easy as it might look, particularly if there was a lack of sensitivity to this issue at the time of system design. Which might well have been years and years ago, well  before this particular front end service had been thought of.

I heard yesterday about yet another innocent walker being crushed by rampaging cows. Which makes me wonder why it is that no-one has referred the issue of cows on Epsom Common to the Health & Safety Executive. Cows, some of which have serious horns and any of which could easily crush, trample, gore or otherwise damage an innocent walker; a town walker entirely unused to being around cows and quite possibly doing all the wrong things. Like feeding them humbugs by hand. I bet that if one was talking about the same level of risk but associated with, for example, playground equipment or a working practise on a building site, the Executive would have done something about it. So what is it about playing farm which confers exemption?

Or owning a fighting dog for that matter.

From time to time I get phoned up by a friendly operator who wants to confirm that I was still intending to attend this or that hospital appointment, having already been warmed up by some rather stroppy words in the appointment letters explaining that I may be struck off the waiting list or worse if I fail to show without notice or otherwise adequate excuse. Presumably no-show is something of a problem and they have no choice but to be a bit stroppy.

Quite by chance yesterday it transpired that the same call centre serves the whole of England. Presumably some central foundation trust or other provides reminder services to any other trust that cares to sign up. Which, on the assumption that there are a number of different appointment systems in the NHS world, that IT people out there have been busily building feeds from every different appointment system to the central call centre, with updates either in real time or from time to time. I guess daily would do for these purposes. One assumes that the central system does not retain information about patients and does not get after-the-event information about no-shows - not even for management information and statistical purposes only. Otherwise, someone might be merrily building a know-all database about all the patients in the country...

All of which explains why if you ask the friendly operators anything about the appointments, like where in the building the Ashley Cole Suite is, they do not have a clue, having not, in the case of this example, been provided with maps of all the trusts on their books.

It would be interesting to know exactly why the Welsh have opted out. Is it a matter of national pride to have one's own appointment reminding call centre, a bit like African countries used to have their own airlines? Have the Welsh, being relatively small in numbers, been joined up for ages and see no need to fix what already works? Is there a Welsh language issue, with the English call centre not wanting to get embroiled in having to provide a bilingual service?

Also, who or what was the driver behind setting up the central service? In the new open NHS, is it open to entrepreneurial NHS civil servants in one trust to set up a stall selling a service to other trusts?

First visit to Hampton Court for a while today. Daffodils a little past their best but still plenty of life yet - and plenty of variety. One wonders how many varieties there are. But any shortcoming on the daffodil front was more than made up for by the mixed displays of tulips with spring bedding plants. Lots and lots of them - probably more than Polesden Lacey wheel out for their tulip festival. And I think I prefer this mixed display format. Pure tulip is all very well, particularly for the relatively short time when the tulips are at their best, but mixed gives the designer a bit more scope to show off his skill.

Sunken gardens and the privy garden were in good form with this last having lots of spots of bright colour added to the usual rhapsody on green. Furthermore, the privy garden seemed particularly animated today, with all the evergreen spikes and balls on stalks seeming to move around as their relative positions changed as one walked across the head of the garden.

We also came across a plaque to one Captain Sir Donald Gosling, RNR, generous donor of the golden jubilee fountain at the end of the long water. We were curious as to who he might be and it turned out that he was a if not the main man in National Car Parks. He had also served in the navy in the closing years of the war and has been heavily involved in navy flavoured good works since, in addition to fountains.

Back home to another go at cheese scones, with one left of the twelve as I type. I don't suppose it will last much longer, if for no other reason than their being a lot better fresh than the following morning. Long live the simple pleasures!

BH took her scones with a pale yellow margarine from what to me was an unappetising white tub called 'pure' with 'soya' in slightly smaller letters underneath. Closer inspection reveals that despite the 'goodness of soya for everyday enjoyment', the soya is enhanced with water, other vegetable oils and entirely natural flavours. Clever business the making up and packaging of food. Not too sure about the goodness either, given that Wikipedia points out that 'raw soybeans, including the immature green form, are toxic to humans, swine, chickens, and in fact, all monogastric animals'.

I have also renewed my acquaintance with digestive biscuits, part of working back up to wholemeal bread. As I recall, they used to be in favour with polar explorers as the things both kept and packed the calories in, being made with lard in those days. The ones we have now admit to regular flour, vegetable oil, wholemeal flour and sugar. So they will be OK for those of faiths which do not care for pig. But they do not taste quite like I had remembered: a bit dry and thin. Perhaps they will be better when the packet has been open for a bit and they have gone a little stale. Or perhaps the recipe has been changed, despite being called McVitie's originals.

Big day yesterday in that we took our first ride on a train since bag day: nothing too grand, just a short hop from Epsom to Stoneleigh and back. Made easier by the recent provision of radar facilities both at Epsom station itself and at the newly renovated John Barras community pub at Stoneleigh, a pub which used to be called 'The Stoneleigh' and is now called 'The Station'. Massive great place. Doing a reasonable trade on Friday afternoon - rather smarter dress than one gets at TB, but not at all clear what the huge amount of upstairs space is used for.

Rest of Stoneleigh Broadway was a bit sad and quiet, but the library was still up and running and we found a café where I took my first bacon sandwich for a while. A bacon sandwich which appeared to have been made out of bread which had been sliced on the premises, rather than the ready sliced white which is more usually used for the purpose.

The only downer was that somewhere along the line I managed to lose my walking stick. Only a prop at the moment but I do actually use it on occasion. Sturdy bent wood job probably bought for a quid at a car booter. Would also be useful for seeing off dogs and muggers. Bought new, I suspect I would have to pay a tenner or more, so next week's project is to tour suitable charity shops for a more modestly priced replacement.

More down back home when I took a look at the Guardian, to find that it is still found necessary to be dragging over the disaster at the Hillsborough football stadium, more than 20 years ago. I grant that there may be issues which have not been dealt with, but it is still depressing that we have been printing money for lawyers for all this time without an end in sight. As a nation we do seem to be getting into this sort of thing. Can't just settle for a cock-up and move on; we have to agonise endlessly, apportioning blame & punishment.

And then there was the rather grubby business of our sending people back to the late Colonel Gaddafi to be tortured in Tripoli. With one Mark Allen, a former career civil servant, in rather an odd role.

PS: earlier in the day, buying kippers at Waitrose, found that the fag shelves were now covered up by sliding doors. The sort of thing you might have knocked up for your kitchen. I wonder by virtue of what regulation the government is able to interfere in this matter? The no-smoking legislation that I have seen, tacked onto some health act in 2006, covers smoking, smoke free premises, vehicles & places and the age of smoking. Nothing that I could see about display of smokables. Perhaps there is some enabling act - along the lines of that which Hitler got passed very early in his reign, enabling him to decree into law anything that took his fancy, without having to trouble the legislature. According to Simon Jenkins (in the course of the same article that told us about the Libyan business) we have one such enabling act to support the forces of law and order in their fight against terrorism, an act which makes all kinds of unlikely activity into terrorism. Needless to say, the forces of law and order will only invoke the act when they are dealing with real terrorism.

Completed my fourth jigsaw yesterday, this one a product of a company called Educa (http://www.educa.es/), part of the thriving Spanish jigsaw export industry. Or they might regard themselves as Catalan rather than Spanish as they bother to have a Catalan version of their website.

I have commented in the past on the way that doing a jigsaw of a work of art is a good way of making one look at the thing, a comment which has been confirmed by my experience with this one, a view of the Nativity Facade of Sagrada Familia. Along the way I decided that the beach at Barcelona must be made of that special sort of sand which lends itself to drip castles and that Gaudi must of been an aficionado of same when a child, and translated his passion into a cathedral in later life. I say cathedral but it is not clear that that is actually its status - in my picture book of same I can only find a reference to a monumental expiatory church. Furthermore, there is a proper old cathedral in Barcelona Old Town and perhaps the rule is that you can only have one cathedral in any one town. Other than Rome maybe.

The jigsaw has 500 pieces and is about the same size completed as the alpine valley (jigsaw 2). It had been cut out of substantial card which made the pieces much nicer to handle than those of the beach scene (jigsaw 3; see April 7th). It is regular in both the first and second senses: pieces all more or less square and exactly four pieces meet at every interior vertex. Most of the pieces were of the prong-hole-prong-hole configuration and some way into doing the jigsaw I found that they could reliably be sorted into thin pieces and fat pieces, with thin and fat alternating chequerboard fashion in a very regular way. This greatly reduced the number of trials when one was reduced to trial and error. Some of the pieces had a Spanish flavour in that instead of two proper prongs there was one proper prong and a bulge. With the matching piece having one proper hole and a depression. Other new features were a little stand on which to erect the top of the box for easy viewing of the picture and various bits and bobs to enable one to preserve the completed jigsaw for posterity.

My opening strategy was to sort the pieces into five heaps of roughly equal size: pond & trees, border between church and sky, interior of church, edge and sky. Assembly in the same order. First two heaps went fairly smoothly. Moving on, found that there was a lot of fine detail in the picture, rather too fine for the picture supplied, which had not been much of a problem for the first two heaps but which became one for the interior of the church until I worked out that the interior had a strong up and down grain and one could usually tell the grain of any particular piece. Another dodge for reducing the number of trials. The sky presented a different problem in that there were no clouds to break it up, just a gentle shift from light blue to dark blue as one moved up the jigsaw, with the shift being gentle enough that one quite often needed to put a piece in the wrong place before one realised it was the wrong colour. In mitigation, I got quite good at discriminating among the different shapes of prongs.

Got very near the end of the sky when I realised that I had made some mistakes. But once again my luck held and I was able to spot the mistakes, undo the damage and complete the jigsaw.

The illustration is of the right facade but is taken from the picture book rather than the jigsaw box, this last not being convenient to scan. Pond & trees missing but it does give an idea of the thing.

PS: over breakfast been reading about a row about the drive to assess disabled and damaged people as fit for work and I offer a comment from TB. A chap there, perhaps getting on for fifty, damaged his back some years ago, has been out of work since and he has now been assessed as being fit for work. He says fine; I would love to get out and work. But who, in the present climate, is going to take someone like me on, who used to be a labourer, with my sickness record and my lack of computer skills? Complete waste of time. The younger person with a more up to date skill set and without a sickness record is going to get the job every time. Hard to work up the energy even to try.

Following my various posts about the Halifax Building Society (see, for example, April 7th 2012 and March 14th 2011), I decided to act. So into Epsom and into our local office, steamed up for action. But no. Oh no sir. We can't talk to you about our insurance policies in this office. Why don't you call the nice insurance people using that phone hanging on the wall? Not best pleased, but I give it a go, listening to dire music for a bit, then a long warning about how the call is being taped then a short chat with a pleasant young call centre operative. Short because in the absence of paper and pencil I was unable to note down some reference number to repeat to the next operative in the chain. We agreed that it might be simpler if I called from home armed with paper and pencil.

Get home and phone the number on the insurance renewal document. As it turned out, this pleasant young operative did not need me to be armed with paper and pencil but instead, with much gushing, suggested knocking back this year's insurance premium to something quite close to last year's. Which is all very well but I think that it is a blot on the landscape of our financial services industry that they make money out of people's laziness in this way. About on a par with the retail banks making their money out of often minor and/or technical infringements of the terms and conditions in the unread small print, rather than simply charging bank charges in the old way. The morality of the jungle rather than that of a civilised society, some 2,000 years after the Son of the Lord showed us the error of our ways.

Then this morning I read that the organisers of the Olympics see fit to invite the ageing 'Sex Pistols' to participate in the musical part of the closing ceremony. Quite extraordinary that we choose to highlight such an outfit in such a context. At least they had the good sense to refuse.

Having got all that off my chest, I can report a red-letter day yesterday, the occasion of our first meal out since being invested with the order of the bag. Started off gently with the 'Shy Horse' in Leatherhead Road (http://www.vintageinn.co.uk/theshyhorsechessington/), where, with the special beef lasagne being off, we both had a chicken, ham and leek pie. Which turned out to be rather good. Lumps of chicken in a white sauce involving leeks, ham and cheese, served in a bowl with a freshly cooked slice of puff pastry draped over the top. Warming the stew and cooking the pastry having been accomplished in a single operation. With the additional property that the stew could easily be rebadged with some Italianate name and served with pasta, or, alternatively, served up as a fricassée with rice. A good way to tart up left over chicken. Rounded out with two goes of cloudy apple juice, costing perhaps half what I would otherwise have spent on a couple of pints of 'Pride'.

Later in the day felt the need for some hearty soup so down Manor Green Road to buy 300g of stewing beef. Chop finely with a large onion and several stalks of celery and simmer for two hours. Add a portion of Sharwoods medium egg noodles for the last 10 minutes. Good gear, with the beef having generated a good quality broth. Knocked off the last pint for breakfast.

Surrey County Council is, along with the rest of the public world, struggling to make ends meet and had lighted upon what it thought was a nifty wheeze to both keep its libraries open and to save money. It had clearly worked out that Surrey is a volunteer rich county; plenty of ladies about who are tired of lunching and would like to put something back while getting to meet a few different people and having a natter. So why not turn over the small neighbourhood libraries to volunteers? Not very busy and keeping them ticking over should not burn out too many grey cells.

Enter the protesters. Save our libraries! Down with volunteers! And not content with protesting they went to the length of taking the matter to the High Court, probably consuming more energy in the process than would have kept said local libraries open for years. After due and solemn deliberation a judge ruled that the Surrey proposal was illegal in that in making it they had not taken proper account of the need to train any volunteers in the mysteries of equal opportunities and service to the unequal would thereby be put at risk. Much cheering and whooping from the protesters. We've got one over the county! We've got one over the government!

Fair amount of coverage in both national and local papers. Fun and games all round. Pictures of grey hair and no hair protesters with banners. But I have yet to spot any discussion of the issues. Is it better to cut funds to libraries rather than funds to care workers? Is it better to have small libraries run on an amateur basis by volunteers than not having them at all? Is it sensible to try and maintain equal opportunities in these circumstances?

While I do not have much sympathy with this protest or the present crowing of the protesters, I do, despite my best intentions, agree with the judge to the point of seeing an equal opportunities point. The service might be provided by volunteers but it is being provided as a public service and as such ought to meet certain standards, which includes access for all.

There is also the longer term issue of whether we want libraries at all. My impression is that lots of libraries have more or less shut down with their role taken over by the Internet. For example, all the rather splendid libraries that self respecting government departments used to run. And I hear that that run by the Royal Astronomical Society in Piccadilly does little business these days. So should most of the local authority ones be rebranded as Internet cafés, to serve those people who for one reason or another do not have the Internet at home? What is more, it could easily be that the cost to the local authority of borrowing a book is much the same as the cost of buying it from Amazon - in which case people should be buying rather than borrowing. And Surrey being an eco. sort of place they should clearly be buying to kindle.

But in the shorter term we have to remember that there are still pots of people out there who do not do the Internet and are unlikely so to do any time soon.

Following yesterday's post, the Falcon Vista jigsaw was completed this morning. Rather easier than I expected until I got to the 50 or so pieces of unadulterated sky. There were slight gradations of colour but they were hard to pick up, even with the halogen lamp, and was reduced to trial and error. An activity which is not as bad as it sounds when one is running down of an evening, rather like an IT person turning to testing and documentation to fill in time on a slow Friday afternoon. Both activities which most of those expected to do them find hard to take as seriously as their management would like.

The lack of regularity added an extra frisson in that from time to time one realised that a mistake had been made and that some unpicking was necessary. On this occasion the various unpickings went smoothly and the jigsaw ended happily. Except that is when I came back an hour or so later to admire my handiwork and realised that the last piece of sky was both a colour clash and a poor fit. Luckily, my luck held and I was able to identify the piece with which to swap in a matter of seconds.

In between times resumed kitchen activities. First item was a invalid version of pork soup, that is to say not involving either pearl barley or white cabbage. Simmer half a tenderloin with a finely chopped onion for several hours. Add two nests of Blue Dragon (our local Costcutter does stock stuff from Sharwoods but not their noodles) egg noodles, topping up with just enough water that the noodles are decently covered. Simmer for a further 8 minutes and serve. A little bland but entirely eatable. Second item was a return to cheese scones, something I used to make quite regularly on Sunday afternoons at one time. Just a few calories: 12oz flour, 3oz butter, 4.5oz cheese, pinch of salt, pinch of cayenne pepper and half a pint of milk. Made up into a dozen scones which had vanished into the two of us (not three because of the gluten) by around 2130, that is to say about three hours later. The only mistake was that I had forgotten that the recipe suggests too much milk so I had to add some flour to the dough to dry it up a bit. Half an ounce eaten raw in a gesture to childhood, a time when raw cheese scone dough was a forbidden delicacy, it being alleged to upset the stomach.

On the 28th February the famous water tower at Horton was half down, courtesy of the people with the flash web site at http://www.erith.com/. Today, well over a month later, the demolition might be described at 99% complete. So its not just the builders doing domestic work who make a good start then take off to keep some other customer warm while you wait and watch all the building junk collect dust (and maybe rats) in your front garden.

And while we are on buildings, time to complain about the insurance premium I am paying Halifax, the former mutual, to insure our house. 2009 was the same as 2008. Then it went up 10%.Then it went up by a modest 8%. Then this year it goes up by a whopping 18%. This for a policy on which we have not claimed for years and at a time when house prices are stagnant. As I never tire of saying, bring back the days when you could trust an outfit like Halifax to give you a fair deal without having to fuss. When you didn't have to chase around every year to make sure you are not being done for being idle. All this isa nonsense is just the same. Zillions of deals out there, all slightly different, all with slightly different nooks and crannies. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just stuff the dosh in the building society and forget about it, without feeling guilty that you haven't spent the weekend reading all the small print in the money supplement.

More important, I have now embarked on a jigsaw from Falcon Vista, this time via Oxfam, having discovered that the Epsom Library jigsaw service seems to specialise in 1,000 and 2,000 piece whoppers which are a bit out of my league for the time being. 500 piece photographic scene of a beach, maybe somewhere in Italy. First complaint, the pieces, while about the same size as the last lot, are very thin. Bit apt to jump out of their slots if disturbed. Second complaint, the picture on the box has not been trimmed to be the same as the picture on the jigsaw. Minor source of confusion. Third complaint, the colours of the picture on the box are not all that like those on the jigsaw. Another minor source of confusion. Fourth complaint, regularity. On 28th March I talked about the regularity of jigsaws. This jigsaw has reminded me of another sort of regularity, according to which exactly four pieces meet at every interior vertex, a sort of regularity that this jigsaw does not possess. You cannot rely on a piece being wrong just because there is overlap. A major source of confusion. There are also a lot more pieces with other than hole-prong-hole-prong configuration.

However, despite all these complaints, the jigsaw advances and I have certainly had my £1.70's worth from it. Very handy at a time when ITV3 is very much in the doldrums.

While I might not care for the activities of the coppicers on the Common, I do have a sort of coppice of my own in the back garden in the form of a decapitated chestnut tree which has sprouted, last noticed (according to the search button) on April 28th 2010. A coppice which is getting under way again, with new shoots popping out of the stump. Clearly got the wit to get going before it gets shaded out by the overhanging oak from next door - an oak tree which probably overhangs more of our garden than it does that of its owner, having been pushed over our way by a neighbouring willow tree.

Second item of interest is culinary, in the form of a new variety of chicken carcase soup, prompted by my low fibre regime. Use rather less water than usual, maybe two pints to the carcase rather than three to four, just one onion and one carrot. Boil for four hours or so, mashing occasionally, by which time one has an opaque, cream with a hint of coffee coloured stock. Strain and add some chopped cold chicken, two biscuits of Sharwood's medium egg noodles and simmer for a further six minutes (rather than the four it says on the packet). Not bad at all; hugely superior to the e number filled chicken noodle soup from Knorr one might otherwise be reduced to.

Third and last I can today report the completion of my second jigsaw of the season, a Schmidt 500 photographic view of an alpine valley. The finished jigsaw is maybe half the size (by area) of the first jigsaw (see March 28th) with correspondingly smaller pieces and all in all a lot more difficult. Reduced on the last lap, an expanse of mottled but otherwise feature free mountain side, to trial and error. Sorting was not of much help as all the pieces had the same format - prong, hole, prong hole as one goes round the piece clockwise - and colour variation was quite subtle. Even so, quite often, the brain and eye combined managed to spot the right home for a piece before the mind got under way. Perhaps another legacy of our hunter gatherer past noticed in connection with gathering nuts last autumn (see September 2nd 2011).

Been struck in various places over the last few days about the merit or otherwise of the provision of free entertainment in public places, entertainment which come in the form of flickering pictures and noise or just noise. TB often offers the unusual combination of flickering pictures from one machine and noise from another, a compromise which appears to satisfy both those who like to watch the racing while they drink and those who like to have some music.

Generally speaking, I find both a bit irritating. Depending on mood and context, one can often block the noise but I find the flickering much harder to deal with, even if it is at the periphery of the visual field. One really needs to have one's back to it, not always convenient.

Particularly irritating are those small waiting rooms you often get at the bottom of big office blocks furnished with large televisions. OK so the things are cheap and have become a bit of a must have amongst the office management fraternity, but why they should think that the average waiter would rather watch the box than read the paper, prepare for the coming meeting or just doze is beyond me.

Some shops don't do badly either. Once upon a time it just used to be shops catering for young people who played loud music to scare away older people. And some shops used to intersperse the music with spoken word advertisements, a particularly tiresome genre. I even recall some tale about supermarkets supplementing the oxygen in the air, which taken together with jolly martial music, stimulated the buying buds. But now even quite decent shops do it, M&S for example, a shop which used to be above such stuff.

And then there is always South West Trains. Once they discovered that they could pipe announcements into carriages there was no stopping them. And over and above the central computer generated guff, they even gave the guards discretion to use the thing as they saw fit - and some guards are quite keen. This for material which 99% of passengers find neither diverting nor informative.

On the other hand, I remember having a chat with the keeper of a small hotel about it, one of those small hotels with a big empty breakfast room. The keeper explained that she had experimented and found that, on the whole, customers found silence in a big empty room a bit oppressive. They liked a bit of light music, light both in the sense of easy going and in that of being quiet, in the background. Such music also served to cover the conversation of others if there were more than two people in the room; customers also liking a bit of privacy.

There is also the angle that sometimes one finds some conversations in waiting rooms really irritating. Perhaps one is waiting for a bit of dental treatment and some loud gent. is banging on ad nauseam about how his last experience of this particular treatment (as luck would have it) went completely pear shaped. Completely oblivious in his desire to sound off that his soundings might not be to everybody else's taste and with his interlocutor far too polite to tell him to can it. A bit of noise can mask such things a bit; a case of two wrongs making a right for once.

PS: made it onto Epsom Common for the first time for a few weeks the other day. All the way around Christ Church and back, a trip somewhat marred by the discovery that the Chain Saw Volunteers have been at it again since I was last on this stretch of the all weather path. Big trees, little trees, all sorts. But I don't suppose I am going to find the energy to put in a complaint to their forthcoming annual meeting on 24th April (see http://www.epsomcommon.org.uk/). Perhaps some concerned reader will act on my behalf.

Now completed 'The Eustace Diamonds' for the second time, following the mentions on March 27th this year and April 11th back in 2008.

It is often alleged that both my speech and my writing are apt to be obscure. But I also take pride in their being sound. If I say something, there will usually be a reasonable point lurking underneath somewhere, possibly despite appearances. So I am a bit annoyed about my comment on the Trollope of 2008 about one of the themes of 'The Eustace Diamonds' being, to quote, 'the unsuitability of the truth in all sorts of social situations'. This is something that I sign up to, but I can't see why I should have thought that it was a theme of this book. It is true that the principal character, Lady Eustace, while bright and beautiful is also a liar, a lady who lies all the time about matters large and small, to the point where she lies when there is little or no point. There is also a passage when Trollope, through the mouth of the male lead, tells us how drab and dreary it is to be telling the truth the whole time and extols the virtues of puffing things up a bit. And then there is a rather longer passage when Trollope, this time through the mouth or mind of Lady Eustace, explains how important puffing is in wooing. It is no good for a wooer to be drab and dreary as that is a right turn off. The lady needs a lot of puffing, and the fact that part of her might know full well that she is being fed a lot of nonsense if not worse does not detract from that need. So while the book does indeed say something about lying, it does not do it in quite the way that my 2008 post suggests. Whatever did I have in mind?

I close with an honourable mention for Nandos and Wetherspoons. Both outfits make a strong showing in the RADAR book of disabled toilet facilities. Not the only such outfits present in the book but certainly the most prominent. I did not spot any McDonalds at all, which I found odd given their long standing reputation for the provision of clean and decent facilities for ordinary folk. Maybe we shall reward Nandos with our first visit, having been somewhat deterred hitherto by their having been described to us as chicken flavoured McDonalds.

After the last not too successful foray into TK Maxx for trainers (see October 19th) and having in the meantime determined that they do quite a strong line in luggage, had another go this afternoon, in search of something suitable for carrying spare bags and their accessories when straying far from home. And I was pleased to come across a natty looking bag, smelling of leather and labelled 'Osprey', knocked down from £225 to £69.99. Nicely designed thing not awash with pockets and buckles. Just the ticket, so after a pause on the handy bench outside to be sure about it, the deed was done.

And just to be absolutely sure that I had indeed got a bargain, I have just taken a peek at the Internet where I find that Osprey do indeed sell bags, and a good number of the ones looking something like the one I bought do indeed cost around £200. But not the exact one that I bought. So off to the Osprey site proper where I page through the mens' bags and the rather larger number of womens' bags not to find it. Various posher versions (the one illustrated is a snip at £475. Miles too big for present purposes) and one cheaper version but not the thing itself. From which we deduce that TK Maxx operates the same model that Wetherspoon started out on: buy up lots of end of line stuff cheap and sell it slightly less cheap.

Yesterday I had occasion to mention Chris Grayling, who now deserves a second mention for another reason. On two occasions in the last year or so, prompted by the 'Dignity in Dying' people, I had occasion to send him an email. On both occasions I got a very prompt reply. OK so he does not agree with what 'Dignity in Dying' are trying to do, but whoever answered the emails had bothered, at the very least, to glance at mine. To do more than send out the standard reply for 'email from the Dignity in Dying campaign'. So the man runs an efficient office.

The second reply also raised a point which caught my eye. He claimed that his view on the matter was the majority view in the constituency (how could he possibly know?) and said that in any debate he would follow the dictates of his own conscience. The point that caught my eye being that of representation. Would it be right to for an MP to follow his own conscience on a matter where his constituents overwhelmingly took another view? Would the constituents have any other redress than to deselect or vote down the MP at the next opportunity - quite possibly years away?

One might argue that an MP in such a position ought to stand down, particularly in the case that his view had changed from that advertised at the time of his election. Slightly less drastic, such an MP should represent the views of his constituents, with it being fair for him to point out that he did not agree with them. At least to take the trouble to attend any relevant debate, to try and understand the point of view of those of his constituents with whom he did not agree. In a related way, old Labour governments  used to agonise about whether it was OK or not to dump this or that decision of the Party Conference, say on nationalisation of commanding heights or on getting rid of our independent nuclear deterrent. At least in those days they had a pricking conscience; not sure that today's politicians bother about that.

In some contexts, representatives are indeed mandated. They are obliged to do what it says on their ticket. I think the electoral college which, formally at least, elects a US president works in this way. I think trade unions work at this way at TUC: their line is decided back at the ranch and the delegates are not free to vary that line without referring back to ranch. Negotiators of all sorts are usually given limited mandates by whoever it is they are negotiating for; they have freedom within parameters.

Most parliamentary votes in this country are mandated in a slightly different way with an MP being obliged to vote with his party, irrespective of what he might think of the merits of the issue, and with the party line quite possibly being set by some inner cabal to which he has no access. Which opens a nice can of worms to which I might return tomorrow.

I close with the complication that we do not actually want our representatives to be dumb conduits of every swirl and twirl of popular feeling. Part of the point of our sort of indirect democracy is that the tabloid fuelled mob does not have access to the levers of power, which helps keep a bit of decorum in public affairs.