pumpkinstrokemarrow

This afternoon was enlivened by a swarm of bees sailing past the study window, a loose spheroidic cloud maybe 15 feet across and twenty feet  up, moving quite fast, say more than a walking speed, in a southerly direction. It was the noise of them that attracted my attention. Don't remember ever seeing such a thing before. However, BH came up with the observation that 'a swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly' - a rhyme which is well known to Mr. Google but not at all known to me. 'A swarm in May' also appears to be the title of sundry books and films. In the meantime we get the silver spoon by a matter of a few hours, it being the last day of June. Also, as it happens the date of reference for the annual estimates of population prepared by Her Majesty's Corps of Statisticians.

Now finished the book by U. Eco on Queen Loana to which I was pointed by O. Sacks in his book on Musicophilia (see May 18th). I followed up the reference as it was said to portray a person who had kept his semantic memory (elephants have trunks) but had lost his autobiographical memory (I saw an elephant yesterday at the seaside). Unlike the disease of experimental fiction (June 27th), this one really exists and the novel is interesting, if not, to my mind anyway, making it to the level of Simenon on strokes in 'Les Anneaux de Bicêtre' (see November 16th last year). I am now a bit clearer about what having this particular complaint might involve. For one, wondering about whether one had bedded one's secretary: bit naff to have to ask her.

Also an interesting example of a novel with illustrations put there by the author which are integral to the novel. Not stick ons by some illustrator after the event; can't think of another book quite like it in that respect. Nicely produced by Secker & Warburg, yet another once illustrious name swallowed up by Random House.

Much interesting stuff, presumably autobiographical, about growing up in northern Italy through the time of  Mussolini. A change from my usual diet of France at about the same time.

An interesting prayer for the dying, enumerating the stages through which one is to go before finally expiring (although we are only given 7 of the 14 stages, starting with one's toes getting cold). Presumably intended to prepare one for dying, to warm one up for it as it were, perhaps to be used when dying. Certainly intended for the subject rather than his or her loved ones. Not altogether clear whether it is a real prayer although it seemed quite a plausible part of a Catholic repertoire. Must try and find out more.

There was also a traumatising episode when two, relatively innocent German soldiers were killed one dark night, after having been taken prisoner, in the course of some captured Russians getting through to the partisans. Which pointed up for me how much things have moved on since Antony wanted to let slip the dogs of war (see Thursday) or since the people of the Nibelungenlied gloried in slaughtering each other, no holds barred provided one was brave and did the business with style. Which last was, I think, progress from the savagery of the Romans. And according to Walter Scott things were much the same in this country at the time of King John (see Ivanhoe). And according to Powicke were still much the same by the time that King Henry III came along. And now, I suppose, much of that sort of energy has been canalised into the watching of football. Which is definitely progress, even if one is not much interested in either the feet or the balls.

Earlier this week we paid my first visit to Claremont for some time, the garden part of a house which used to belong to Clive of India and which is now a school. A house which went to some lengths to hide the presence of the many servants needed to run the place, including a sunken road which they used for entry and egress, unseen. The garden contained parkland, woodland, a large lake and a grassy amphitheatre, with an outdoor Macbeth offered by http://www.tlcm.co.uk/ for the middle of July. Ideal day for such a place, warm, languid and sunny. Note that, in common with many places of this sort, a lot of mature trees have got or are getting to the end of the line, but succession planning is good. The landscape gardens are not greatly scarred. There is also a fine cedar by the lake, a cedar which, unusually, does not appear to have lost any large lumps.

The only blot on the landscape was the absence of the fleet of large carp which used to sail the lake in search of visitor supplied food, sold in little bags express. A trusty explained that these loan fish had been brought in to improve the ecolity of the lake but it had been found that they did not go the job and the loan had to be terminated.

Then yesterday off to the North Western Reform Synagogue near Golders Green (http://www.alyth.org.uk/) for a lunchtime recital from Camille Maalawy, who appeared to be functioning as part of the bridge between the two communities of Israel. She also used her fine voice to great effect on a range of Sephardic and Arabic songs. Very good stage manner, managing to appear happy and cheerful despite the rather thin audience. Readers might like to know that I chanced upon this place by asking google for a lunch time concert, something I fancied at short notice on a whim.

Synagogue recently refurbished to a good standard, similar in appearance and tone to one of our newer low churches. Interesting display of silverware in a couple of cabinets at the back.

Golders Green, a place I have not visited for a very long time, was well and lively. Maybe half the shops were restaurants or cafés, but they managed two or three bakers in the half that was left. From one of them I took a small rye (with carraway seeds), a cholla and two sausage rolls, consumed, as it turned out, in reverse order. Sausage rolls were some sort of interesting, probably foreign, sausage wrapped up in a light pastry. Good. Cholla taken with butter was good - and gone before midnight. Rye taken with corned beef for breakfast - rather better as it turned out than the salt beef sandwich purchased the day before. This last being adequate but miles away from the Great Windmill Street offering of olden times.

PS: I have a rooted dislike for television interviewers, people whose special skill seems to be to make fools of hard working decent folk who have the misfortune to fall into their hands, so I felt rather sorry for the innocent abroad said to have been mauled by Paxo the other day. But it was a sign of our strange standards that, according to the Guardian anyway, the innocent sank to the very depths when she claimed that the government was still out to remove the structural deficit. An intention which one might have thought was entirely admirable if difficult to achieve any time soon. But I am consoled by the reflection that media folk probably pay far more attention to this sort of nonsense than the rest of us do.

From time to time I have commented on the failure of my tequila bottle garden to bloom, see for example March 9th. But this morning, I decided that enough was enough and that there must be something persistent and toxic in the bottle to stop anything other rather elementary mould from growing, not even algae on the exposed and sunlit glass. So mainly black contents swilled out into the compost dustbin, revealing, incidentally, some quite long roots. So something did succeed in putting down roots at some point, but which then died and failed to decay. All most odd.

Put about two inches of purish rain water from our rain water butt into the bottle and added an ounce of dried sunflower seeds. We will see what happens this time over the coming months. Will there be a greening?

There was a rebirth of a different sort the other night when the flow of  ITV3 repeats of Christie and Christie like whodunnits dried up and we were pushed over to BBC to watch a film of the RSC black production of 'Julius Ceasar', a play which I do not remember seeing live (although I dare say I have), and which I last took seriously more than 50 years ago - in parallel with taking the commentaries of the hero seriously. A quirk of the timetable.

Quick refresh in the trusty Arden, after which I thought, having mistakenly thought that the film was a South African affair, that the play might be a lot closer to South Africans than it is to us. That their political culture had a lot more in common with that of the late republican Romans and the late Tudors than ours did. We might go in for conspiracies, corruption and demagoguery, but without quite the same verve as the ancient Romans or the modern South Africans. We no longer give the losers in the great game the chop, my understanding being that the last occasion on which this happened here was in the reign of Good Queen Anne, more than 300 years ago. Then I twigged that while the production might have involved some South Africans, it was put together by true Brits.

I also learned that on or about the day of Caesar's assassination, it was the custom for naked young noblemen to run a course through the city, carrying leather thongs. And if they happened, on their way, to catch a matron with a thong, that matron was guaranteed to be cured from the curse of sterility. And Antony, a senior general, was among the number of said noblemen. See line 6, Scene II, Act I. Can one imagine Messrs. Cameron and Osborne streaking down Whitehall to the cheers and hoots of heaps of young conservative ladies with the hots in their jodphurs?

But when was all said and done, I watched something over half of the film and thought it rather good, with 'modern dress' not being anything like as intrusive & irritating as it sometimes is. Antony, in particular, was able to bring to the part a power that is usually entirely missing from such roles at the Globe. He really got me going by the time that he got to 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war'. I only learn afterwards that the drill used to be that when a duly anointed king got properly worked up in battle he could shout 'havoc' which was the signal for no quarter, or 'take no prisoners' as we would say now. In this case, naked revenge on everything in sight and never mind the consequences.

PS: interested to read over breakfast that one of the small countries (Jersey) which has grown rich by helping the even richer avoid pay their fair share in tax is getting grumpy because we, amongst others, are limbering up to do something about it. Free ride over. At least it would be if the policy wonks at the Treasury came up with a wheeze which grabbed a decent share of all those profits which presently roam around the small countries of the world, more or less untaxed and more or less under the control of their accountants. Maybe a turnover tax? If you are a profit making multinational which turns over a lot of dosh in the UK, sucks a lot of dosh out of the UK, then failure to pay a sensible amount of corporation tax results in a swingeing fine based on turnover. Think Amazon or Microsoft. We should try to avoid opening up cracks for lawyers to climb into, so the meaning of sensible should be entirely in the gift of well meaning and more or less unaccountable civil servants and not subject to judicial review. Prerogative of Her Majesty..

Following my post of 8th June I have now finished my first paid-for kindle read of 'The Flame Alphabet' by Ben Marcus, with the time it has taken to read this short novel being a reasonable comment on how well I got on with it.

As far as the kindle edition itself is concerned, I discovered no more twiddles than a table of contents which enabled one to jump about without having to create one's own bookmarks. Plus the book as a whole was a bit tidier than something from Gutenberg, which tend to be a bit untidy. Maybe enough of a step forward to be worth paying the very modest prices Amazon want for kindled versions of classics.

The book itself turned out to be a science fiction yarn set near a New York in which speech and language had become things which messed up participating adult brains. The exemption of children providing some of the plot and the rather special brand of the Jewish faith of the leading couple providing some more. Plus lots of stuff on the various wheezes needed to keep the disease at bay. An interesting enough idea, but there was an awful lot of pretentious, scientifically flavoured waffle to the square inch. Plus, the author has a gift for words to describe the various sorts of filth encountered along the way - something I can do without, approaching an age when keeping the filth at bay is a real world problem and I do not need fictional echoes.

The reviewer, in so far as I could understand her contribution, seemed to be rather more on-message than I turned out to be. But I can think of at least one person who would find her linkage to Joyce's Ulysses inappropriate. In any event, I don't think I will be looking out for any more from Marcus.

We have been eating Portuguese sardines in sunflower oil (with the omega 3 option) from Sainsbury's for some time. The usual drill is to mash them up with some full strength salad cream from Heinz and serve them for breakfast on wholemeal bread without butter. For some reason it never occurs to me to toast them, despite sardines on toast having been the late night snack of choice during my days in Passfield Hall.

Came a cropper this morning though. Started to mash them up and was surprised by the heavy going. Was this just because the mashing bowl was a touch on the small side? Soldiered on and the resulting mash eventually found its way onto the wholemeal bread and from there into the oral cavity, also known as the mouth. Where it was found to contain all kinds of crunchy bits, which on inspection appeared to be vertebrae. All most off-putting, it being understood that sardines are eaten with their bones and skin but also that said bones and skin mash up with the flesh and are not separately identifiable at the point of consumption. Certainly not crunchy.

Most of this tin now in the compost dust bin. I don't suppose that the red worms are as picky about such things as I am.

But what has happened, after all the years of satisfactory supply? Have Sainsbury's driven the prices they pay the fishermen down so low that these last are resorting to cutting the sardines with some other kind of fish? A very bony sort of other fish?

PS: I note in passing that Passfield Hall has become very entrepreneurial since I was there, with a web site offering B&B during the holidays. Complete with a health warning that there may still be some smelly students in residence.

There were no chicken lumps available to add to this week's chicken soup, so decided that it was time to resume consumption of lentils, having been previously warned off on account of intestinal shortages. So in went the lentils along with white cabbage, Costcutter noodle nests and Waitrose mushrooms. Served up for tea yesterday (well, not exactly tea, but the meal we take at 1800, rather smaller than the meal we take at 1300) and finished off for breakfast this morning. All systems have remained at go.

Over breakfast turned the pages of the Economist, which prompted two thoughts.

First, I like the idea whereby we do a deal with the Argies about the mineral rights associated with the Malvinas. Our being there probably offends their Latino pride, but I imagine that they are actually more bothered about said mineral rights. We might also allow the Argies to attempt to buy the 2,000 or so islanders out. How many would trade their windblown sheep and penguins (penguin fingers to feature alongside fish fingers at Iceland?) for a few milllion in the folding stuff? While the Argies might calm down their rhetoric about filthy colonialists and give some thought to those from whom they pinched their country, not that long ago. Do they have natives in the same way as, for example, Canada does? With native rights, native parliaments and all that sort of thing?

Second, I continue to wonder about all the winners comings out of the present crisis, continuing to hold to the belief that all the losses at all the banks must be balanced by winnings elsewhere, and not just all the fancy fees earned by the professionals who worked the systems which brought us down. There must be some fat cats out there who got out at just the right time, with winnings which it would be good to slice up in aid of our public finances. One answer would be that the winners get caught by the income tax system and one answer to that would be that the winners are just the sort of people who know how not to get caught by the income tax system. Get all their money held by those nice people in Jersey or Guernsey or some other such wheeze.

And I am sure that much of the heat would come out of banker hate if there could be some public executions, as it were, of some exemplary winners. The US has managed to bang up a few formerly big cheeses; so why are we so feeble here?

Fuelled partly by a touch of cool-but-not-cold 2010 Pouilly-Fumé and partly by a need to demonstrate my superior skills to some visiting infants, I was moved to patio art yesterday afternoon, art which shows traces of a prior discussion about the merits of large ears.

Sadly, my Nokia fails to do justice to the fine colour scheme.

Following the post on 13 June, I decided I could not wait for the relevant authorities to wake up to the ever growing groundswell of popular demand for subsidised jigsaws and bought my own arty jigsaw full price and new. The most expensive jigsaw I have ever bought: but then it did come, via the engagingly named Jigsaw Road, from Ravensburger in Germany, this despite the fact that the Ravensburger Corporation appear to live in New Hampshire. See http://www.ravensburger.com/us/start/index.html.

For once, and there appeared to be no choice about this, a 300 rather than 500 piece puzzle. But the thing was very nicely made with something copyrighted called 'Softclick' technology and generated very little of the blue gray jigsaw dust during the construction and deconstruction.

Started with the edge, as usual. Then instead of the skyline did the black/white boundary. Then the white face, hands and toes. Then the bouquet then the black face and then the black cat. Then the brown stripe (upper centre). Then the unclothed body, then the clothed body, then the bed linen. Finished off with the four islands of black, for which I did resort to sorting by shape of puzzle piece although there was enough variation that little trial and error was needed. Pieces very much of a size with just one large piece. Prong-hole-prong hole pieces in the majority but there were plenty of others.

Net result, I do now know this picture better. But not by that much: 300 pieces clearly not enough for the serious art lover. In token of which I observe that it is maybe 40 years since I last saw the very large original in the Jeu de Paume. Is the size the problem rather than the number of pieces? I think the building has been repurposed since with the pictures moved to a converted railway station; the French answer to a converted power station. And maybe 50 years since the picture was the subject of a short lecture from our art teacher, an engaging gent with the handle 'Tiddles' and who was most interested in the rendering of neck, hands and feet. Amongst other things, he thought that the neck was of unnatural length. Next stop, the 'Rokeby Venus'!

PS: read all about Ravensburg at http://www.stadt-ravensburg.de/. Interesting to see the stab that Google makes at translating a site like this. Far from perfect but jolly helpful none the less; quite good enough to get the idea about what is going on. Although there does not seem to be anything about Complex-J, presumably one of the town's big employers.

These being the woodland strawberries which are growing east of the northeastern leg of the new daffodil bed. First picking earlier in the week, resulting in about three heaped tablespoons of produce.

Small, flavourful and not particularly sweetful. But at least they had not been raised under polythene or air-freighted from Kenya. Most eco.

A bit later, to Esher to check out their culinary delights. First stop, decided not to go back to the fancy but rather expensive Chinese restaurant there (http://www.goodearthgroup.co.uk/). Second stop, the rather large and cold Christ Church which was built in the mid 19th century, the neighbouring St. George having become a touch crowded. Presumably much too large for current needs. Maybe they should take a leaf out of the Catholic book, flog the church & the land it is on and devote the proceeds to good works. Like promoting the word of the Lord in darkest Africa, in the everlasting hope that the flame will be kept alive there, against the day when it putters out here. Third stop, the Piccolo, so new that it has yet to put in a proper appearance at http://www.caffepiccolo.co.uk/, which I am assuming is the same outfit. Quite busy for a Tuesday lunchtime, mainly people of our own age and station. Pleasant meal, but we made the mistake of buying the wine by the glass, rather than just getting a bottle. And the veal escalope, said to be cooked the Paduan way, or some such, was very interesting, perhaps better described as a sandwich. The thing was an irregular oval shape, perhaps six square inches in area and just over a quarter of an inch thick. 2mm of some sort of battery/breadcrumby covering, 2mm of meat then a further 2mm of covering. Quite eatable but not terribly meaty; perhaps designed for a candidate veggie.

We decided that the waitress was a fake Italian from Poland on the grounds that she thought that Harvey's Bristol Cream was a viable substitute for Vino Santo. Us now being very knowledgeable about this last.

Off to Tate Britain - the one on Millbank - the other day to see a display of early still lifes, to find that the poor old Tate is in the throws of a major reorganisation.

As far as I could see, everything prior to around 1900, a span of maybe 300 years, is now confined to a single badly overcrowded room. Some pictures hung two up which makes the top one a bit hard to view. A good chunk of the place is closed. The remaining chunk is given over to beautifully displayed modern works - in most of which I had little interest and and some of which do not strike me as fit for a national collection of a serious country. OK, so the trustees have a duty to showcase what is being done now, but they might retain a sense of proportion and some respect for the efforts of previous generations, instead of displacing a whole lot of what were national treasures in favour of conceptual, installation and performance art. Triumphs of ego over art. The central hall, the rather grand one with pillars, is cluttered up with all kinds of odd stuff, including a large screen on which I saw moving pictures of combine harvesters. What on earth were they doing there?

The one bit of modern which caught my eye was a rather splendid curved mirror, maybe four feet in diameter, in which one saw the room behind, nicely distorted and upside down. The image moved around in an intriguing way as one moved around in front of it. A much more sensible and attractive affair than the much larger mirror which was stuck up next to the Serpentine last time I was there. The one by the chap who brings us the olympic tower, the picture of which I mistook for an April Fool joke from the 'Evening Standard'. Not only a large mirror but also a rather ugly one, at least to my eye. Other eyes were clearly more taken, if not taken in.

The still lifes were small in number but large in interest. Not least because I had forgotten that still life is another way of saying dead life, not something that has always been thought of as an appropriate subject for a picture. I liked the stuff by Edware Collier best, from the Netherlands despite his apparently English name. It seems that as the Netherlands declined from their glory days, a number of their painters came over here to try their luck, bringing the art with them. His letter racks were good fun. Perhaps, one day, the Tate will mount a more ambitious exhibition.

Followed up by a trip up to Tachbrook Street to check that the cheese shop was still there, which it was, as is the web site http://www.ripponcheese.com/. Nice drop of young emmenthal even if it did not come off a wheel - not so keen on the mature stuff. But, sadly, no Swaledale and had to settle for something called Trelawny instead. A fine cheese I dare say, but not really my sort of thing. Perhaps a bit young for me. Maybe they will patch things up with the Swaledale people (http://www.swaledalecheese.co.uk/) at some point and restock what I think is known as Swaledale traditional.

Back through Victoria Station where I was interested to find that W H Smiths had installed DIY checkout machines, very like those in our own little Waitrose at Epsom, except that they had been finished in black, rather than the paler shades favoured by the Waitrose décor people. It struck me as a rather cumbersome way to stump up the three or four quid needed to pay for one's Economist. Nostalgia induced for the days when Smiths thought to place large plastic buckets at the exits, into which one just chucked the three or four quid, under the eye of the watchful African-British security guard. Presumably they decided that the Caucasian-British fancy newspaper buying public were far too dishonest for such a simple scheme to work. In any event, using the DIY checkout I managed to get charged twice for the one copy of the Economist and had to wait while a helpful Subcontinental-British assistant manager went through his drill on his special workstation. Still managed to catch the next train though, so no damage done.

Back home to celebrate a record breaking bag, at that point at 55 hours on and going strong, running out eventually at 76.4 hours. Chose a bottle of 2008 Gervrey Chambertin (ex Waitrose) for the occasion and very nice it was too. Oddly enough with an element to the palette which reminded me strongly of our own sloe gin.

Perhaps 30p cheaper than the bottle of a similar stuff which I bought from Lancelot Wines last year (see August 13). We liked them both and I have no idea which was the better buy; furthermore I don't think I know anybody buffy enough to have such an idea, generally moving in circles more beery than buffy.

PS: more of the funny highlighting to be expunged. What is going on?

The Guardian has been running lots of stories about how near the bread line we all are.

One of the people featured was a 43 year old single mother who is a civil servant, a relatively safe job, and who takes home, after tax that is, £1,533.12 a month. She is said to be really feeling the breeze with her outgoings last month being £1,451.66, leaving her the miserable margin of £2.68 a day - barely enough for the daily pint at her local Wetherspoons. Certainly not enough for both a pint and a packet of wild woodbines. And I don't suppose that her Wetherspoons does singles: not many places do these days.

More seriously, something under half her dosh goes on mortgage and utilities - which last presumably includes things like gas and electricity and might include things like telephone and internet. This leaves her around £200 a week - which struck both BH and I as plenty. There are three of us and we don't spend anything like that on consumables like food, bog rolls and washing up liquid.

On the other hand she does think it appropriate to whack out £100 pounds a month on her son's guitar lessons and another £50 on the Christmas club. Has the son never hear of Saturday jobs? Has she never heard of charity shops and car boot sales? Why is the father not contributing?

Clearly the Guardian's idea of poverty is not quite the same as mine.

Biggish piece in yesterday's Guardian about how it is possible that the substantial cut being made to the NHS budget will result in a substantial cut being made to the health outcome. Why do governments persist with the nonsense that you can cut public sector budgets without any untoward effects? That the cuts can all get lost in efficiency savings. You would not run a private business on such tosh, whatever you might tell the press.

Then, some time ago, I remarked on how badly we managed the supply of teachers, particularly since the supply of children was a reasonably predictable quantity. I remark today on how badly we manage the supply of doctors. Bad again because the supply of unhealth is a reasonably predictable quantity but also because it takes a lot of time and money to train a doctor. The Brown/Blair gang push the health budget up to unsustainable levels and now the Cameron/Osborne gang is pulling it back down again. With one result being that a lot of expensively trained doctors are not going to get jobs, at least not the ones they expected when they started out. All terribly wasteful.

PS: more of the odd white highlighting creeping in from somewhere. Not to mention unwanted and invisible line feeds. Blog team alert!

PPS: take a mention in the geek dispatches. I managed to edit the underlying HMTL to get rid of the offending formatting. A plus for the blogger product that it lets you do such things - but let's hope there are no untoward side effects.

The stairs to the river beach which the trustees of Battersea Park have not seen fit to reopen, despite considerable nearby expenditure on other things. See June 13th.

Coming home past the large infant primary school at Pound Lane, I passed what appeared to be about half the school having what appeared to be a lesson about how to mount a demonstration. The children were strung out along the pavement, maybe a hundred yards worth or more with sundry adults acting as marshals. Some the children were carrying home made banners, some as basic as a sheet of A4 with some scribble on it, and most were joining in the chanting about road safety near schools as they marched along.

When I was at secondary school we had a modest number of lessons called civics which, as far as I can remember, were mainly about how the Houses of Parliament worked and how bills were passed through them. Nothing about the sort of basic morality which featured in 'Les Malheurs de Sophie': learning to defer gratification and to listen to your elders and betters. Maybe that sort of thing was deemed to have been covered in primary school. But these are the sorts of things which children, as responsible adults designate ought to learn about.

But I am not at all sure that it is appropriate to teach them about how to demonstrate, assuming that that is what the Pound Lane children were up to. For one, it sounds very close to helping teachers promote whatever is on the NUT agenda for the week. For two, even if one thought that it was appropriate to teach such stuff in schools, one might think that an infant junior school is not the right sort of school. For three, what does the school do in the way of more basic morality? The sort of stuff that one used to get under the heading of RI? Parables and other lessons from the bible. Have we thrown the morality baby out with the biblical bath water - in favour of the nice easy option of walking about the streets shouting on a nice sunny day?

Which reminds me that I was wondering about the prodigal son the other day. OK, so it is all very irritating if you are the goody-goody stay at home son, but as a parent one can see how easy it would be to get into feasting the returned prodigal, against dubious promises of good behaviour in the future. Furthermore, without the carrot of feasting is the prodigal likely to return at all?

Irritating in the same way as it might be for someone of modest means who has saved all his life and has to pay for his own care home, while the chap of the same modest means but who chose to blow his on the gee-gees or up against the wall gets someone else to pay for his.

Much better stuff for children of tender years and little understanding than demonstrations.

And then, over the last few days, we have been hearing all about the exploits of a child with a mobile phone and an interest in school dinners. One might think it a worthy project for her to take all these pictures, get them beamed around the world and raise a fat wedge of money for some worthy cause. But, as a teacher, I would think one could get very cheesed off with children having active phones complete with cameras in class. Hard enough, especially in a bog standard comprehensive, which, by definition, is what most of them are going to be, to keep order as it is, without a background clatter and chatter of mobile phones. But how does one ban them in this day and age? One can hardly be searching the children on entry and I guess one would have to be satisfied with the time honoured confiscation if caught at it.

Plus, do I want the bother of having to deal with all the consequences of pictures of me on an off day or of children on a off day getting out into the wide world? Is it what I have been trained for? Is it a good use of my time? Do I want my day to be driven by what some tabloid editor thinks is going to shift newspapers? Do we want our headteachers to be spending a great chunk of their day managing media relations? All this openness comes at a price.

Against that, if everyone is at it, only a very small proportion is going to get seen by enough people to cause bother. The stuff might get out onto the web but who is going to look at it?

First visit for a while yesterday, starting at Christ Church on the all weather track in an anticlockwise direction, then branched down to the railway, then onto the Wheelers Lane and Hook Road extensions.

Pleased to report that I spotted neither new chain saw activity nor cows, although there were a few foxes, not something I usually come across on the common. There was also a handsome dog rose, well into flower.

And an odd visual at the pond just by the keeper's cottage. This is a pond covered with duck weed, roughly circular, and the surface of which from a distance looks like a sheet of steel with some kind of matt green coating. Closer to, the sheet of steel resolves into something more mottled, but which started to throb or pulse in an odd way when one tried to focus on it from close quarters. I don't think there was anything odd going on in the pond, so there must have been something odd going on in me.

On the way out noticed the aspens last noticed on May 7th last year, but there was neither fluff nor shaking on this occasion.

Back home finished off  'Les Malheurs de Sophie' by one Comtesse de Ségur, a book to which I had been pointed by Drabble on puzzles, in a nicely produced edition from Hachette. Entertaining morality tales, first published in 1859, mostly about how Sophie manages to kill off all the various animals with which she is involved, rather more violent in that respect than English children's stories that I know, although for all I know, our stories from 1859, of which I know nothing, might be just as violent as their's.

Stories clearly very popular with lots and lots of different versions being available from Amazon France, including natty-little-frilly-pink boxes full of DVDs. Just the thing for a 10 year old female.

The Comtesse herself also has an interesting past, being the daughter of the chap who was the governor of Moscow at the time it was burnt down during the French occupation of 1812, subsequently exiled. Acquired her handle by marriage. So these typically French stories were written by a Russian. Maybe an outsider is better placed to capture the essential essence than an insider.

Finished the day off by finishing our first viewing of 'Barocco', a subtitled French hand-me-down from Bourne Hall Library for which I paid all of £1, double the asking price of 50p as I could not be bothered to wait for the attendant to finish with the customer in front of me who was into something complicated. A stylish affair, but so old that it did not resize to fill our not very large television screen. And while we got the general idea, the ins and outs of the framing political scandal more or less escaped us. I shall have to read what Wikipedia has to say about it before trying again.

The first post-Drabble jigsaw, the effect of which was to make the experience a little more self-conscious than it already was. But it was not damaged in the way that experiences sometimes are when you know too much about them.

The second puzzle from Waddingtons, with the style of the thing much like that of the first and the solution proceeding much like that of the first (see June 4). So on the basis of this sample of 2, I think I quite like their sort of puzzle.

My only complaint is that the picture on the box has not been trimmed right, losing around 1cm all round the picture on the puzzle itself. This was not a problem top and bottom but it did cause some confusion left and right. Surely it is no big deal to get the picture on the box right? I can see that getting the colour on the box and on the puzzle the same might be a challenge but surely not the shape? Should I write to someone about it? How do I find out to whom to write if Waddingtons no longer exist as a company? But maybe living on as a brand name owned by a Chinese gentleman?

So edge, then boats then water. Skyline then sky, this last including correction of an error in the top edge, an error which slowed things down for a while.

Housetreeline, then working out from that line, the houses. The pieces were strongly keyed by content so, despite the numbers, most of the time I was able to pick out an interesting piece from the heap, find its neighbours and place it on the puzzle. Little need for serious searching, that is to say searching for the piece to fill a particular hole and no need for sorting.

Finish off with woods and hill side. These made much easier by their being a high proportion of non-standard pieces. Having sorted the pieces - there not being that many of them by this time - by type I was able to place most of them by eye without much need for trial and error.

In the intervals pondered a little about the sad case of a woman whom a headline in the DT tells me is going to be force fed lest she starves herself to death. I did not read the story, but I would be surprised if I had found it satisfactory, starting from the position that if someone wants to starve themselves to death, that is a matter for them. One might make an exception in the case of a child, but it would be an exceptional child with the will power to do such a thing. And one might make an exception in the case of someone who was seriously disturbed - but in this case I do not think that wanting to starve oneself to death should, in itself, count as evidence of disturbance. And then there is the unpleasant business of the assault involved. I understand that feeding someone who seriously does not want to be fed, force feeding, is a seriously unpleasant business for all concerned.

I am not impressed by the argument that if one keeps the person alive against their will, that person might, one day, change their mind and come to be glad that you had. If one lets them have their way in the first place, the question of changing mind no longer arises - there is no mind - but at least what had been the mind had been allowed, in the words of the song, to do it their way. And what about all the people who do not change their minds and who have to drag out a miserable life to the bitter end? There are no prizes for heroism in that department.

PS: what is causing the faint highlighting by whiter than average background in the fourth and fifth paragraphs above? Nothing that I intended to do. By coincidence, Word started doing a lot of stuff I did not intend it to do yesterday: has some demon got into my fingers?

Have finally made it to Bachmanns (http://www.bachmanns.co.uk/), a cake shop in Thames Ditton which we have known about for months but which, for some reason or another, we have not visited before. First bit of news was that there was a little car park just off to the left, just before you get to the cake shop on the right. Second bit of news was that they did not do eat in but they did have a couple of tables outside where you could have coffee & cake (or whatever). It was warm, which was fine, but also a bit windy, which was not so fine.

Cakes, however, were very good. We had a yellow danish and an apple strudel while we were there and took away a couple of tarts and a fruit loaf. The tarts were the size and shape of Bakewell tarts but were described as Italian and were full of a sort of nut based mince meat. Very good they were too. The fruit loaf was light brown with fruit and tarted up with a little rosemary. Also very good. Maybe we shall be back next week to try their version of Linzatorte (see April 27th for alternative spelling), BH having had some words with the enthusiastic baker about composition & finish.

Followed up today with a new recipe for the cheese sauce we serve with back to basics, bogoff boiling bacon from Sainsbury's. Fry two cloves of finely chopped garlic in 1.5oz of butter. Add a couple of finely chopped onions and gently fry until soft and translucent. Add 1.5oz of a special blend of flour involving rice, potato, tapioca, maize and buckwheat. Stir it in and continue to fry for a few minutes. Stir in a pint of goat's milk, keeping an eye on the heat. Easy to have a stuck down job at this point. Stir in 1.5oz of grated cow's cheese (Heritage Mature Cheddar, courtesy of our local Costcutter. Not bad at all for the price). Keep stirring over a low heat for a further 5 minutes. Serve with the boiled bacon, boiled potatoes (slightly too back to basics for my taste. Rather a lot of darker bits) and boiled white cabbage. Sauce excellent, with the added convenience that the small amount left will microwave up to be had with the small amount of bacon left tomorrow.

For afternoon stroll, to Nonsuch Park where we find that somebody has been busy, maybe the Nonsuch Volunteers (http://www.friendsofnonsuch.co.uk/), and in the warm afternoon sun the place was looking as good as I remember seeing it. Great display of summer flowers, nicely set off by the lawns, bushes and trees. They had even laid on some late season's tadpoles. Tea and cakes served by a bevy of cheerful Polish girls, who even managed a touch of the gluten free for FIL.

DT tip top.

Once upon a time there used to be a joint called 'Roosters' which catered to the late night appetite for fatty beefburgers of under age drinkers. A veritable institution for many years. The next occupant of the building went for a complete change and sold baths. The current occupant has gone back to the building's catering roots and trades under the name of 'The Canopy' (http://www.143thecanopy.com/), a place which looked a bit fancy but which we had never managed to get to, partly because it seemed to have odd hours. Never there when we were. Furthermore, being entrepreneurial, they had opened an outdoor coffee department on their chunk of market place, a department which attracted a clientèle of smoking ladies of a rather different class to the indoor customers, almost entirely older and genteel.

But yesterday we finally made it for morning coffee and bacon sandwich. Which last turned out to be made with good quality bacon, white toast and was served with a micro salad on a shiny white oblong plate. Rather to my surprise the toast worked fine - perhaps because the toast came before the sandwich, rather than the other way around.

Later on that day, a touch of agatha (not agnatha which is entirely different) on the box, flying under the name of 'Why didn't they ask Evans?'. A slickly made affair but I found it a bit hard going, with the result that it was no match for the jigsaw resident in the same room. I also suspected that Miss. Marple was an intrusion, a rather clumsy one at that.

Checking this morning, I ask wikipedia which tells me that Miss. Marple was indeed an intrusion into this second bite at what had been the subject of one of the very first adaptations of an agatha story for television, the bardess not really approving. It might even have had to wait for her estate to give the OK for lots of dosh after her demise. But it is a tribute to the strength of the Marple brand that such intrusions are thought to be appropriate. Also that the price of Marple DVDs holds up so well, their fetching a good deal more than those adapted from the bard proper.

Resorted to powerpoint to help me understand the plot summary provided by wikipedia (see https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8152054/evans.pptx if you want a better view than that above. Although this last seems to be a lot better than my last attempt at this sort of thing on November 26th. Don't know what has changed), which eventually turns out to be very simple - and not much to do with what we saw yesterday. I suppose that the ability to turn a such simple plot into a slick & satisfactory whodunnit is one aspect of the considerable agathan talent. Perhaps I ought to suggest to the people that market these things that a picture is worth a thousand words, or put another way that a powerpoint that they can buy from me is a lot more helpful than a cast list.

Despite all this interest, not moved on this occasion to buy the book. At least not from Amazon. Maybe it will turn up at a car booter.

A dress rehearsal for the Midsomer gathering of the Chain Saw Volunteers (14th West Horton), caught by an intrepid camera from the borough 'Insight' team, from the very magazine from which I read that central government is instructing local government to withdraw funding. Which all goes to show that all governments bang on about reducing red tape and not interfering while carrying on doing just that. Even in paltry matters such as borough rags. Notwithstanding (a Frenchy might use 'quandmême' here?), I am pleased to be able to put faces to all those dead trees.

Note that volunteer etiquette discourages the exhibition of weapons or dead trees in photographs of this sort as it encourages showing off of the worst sort, rather than volunteer spirit of the best sort.

Nearly finished off the bottle of sloe gin decanted on 2 January. Quite drinkable; a sort of alcoholic ribena, but a bit sweet when one gets to the third glass. The fourth glass was full of sludge so got returned to the bottle for disposal elsewhere. Only half a gallon or so to go.

Sticking with the fruit thoughts, bought a couple of pounds of apricots yesterday. Stewed them in a saucepan just large enough for then to all sit on the bottom, in about half an inch of water and with six ounces of sugar. Result turned into a dish where they looked very fetching, the sort of thing that someone like Cézanne would have made a fine still life out of: "Rhapsody on some yellow spheres in a white bowl with spoons & cruet aside". Didn't taste too bad either.

Spent part of yesterday finishing off my read of Ms. M. Drabble's reminiscences around her auntie and her jigsaws. An odd sort of book, rather undisciplined and chatty given her publishing record, but lots of interest nonetheless. Perhaps she is too rich and too well known for the poor and unknown editor to have reined her in a bit.

Much musing on why quite a lot of us like to spend serious time - and possibly serious money if one goes in for arty jigsaws - on a hobby which is, at first glance anyway, rather silly. You make a machine to chop up a picture. You chop up the picture, stir the pieces into a heap and then spend hours putting it back together again. After which you break the jigsaw up again, put it back in its box and put the box in the attic. When attic full, start taking them back to the Oxfam shop, or wherever you got them from in the first place. She says along the musing way that she became a lot more tolerant of other peoples' silly hobbies, giving the example of bridge which she does not like at all. I might give the example of golf. The important thing is to reliably derive satisfaction without disturbing others. Worthiness, whatever that might be, a secondary issue.

Clearly not all bad because she is well signed up to my theory that doing a jigsaw of a painting is a good way to get to know that painting. And one can get a lot from what is probably a poor reproduction. Plus one is so much better prepared to extract value from the real thing should opportunity arise.

Much musing on old age, around the ageing and death of her auntie and her own ageing. Is it right to make an old lady who was a fine needlewoman in her day do a child's clumsy needlework in her dotage by way of occupational therapy and for the care workers to heap extravagant praise on her for her clumsy efforts? Both Drabble and I are rather inclined to think not. But is it wrong to try and keep the brain cells of our old ones ticking over? Would it really be better to let them simply slide away on a sea of apathy?

My arty uncle certainly made a cleanish break. After he had a stroke and could no longer cut wood to the standard he expected, he packed all his tools and gear off to the museum, the Fitzwilliam I think, and took to water colour which he could still manage. He would not have wanted to be praised for declining efforts. I wonder what the Fitzwilliam do with it all? Presumably his was not the only gift of this sort. (Note that 'Point Counter Point' exhibits a fictional artist addressing the same issue).

So if you have a serious activity or hobby, quit while you are ahead. Leave what you did which was good as a monument and do something else in your dotage. Don't muddy your own waters.

The other day to Dorking to check that the White Hart is still doing toasted tea cakes, a tea time confection of which I am fond and which seems to be something that can be knocked out commercially without destroying the intentions. Arrive there to find that the place had been taken over by Mercure, with the result that the old style lounge area, decorated with plenty of timber, some clearly recycled from other deployments, was still as pleasant as ever, but with the bonus that the sanitary facilities had been worked over, something that chains tend to be better at than independents. Teacakes good, coming with one small pot of jam with each half, an innovation which I thought unnecessary but BH was happy enough. Served on interesting oblong platters made out of some kind of off-white plastic.

No warm beer in sight but that was not a problem on this occasion and anyway plenty of places nearby which do do it.

The following day to London Town to check out the flats at Caro Point (http://www.caro-point.com/), part of a handsome development sandwiched between a small dock, a Peabody estate and London Transport Police. Just the ticket if we were ever to contemplate moving back to the big town. Right by Victoria Station but a residential rather than commercial area. Plenty of diversity to stop the place becoming a richies enclave and a small Youngs pub on the doorstep. Plus parking spaces for boats should one feel the need. Only snag was that a one bedroom flat was swinging in at more than £500,000 with top price near £4m.

One supposes that the heritage people were very fierce with the developers about keeping the dock in place, a dock which presumably used to connect with the nearby railway. There are vestiges of what might have been a goods yard. On the other hand, google also finds talk about coal deliveries to the next door pumping station. Chimney turns out to be nothing to do with shot while I had been saying it was everything to do with shot for years. Maybe some ancient confusion with a real shot tower which used to be on the other side of the river.

Along the way took in the 'Latchmere', a theatrical boozer, where we had a rather expensive and prettily served concoction described as a salt beef sandwich. No relation at all to those which used to be sold in Great Windmill Street. The meat might just as well have been spam, not that one really noticed through all the salad stuff. Where were these people brought up? BH almost put off her lunch by loud music and loud posters, these last featuring two large pigs' heads - clearly detached from the rest of the pig that is and advertising a play about the nature of justice in a world where the rule of the law can appear a distant truth. Cor, as they say. Proper barmaid, with proper accents and proper kit. But no DT although the regular facilities were adequate.

While Clapham Junction has a shiny new DT, sadly in rather careless use by able bodied staff. Not in the same league as Epsom - although I suppose one should allow for the better class of clientèle at this last. Victoria station not much better despite having to pay. No hot air and an attendant who could barely speak English and who did not appear to give a toss.

Followed up the Latchmere with a swing around Battersea Park where we were able to admire the large numbers of fine London planes. Roses pretty good considering the recent weather. Some nice bits of fifties garden design; for my money a good period, a period before the rot set in for the sixties and seventies. We thought it a pity that the fine steps down to the beach by Chelsea Bridge had been railed off. No-one thought to give them a refurb. while installing the expensive new walk way under Chelsea Bridge. No-one thought that it might be good to return access to the beach to families visiting or families living nearby. They do things rather better down by the South Bank but that, I think, is Lambeth rather than Wandsworth.

We learned that flying herons can make a loud noise, somewhere between that of a duck and a crow.

Then just a quick hop across the bridge to Caro Point.

It is fairly irritating for this cash strapped country to be pouring £20bn or so down the drain on the Olympics. A drain fitted with a divert to the family homes in parts east of all those chaps and chapesses from parts east employed thereon.

Further irritation in the form of some red steel monstrosity.

Then still more yesterday to learn that £20m or so is to be spent on a full size working replica of the lid of a kitsch jigsaw puzzle (originally from Waddington, late of Leeds). OK, so if there are to be games I dare say there has to be an opening ceremony. It is the same as films; you can't just dive straight in, you need some framing flannel. But I am sure that if I was given the job, I could come up with something a good deal cheaper and a good deal more dignified. Perhaps involving the monarch giving the signal by lighting something. And while I was at it I would prune out some of the more exotic sports, boob bounding for one.

And the balance could be spent on subsidizing arty jigsaws of a more interesting olympic event. I would even buy one myself, despite having had a repro. of the picture for many years. A jigsaw makes one pay attention.

PS: I think I have mentioned before that it would be a lot simpler and a lot more sensible to have a permanent site at Olympia. Apart from anything else, an earner for the poor old Greeks. So long, that is, that they didn't just flog the franchise to Virgin so that they could carry on sitting around in the sun,

Puzzle number 13 comes from yet another line, JR Jigsaws 500, from Stockport. It came in a lower grade box which rather belied the entirely decent puzzle within, only marred by some of the cuts being incomplete, resulting in small tears, and a tendency of the larger pieces to fold. A side effect of the small tears was a larger than usual amount of that odd cardboard dust you get left on the table when packing a jigsaw back into its box. Dust which, in this case, is now safely lodged in the Patrón compost bottle (see earlier posts on this last subject).

Once again, completed in around 24 hours.

Started for a change by sorting into four heaps, three small and one large: edge, skyline, sky and remainder. Then did the edge, then did the skyline. Put the modest amount of sky aside as a treat for later.

Buildings on the right, working across to the buildings on the left. Boats on the right, working across to the boats on the left. Boats in the middle. Waterline. Cliff. And lastly the sky.

One of the oddities of this puzzle was that while the size of pieces varied a bit, with the largest being perhaps four times the area of the smallest, they were all regular, that is to say all the interior pieces came in the prong-hole-prong-hole formation. No irregulars with protuberances of curious shape. This meant that the sky, despite being small, was difficult. Very little colour variation to help one along. The key was that the sky pieces came in essentially two sizes, large and small and one could usually tell which any target hole was - a target hole having at least two pieces adjacent to help one along. So sort the sky pieces into large and small then move onto trial and error, with the sorting into two roughly equal piles massively reducing the number of trials and with the process being slightly better than random. Brain-eye coordination was adding some value.

Celebrating the successful conclusion of this puzzle by reading M. Drabble on the subject - an author whom my mother used to read but whom I have never read. Beyond, maybe, glancing at the 'Millstone' once, many years ago. An interesting bird on an interesting subject. Printing marred by an irritating tendency to omit the space between a period and the capital letter following, which I find very ugly. Fortunately, not usually more than one to a page. But how can such things happen in these days of fancy word processing and publishing software? Should I write to the publishers - some outfit called Atlantic books, an outfit of which I had never previously heard?

Scanning marred by coming out a bit light in colour, like an overexposed photograph. Don't think that this was the result of the box being very slightly smaller than A4, thus leaving a small gap on the scanner plate.

Impromptu visit to hook Road Arena yesterday to find both a festival of donkeys and a car boot sale, both of modest dimensions. The festival included a number of serious looking people wandering around in tweed jackets and black hats and about the same number of donkeys for them to judge. To one side was a tent soliciting money to save the donkeys in Luxor (see http://www.awol-egypt.org/), although I did not get close enough to find out what was special about the Luxor donkey. Perhaps I should have as I would have thought that there were plenty of donkeys in a bad way a lot nearer home, for example in Spain. Not to mention the goings-on on a Blackpool beach on a hot sunny day where,  I am reliably informed, some operators do not even bother to provide their animals with sun hats.

The sellers at the car boot sale had been organised by the neat expedient of two tone grass cutting. Nothing so common as posts or tape to mark the lanes. And the clientèle was even more interesting than that at the rose garden the previous afternoon, with representatives of many races, sexes and orientations putting in an appearance. An impressive range of flesh, some of it tattooed, on display. Some may have even lived in mobile homes.

Did not part with very much money with neither suitable walking sticks (against leaving them on trains and in pubs) or jigsaws to be found. But I did find two tea mugs - that is to say a mug, but cup shaped in that the top has a bigger diameter than the bottom, thus enabling the piping hot tea to cool - which had once come from IKEA. Identical to the one I was given for a recent birthday and which has been in heavy use since. I explained to the vendor that at 2 clean ones for a £1 I did not need to bother to clean the one that I had already got. Vendor suitably impressed by my mid morning wit.

A simple experiment will demonstrate why not cleaning is a good thing. Make a cup of tea with hard Epsom water. Add some medium strength milk, that is to say the stuff with blue tops. Dip blade of a desert knife into brew and withdraw. You will be surprised by the amount of very unappetising gunk which has adhered to the blade. What on earth might it be doing to the lining of one's stomach, lining which is perhaps not quite as robust as the stainless steel of the blade of the knife?

Woke up to think about the oddness that while most of us do not like to dwell on death in a serious way, certainly not one's own, at least while one is in reasonable health, many of us do like to dwell on plastic death, the sort which populates detective stories like 'Mrs McGinty's dead'.

Perhaps something similar is going on to when we watch horror films in order to discretely scratch all kinds of infantile fantasies and desires. As it happens, a sort of film which I used to consume up to the age of around 25. Then from the age of around 55, television detectives. I forget what, if anything, happened in between.

Or is it nothing more profound than the open sesame that murder conveys, rather in the way that 'security of state' does - both in spy novels and real life? We need an excuse to be peeping through keyholes.

Yesterday afternoon to Hampton Court for what seems to be our first visit since April 15. Pleasant afternoon, warm with a light breeze. Rose garden looking good, particularly considering all the rain we have had in recent weeks. In addition to the roses there were some interesting human inhabitants. For example, a well dressed (and subsequently slightly embarassed) Italian lady rolling around on the grass with an infant while an enthusiastic father took pictures. A large sub-continental family with the western clad gents. taking pictures of a western clad daughter with one of the most elaborate cameras I have ever seen, while the older ladies, smartly turned out in their saris, nattered. A very striking and well dressed young lady of outstanding thinness and outstanding high heels, a young lady whom one assumed worked in some profession in which vanity was important.

Onto to the various flower beds along the east front. Some fine foxgloves in the main border and some fine displays in the beds. The Palace gardeners certainly know their stuff when it comes to putting together a display. Remarking on the way that displays of this sort are like paintings in the sense that there may be a proper distance to view them from: a really good display will work at anything from fifty yards down, whereas a less cunning one is best appreciated at some specific distance.

Privy garden up to its usual standard although one wondered about the lone carp in the rather murky circular pond. Walked out down the western beech arch - which have must have been a splendid place for strolling & display on a hot summer's afternoon. Two splendid aloes on the terrace, a plant for which, for some reason, I have a soft spot. Not sure about a forest of them, but as specimen plants, great.

Yesterday evening mainly devoted, for the second time in six months, to 'Mrs. McGinty's Dead' (see November 26 last). A cunning entertainment in that it was entirely watchable this second time around, with neither BH nor I being too clear about what had happened by the time it had.  Continue to be amused by Christy's inclusion of a version of herself as an also starring. And once again there was a certain amount of nodding. Followed up with a quick skim through the book and decided that the adapter had been pretty fair to the spirit of the thing, despite various liberties with the plot. The various homilies about good taste and servants, of interest to the wannabee upwardly mobile of the time (Ian Fleming included a fair amount of the same sort of this stuff in his Bond books, a few years later. I have read that we were well up for this sort of stuff after the rigours of the home front, followed by years of rationing), largely lost in the sugar coated costume drama. A lot of wrinkles in the plot ironed out - which was perhaps just as well as we could not properly grasp what we did get.

Perhaps I should have turned up my excellent diagram of the book before the show rather than after. Although that would not have decreased my irritation that the capture of the Powerpoint slide in the blog seems to have done bad things to the resolution, to the point where it is only just usable.

Spiffing new discovery for a breakfast time snack. Take 4oz of line-caught organic cod, bake with a little butter & onion and set aside. Acquire 6oz cold mashed potato, blend with the cold cod and shape the mixture into a flat cake. Gently fry the cake in 1oz of butter in a closed pan until one has enough brown crust. Serve. The only down side was the amount of washing up generated for one small, if tasty & calorific snack.

Over snack I turned the pages of the 'Metro' and the 'Evening Standard' acquired on yesterday afternoon's swing up Garrett Lane. Rather annoyed to find from the 'Metro' that some bookmaker has erected 100 feets' worth of outdoor sculpture entitled 'Roy the Redeemer' on the white cliffs of Dover. If I, as a humble taxpayer, were to paint my door the wrong colour or prune some tree in the wrong way, I would get a bunch of council or quango bisease baying at the door, despite its new colour. £1,000 fines all round for infringement of some daft regulation or other. But breathe the magic words 'outdoor sculpture conceptual performance', everyone goes all weak at the knees and the grants and permissions come flying in: the taxpayers and the national lottery players can all too easily wind up paying for some dreadful eyesore, with Hyde Park seeming to be a particularly popular site for such stuff. To be fair, I think the bookmaker has paid for this one and it might even be temporary, despite weighing 8 tons. The reports I have seen were agnostic on that point.

But it never ceases to surprise me how we, collectively, are happy to throw money at the chaps that punt this sort of stuff. Whoever wrote the story about the emperors' new clothes certainly knew what he was talking about.

And then in the 'Standard' I read about financial irregularities in the getting on for privatised world of education. What on earth do they expect if they give loads of money to people out there on the front line without the simplicity of profit & loss accounts to control how that money is spent? I dare say there is plenty more to come from the contractors in the business of placements for the unplaceable. I wonder what is to come when huge sums of money start swishing through the accounts of our local health centres - which I assume is what will happen when we get rid of the primary care trusts.

For the avoidance of doubt I should add that while profit might have other up-sides, for example in motivation and in the reduction in the desire for ever more complex performance indicators, it also has plenty of down-sides. And I note in passing that, according to Wikipedia anyway, the functions of primary care trusts are to be split between the health centres and local councils. Which sounds as if we are starting to rationalise local government a bit, with the local council doing everything governmenty on its patch. Which sounds to me like a good thing; a step on the way to breathing a bit more life into local government.

Also that the 'Prince of Wales' on Garrett Lane looks to have shut down for good. One of the dying breed of working mens' pubs, this one from Youngs. And that facilities for the disabled at Tooting Broadway are not as good as those at Earlsfield, let alone Epsom, even being let down by the Wetherspoons there, admittedly one of his earlier efforts. BH thinks that the Sainsbury's opposite might do the business; I shall check on the next occasion.

I had been almost free of senior moments in recent weeks, at least the sort that one notices, perhaps because of the change to my diet, with much lower intake of alcohol and vegetable fibre. Then over the last couple of days, three of the things.

The first took place in the extension, a place where I quite often go, either to place a full memory stick in its place or a washed wine glass in its. On this occasion, for the first time ever, I made a serious attempt to put a wine glass in the memory stick place, to the point where it had more or less got there before the brain went into reverse. This is the sort of thing that used to happen quite often in the kitchen, but never before in the extension. The second took place while I was consuming email, this particular email containing the word 'drs'. The brain locked onto the notion that drs was initials for either somebody or something, perhaps digital resource system, which used to be sold to government by the company formerly known as ICL, with the result that I completely failed to work out that it was simply an abbreviation for 'doctors'. And even when this had been explained to me, it still took a few moments to work out what exactly was going on. The third was a visual error. I was looking out over the back garden, admiring the wind in the left hand hazel nut tree. I looked away, thinking about something else, then looked back to find that a lot of the leaves on the tree had taken on a very pale hue. Was this some trick of the dawn light? After about a minute or so I realised I had locked onto a shrub near the hazel tree: the front end of the sight system had shifted from one tree to another while the back end had stayed put. Most odd.

I can also report the demise of the last three inches of pink sausage. Following the macaroni of on or about May 30th, went for an upgrade yesterday and replaced the dried basil by fresh basil plus diced pink sausage. Let the whole lot stand for a few minutes while the pink sausage warms through - no need to actually cook the stuff again - and serve. Very good it was too. I learned that fresh basil - which I had not cooked with before - smells rather like fresh mint. Also that it is not just gluten free macaroni which soaks up lots of heat. Even the ordinary stuff must have a very high specific heat as one has to have the heat turned well up to keep the ambient water boiling, far higher than one would for say for a similar quantity of rice or crinkly cabbage.

And then there are the tales from the kindle. I was finding the rather tatty formatting for kindle that comes for free from the Gutenburg people (http://www.gutenberg.org/) rather irritating, the particular case being 'Ivanhoe'. Furthermore, it had been alleged that if you buy a real kindle book things are not that much better, so I resolved on a further test and actually bought a kindle book, selected from the fiction pages of the TLS ('The Flame Alphabet' by Ben Marcus) and bought with a single click from Amazon. Well, one click after I had fought my way through the new-to-me search in the kindle part of Amazon which is quite different from the search in the other part, which I am used too. So far, in addition to the text itself, I have discovered a table of contents from which one can jump to a selected position in the book. So Amazon are doing something to adapt a book for a kindle. Maybe there will be other wheezes which my first foray did not come across.

All an expense of course. Presumably publishers are well on top of turning a word processor manuscript into a decent looking paper book but are only just starting out on the business of turning such a manuscript into as decent looking kindle book - a business which my admittedly limited experience with desk top publishing packages suggests might take a while.

Greatly entertained by a piece of serious tripe over breakfast, spotted in the Guardian, opposite a far more solemn piece about unpleasant goings on in Sri Lanka.

Apropos of someone digging up some bardic theatre, one D. Drumgoolies was moved to say 'I love the fact that we are excavating London, and slowly clearing away the miserable piles of Victoriana and Empire, and revealing the anarchic and joyous London which is lurking beneath'. What complete and utter twaddle. Cynics might say that all of a piece with the pantomimes that he, as artistic director, sees fit to put on on the Globe. He might at least be grateful for the originally Victorianic & Empiric wealth which makes ventures such as that at the Globe possible.

The more solemn piece led me to wonder how far one's duty to provide asylum should go. As I understand things, we provide asylum to anyone who turns up at our borders who can show that he or she will be mistreated if returned to their country of origin, an understanding which looks to be confirmed by a page on the UK Border Agency web site which says that 'The UK adheres to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prevents us from sending anyone to a country where there is a real risk that they will be exposed to torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'. Clearly the decent thing to do, but could we take the strain if hundreds of thousands of such people started turning up on our doorstep? Which is more or less what happens to countries, such as Turkey, which have the bad luck to be neighbour to countries which are falling apart. I suppose we should just be grateful that we are a peripheral island, a long way away from anywhere with serious troubles and do our bit for those few souls that manage to make it to our shores. Excluding economic migrants hanging off the bottom of lorries coming across from Calais, naturally.

Pink sausage went down very well, lightly fried, while all these thoughts were whizzing around.

And yesterday saw an excellent beef stew. 1.3lbs of stewed steak, cut into pieces maybe 0.5 by 0.75 by 1.5cm. Fry in a little lard. Add some chopped celery and onion. Add a little water, maybe half a pint. Simmer for 2.5 hours, by which time the fluid had become properly gravy like, this without any fortification in the form of corn flour, wheat flower or gravy browning. Meat lumps cooked while retaining enough texture to tickle the palette. It all went down well with the traditional mashed potato and crinkly cabbage.

Instead of watching BBC reporters gush us about other people celebrating the jubilee, our road did its own bit of celebrating, on Monday.

This picture is such record as I have of my two trestle tables (see, for example July 6 and 11, 2011) doing their bit for the jubilee by supporting important materials for children. As it happens, their first outing for a bit.

I can also report that we did have bunting decorating our front garden, well up to the standard of the road in general. BH got well ahead on this particular game by buying some bunting, very cheap, from a novelty shop shortly after the visit to the 'Spotted Dog' in Dorking (http://www.thespotteddogpub.co.uk/) reported on March 7. Not lovingly hand crafted from second hand fabrics, but serviceable nonetheless.

FIL was pleased to be able to sport his Golden Jubilee Medal, awarded him last time around, in 2002.

There were various races. While we did not go as far as three legged or sack races I did see my first slow bicycle and egg & spoon races for many years. I made my excuses for not participating in a more active way.

For our barbecue we had both gluten free and pink sausage. This last coming from our Polish grocer (from the former German town formerly known as Breslau. I wonder how much - if anything - about the former German bit she was taught in school) in Ewell Village, a flabby orange skinned job some 3cm in diameter and maybe 43cm in length. Sliced lengthwise and lightly grilled on the communal barbie it nicely blended the savours & flavours of luncheon meat, saveloy and garlic sausage. Served with a jolly little Pouilly-Fumé from Waitrose.

The organisers were also well ahead on their game and organised the regalia collared mayor to open proceedings, which given the 40 odd street parties on her patch was no mean achievement. One wonders how many of them she got to. The programme also rates a mention in dispatches; a nicely produced thing which managed to look both smart and homely, that is to say not the product of some corporate marketing engine.

PS: we marked the occasion in a more private way by adding 1oz of jubilee strawberry cheesecake - another rather pink confection - to yesterday's chicken broth. Sadly, I am not sure that one would have known afterwards if one had not known before.

Last visited on April 7th, some two months ago. While substantial progress has been made and the pot plants have been delivered, the thinking that things stay 99% complete for a long time is clearly sustained.

The blob at the end of the path is a bit of masonry which I imagine supports some kind of heritage tablet, to be declared open by a present or past mayor and recording the former presence of a brick water tower for posterity.

Given that discussions about who exactly is responsible for what between the developer and the council are said to be continuing, I wonder who is responsible for this last lap? I imagine the Erith contract stopped when they had got all the masonry out and roughly levelled the ground. Is there a management company responsible for all the public areas - quite extensive with lots of trees and shrubs, mostly dating from the days of  tree-loving asylum superintendents - or is that down to the same council contractors who like to chip away at the bases of newly planted trees with their sit and ride lawnmowers?

Moved to do another puzzle, number 12, there having been a bit of a pause since number 11 on May 22nd.

This was my first puzzle from Waddingtons and (I think) one of the 10p ones from the Hook Road car booter (see May 27th). Another 500 piecer but with a box slightly too big to scan, so I had to resort to the mobile phone. The image of the completed puzzle was very poor for some reason, so readers will have to make do with the image from the box.

The main point of interest being the relatively large proportion of pieces of irregular size and shape, with plenty of interior vertices not being the meeting point of four of them, and with a small number of pieces being near double the norm in size. This coupled with the image having no large expanses of uniform colour & texture made for easy solution, taking under 24 hours, a personal best - not that speed is really a virtue in this context.

Started off with the edge, then the sky line, then the sky. This early completion of the sky being another oddity. I then connected the down spike of the sky to the bottom of the image, thus dividing the puzzle into two halves. Then selecting red, did the pub sign (top right) and the red door (bottom left). At this point I thought to do the windows of the left hand half, but this was not to be. Don't seem to be much good at overt strategy decisions.

Instead went for the distinctive roof tiles of the top left hand quadrant. The the white drain pipe to the left and the green stripe to the right - both being accomplished in just a few minutes. Selection by pipe in the one case and by green in the other. Then nibbled away at things, particularly the view of the street down the middle of the image. Eventually plumped for the remainder of the right hand half and did that. Then the big windows to the right of the smaller sign on the left. Then below the big windows and lastly above the big windows.

All things considered, we settled for Derby Lite this 22nd year. Clearly not up for doing it properly but it would have been a pity to break the run.

So we settled for starting at the King's Head at 1230 rather than the Marquis at 1000 (0800 one year, since when Derby Day opening at the Marquis has been a bit erratic. We have been pushed into the Albion in the past, but with this one now down we might have been into Wetherspoons had we started on time). In the very beginning the official sequence would have been Marquis, Albion, Wellington (once Milky's domain, now the Agora Amusement Arcade, this despite being a grade II listed building. Milky used to sell useful things like rolls and pies as well as beer), Rifleman and King's Head with unofficial detours to the Plough & Harrow (deceased) Common Room (renamed), the Vestry, South Hatch and the Derby Arms (now foodie place rather than pub, complete with big doormen on big days) also available, depending on mood and weather.

Hour or so at the King's Head over some very ordinary white wine, then into a passing taxi for a £10 ride up to Tattenham Corner for the 4 of us, the first time in all 22 years we have done anything other than walk. Entirely reasonable flat fare from the Epsom Chapter of the Taxi Drivers' Combine. Over the track to the older persons' enclosures on the top of the hill, from where one could see a good proportion the course, although one should say in fairness that the winning post was more than half a mile away and not terribly visible to the naked eye. Neither could one pick The Queen off her balcony so we cannot report on the colour of her hat, coat or dress. On the other hand we had drumming & dancing from the next door enclosure; looked good to be a proper party in time. There was also a very handsome car which looked to date from the fifties, complete pink paint, wings, chrome and Texas number plates.

Having read in the Racing Post more than a week ago that Camelot was a dead cert. for the Derby proper and so scarcely worth a punt, I decided to back Robin Hood from the same trainer in the Coronation Cup, a name which appealed partly because of our present researches into 'Ivanhoe' and partly because it reminded one of our coup with Jet Ski Lady on a previous occasion, said lady coming in for us at the same 66 to 1. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the same trainer did indeed have the winner in this race, one St. Nicholas Abbey, for which the horse I had backed was the pace maker.

Next activity was to inspect the large and much younger crowd in the dip, large chunks of which had been enclosed on one pretext or other. But lots of happy people and lots of rides. No trouble that we saw, beyond ladies in interesting dress wondering whether they would have done better not to wear such very high heels for hoofing it across the downs.

The Derby took the form for us of thundering hooves as we approached the entrance to the tunnel and very thundrous they were too. Race horses definitely impressive animals at close quarters. And as it turned out the Racing Post was quite right about the winner.

Notes from last year at 5th June 2011.

The establishment which I used to use on Derby Day, in the days when my smoking was very occasional and social, to buy 40 Gitaines, a special treat for a special day. The shop still sells cigarettes but I rather doubt whether they still sell Gitaines. And in these days of cover up the only way to find out whether they do at Waitrose is to ask.

I wonder how the new rules apply to the smokers' shop at Harrods, as I recall a small shop within a shop with much old fashioned shop furniture, in particular shallow glass fronted hardwood cupboards lining the inside walls and filled with assorted smokers' products? How do you remove them from the sight of susceptible minors while retaining retail competence?

I am also becoming acquainted with various related products which do not incur the wrath of the regulations, the relevant sentence of which reads 'smoking includes being in possession of lit tobacco or of anything lit which contains tobacco, or being in possession of any other lit substance in a form in which it could be smoked'. One still legal nicotine delivery system looks rather like an asthma inhaler and is intended to be used to supply a quick fix after the meal when one is gasping for a fag. Another actually looks like a fag, glows like a fag and delivers both smoke and nicotine - but cunningly avoids the test of 'lit substance'. And for those who do not keep up with the times, there is always chew. Not sure where one might get the stuff in Epsom.

Another recent acquaintance is a modern mobile phone. The pictures you can take with them are vastly superior than those which I take with my elderly Nokia (such as this one) and they even do flash although I don't think they are yet into zoom. There is still something left for a real camera to do - although it is hard to see how one could make a living out of a high street photographic shop any more. Bring on the podiatrists!

I notice in passing that the regulations also empower the appropriate authorities, whoever they might be, to enact all kinds of variations, so what you see in the act might well not be the whole story. The appropriate authorities can spend long and entertaining Friday lunch times dreaming up all kinds of new wheezes and have them enacted before departing for the 1608 for Surbiton.

The place to the rear left of the picture used to be a notable watering hole, especially on Derby Day. Sadly fallen just before we arrived in town and now home to a gentlemen's outfitter. A gentlemen's outfitter which has fallen so low as to have a ladies' department.

The very serious display (see previous post).

Back to Bach yesterday with some of the 'Well Tempered Clavier Book II' on a Steinway at St. Luke's and played by Cédric Tiberghien, following the harpsichord rendering of a relation last week. Not full but a presentable and enthusiastic audience. Following my doubts last week, it sounded fine on a piano, if rather different. But I am not so sure about the programming decision to play all 12 majors, reserving just one minor for the encore - and very different in mood it was too. Once home I dug out my rendering played by Maurice Cole and played the first four, two majors and two minors, without being reminded at all of the live rendition only a few hours previously. All very odd and I shall have to work at the matter: maybe it will turn out that I can tell the difference between my Cole and Richter versions, despite being two pianists of roughly the same generation. Wikipedia also tells me that Richter, although Russian, had a German immigrant as a father, a complication which caused serious problems when Germany invaded Russia; yet another small fact which had hitherto passed me by.

After the concert, inspected some of the housing to the south west of the church, I guess on the fringes of the Barbican estate. Some indications that it might not be a great place after dark, but at least one ground floor flat dweller took the matter of cheerful pot plants very seriously and put out a very serious display. I was impressed.

Followed by the usual stroll back to Waterloo. The first item of interest was a juvenile black backed gull on the water at Blackfriars. There was a brisk breeze blowing up the river and the gull was trying to take off. Four times it managed to get clear of the water, rise about a yard in the air and then collapse back down again with a right old splash. On the fifth attempt it actually got airborne and flew 20 years up river before landing again. The second item was the preparations on the bridge, noticed in the previous post. The third item was clocking the outdoor café at the National Theatre which appeared to be constructed from cast off sets. Very whimsical.

Closed the proceedings with the first 'Newsweek' for many a year, which turned out to be a transatlantic version of the 'Ecomonist'. Rather thinner, on cheaper paper, not so full of itself and generally rather easier on the brain. Far better coverage of foreign affairs than would be usual in this country, the 'Economist' itself excepted.