People who are loaded

I noticed the arrival of Baufritz in a road near us at reference 1.

I can now report that a very large hole has been dug on the site of what was a large and ugly house - probably both large and ugly as a result of insensitive makeover. I assume that the hole is much larger than the cellar it is intended to accommodate, as the cellar needs to be lined with substantial concrete walls.

I also assume that the cellar is a dodge to get around a planning rule which says that the new house must occupy the same footprint as the old and must be of comparable size overall to neighbouring houses. A dodge because the small print about size says that size means what you can see from the outside. Maybe lawyers could argue about whether you could see a cellar with independent access, along the lines of all those sub-ground flats in expensive parts of inner London? Is it really a granny cellar rather than a granny annex?

I grant that the new owners will probably be able to boast in the bar of their golf club about having the only cellar in the road and they might even be able to get their picture into the property section of the DT one day, but it all seems very odd to me. If I had the sort of money that must be involved, I think I might just give a lot of it to charity, to a worthy cause, rather than digging a large hole in the ground.

PS: presumably the new owners voted remain, given the large amount of money they are spending on materials and labour from continental parts of the European Union.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/wooden-houses.html.

Shin

We start with PrimeStar of New Zealand (reference 1), a meat wholesaler whose picture of a shin of beef was turned up by Bing. Domiciled in Miramar, the name of a hotel in which we have stayed in Bournemouth, many years ago, and which was still there, more or less unchanged, when we lunched there, much more recently. And is still there today (reference 2), if a touch flashily presented. One memory from which is the view from our bedroom one evening of the Britannia turning up with the Queen and an attendant frigate. Another is of a French chap carefully corking up what was left of his wine after lunch and sending it back to the fridge for the next day. A place which, I might say, took a substantial cheque when we left, without bank card or any other form of identification. Those were the days!

While the meat wholesaler offers a far bigger range of cuts than is usual in a meat retailer, that is to say butcher, in this country.

Another strand of the story concerns the arrangements of my childhood, involving Sunday roast at Saturday lunchtime, cold on Sunday and minced on Monday. Or something like that, with the important point being that I do not recall our ever buying shop mince: we always minced the cold roast - which I have since learned gives a quite different result from once-cooked shop mince.

The diagram

A whole shin

Most of a shin

Bought from the butcher in Manor Green Road (reference 3), cut by eye to around 8lbs, but turning out to fit the vessel destined for first cooking rather nicely. Or so we thought.

Started at around 0500 at 125C.

End of first cooking

By around 1000, the joint had swelled rather than shrunk (as I had expected), pushing the lid right off. By this time also a fair amount of fat had leached out. Covered with foil and returned to the oven.

Out again at 1030, by which time it looked fit to eat - but that was not the plan. Fat drained off and meat left to cool.

Ready for the mincer

The meat was minced the following morning, along with some onions and carrots. Mincer outlet visible right. Ended up using rather more onions and carrots than are shown here.

A slice of shin, almost ready for the mincer

Note all the fat and connective tissue. All flavour enhancing.

Down to the bone

Second cooking in progress

Added what seemed like quite a lot of water and then simmered for about an hour, with the lids on. Potatoes left - sold as baking potatoes, discounted by Sainsbury's on account of the wet weather, not good for outdoor barbecues. Which saved on the peeling time.

Furthermore, an outing for our largest saucepan, as well as an outing for the Spong. With neither getting to see the light of day terribly often these days.

End of third cooking

There was a subsidiary pie in the white enamel pie dish visible in previous snaps. Served with a gravy made with the left over stock (and some e-numbers from Knorr, for those who liked to be able to taste their flavour) and boiled cabbage.

Going down

But not going down so well that we did not need the genius tester, visible back right. See reference 4 for a previous outing.

Taken with a spot of red

We don't drink much red wine these days, but we did take a spot of a good 2017 Barolo, from Waitrose, on this occasion. Originally from the people at reference 5. Leaving us with the puzzle of why Waitrose own brand champagne dates back to 2007, making it far older than the white wines that we know. Or indeed most red wines.

The shed

Complete with what appear to be new, or newish, wooden barrels. Complete with very other flashy shots. Not a very artisanal operation at all.

For the birds

With the leftover bone being hung up at the back of the garden for the birds. Although experience suggests that our birds take a long time to find and consume meat in this form.

When we next cook such a pie? When will the Spong have its next outing? And so far, I have only turned up a non-mincing mention, at reference 6. A turning up initially confused by the search in Windows Explorer on the Word archive including sponges in its search for spongs.

Reference 1: http://www.primestar.co.nz/.

Reference 2: https://miramar-bournemouth.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.masterbutchersepsom.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/deconstruction.html.

Reference 5: http://www.terredavino.it/.

Reference 6: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/01/werther-not-goethe.html.

Early morning foreign

The opening page of (soi-disant) news items on Microsoft Edge this morning is a nice mixture of English and foreign. Possibly Hungarian? Possibly Romanian? Hopefully something wrong at their end, rather than something unpleasant happening to this laptop.

PS: still doing it a couple of hours later. The drill seems to be that the news items are in foreign while the advertisements which are mixed in with them are in English. And the laptop still knows that I live in Epsom, England.

Microsoft news

A Microsoft news item (via the Edge browser) caught my eye this morning on account of a striking picture from the Czech Republic of a specimen of the critically endangered sorbus rhodanthera.

This turned out to come from an open access report (reference 1) about endangered trees in Europe. While not from the European Union, the preface to this report is written in impenetrable Euro-speak, quite impenetrable enough to have Euro-haters frothing at the mouth. While the body of the report has lots of complicated maps and lots of handsome pictures of trees.

The first of these handsome pictures does not come from the Czech Republic at all, rather from our very own River Wey at Headley Park, was taken by one John Spooner and is available from something called Flickr, a something which I have heard of but know nothing about. It caught my eye because we have a Headley Heath near us, here at Epsom, but this Headley turns out to be near Bramshott, in Hampshire, just off the A3. Also the home to the River Wey Aqueduct of Bramshott Court, seemingly an important piece of early modern water engineering, helping along the watering of the meadows there, thus substantially increasing their value. Bing has not been terribly helpful on this occasion, so clearly all places to visit next time we are at a loose end, or need a comfort break, on this stretch of the A3.

Then following up our troubles with our box bushes, rather confusingly called buxus sempervirens or everlasting box, I thought to ask the report about box - with 11 of the twelve mentions being down to boxes in the text, rather than box trees in the ground, with the trees being classified as of least concern. Clearly not enough of the many authors of this report have heard of the box tree caterpillar. Report completely discredited.

I associated to the scene in an episode of Lewis (on DVD for once, rather than ITV3) in which university professors visit university libraries (in this case the Bodleian) in order to check that all their books are present and correct on their proper shelves.

But I have taken a copy of the report and it may get a second look at some point.

PS: I feel sure that we have walked in the woods at Bramshott Common, and taken pictures there, noticed in the first instance because Canadian troops were stationed there during the first and second world wars. Many of them died there, of the flu epidemic which came after the first. But I have yet to turn up the post.

Reference 1: European Red List of Trees - Malin Rivers, Emily Beech and others - 2019.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/box-tree-caterpillar.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/caterpillar-control-episode-1.html. There is also an episode 2.

Trolley 302

Two trolleys from Waitrose from the Ashmore passage. Invested £1 to separate them, got it back when I put them back together properly. Neither pound nor token when I returned them to their stack in the Ashley Centre.

The miller's daughter

Last week to hear Padmore and Bezuidenhout do 'Die schöne Müllerin' at (where else) the Wigmore Hall.

A fine evening, but we must have taken our time as we arrived at Epsom Station with only a couple of minutes to spare. Train then held for a bit at Raynes Park. Someone called a 'trespass and welfare officer' on the platform at Clapham Junction, this from the label stencilled on the back of his jacket. Very hot in the tube.

Greeted by an indigent in a cardboard box on exit from the tube at Oxford Circus and there was another in Regent Street. Not impressed that our capital should be decorated in this way, that we cannot find some better way to manage these people, almost certainly afflicted with some serious complaint or other.

A M&S food hall trolley in among the bins at Cavendish Square, but no time to return it to M&S and did not think to snap it. Picnic in the square, which left us just enough time for me to take some Monkey's Shoulder before the off. After, that is, having clocked an art work there taking the form of a large and ugly head, apparently buried up to the nostrils in the ground. Great heavy thing in bronze, maybe half an inch thick - but appearing, at least, to serve as a place of refuge for rodents. Hard to see that climbing on it would do it any harm - beyond not showing it the respect it did not deserve.

Got into the hall itself by the back entrance, to be greeted by what appeared to be an ancient piano, perhaps the sort of thing that would have been available in Schubert's day. It turned out to have been built this year, after an original by Conrad Graf, whom I now know to be the most famous piano maker of his day, that is to say the first half of the nineteenth century. Supplied and tuned by the builder, Christoph Kern.

With this snip from reference 1 possibly being about the instrument in question, with the bit at the bottom possibly saying prices on application - but with the price of the one above probably giving the general idea. That is to say, a lot!

The keyboard struck me as being a lot narrower than that of a modern piano, so presumably not as many octaves. While the tone turned out to be quite different from that of a modern piano - and I rather liked it; it seemed well suited to the occasion. 

So a fine performance, with plenty of variation between loud, soft and still. With Padmore managing to inject strain into his voice at appropriate moments. Also, despite Schubert having stripped out the poems that frame the cycle we know at beginning and end, there was still (for me anyway) an element of self-consciousness about it all, of irony and of laying on the emotion a bit thick. With a rather pre-Raphaelite page turner, suitably willowy and earnest in appearance. Audience diverse and very enthusiastic.

On exit, it seemed even hotter in the tube. But we did pick up the flower power again at Vauxhall, although I failed on this occasion to snap the number. See reference 2. While the times of trains meant that we failed to make the Half Way House at Earlsfield, it seeming more sensible to proceed direct to Epsom, not passing go, as it were.

Home to some stars, and to match the mood of the songs, I got quite sentimental about the sight of the big and little dippers. The names which came to mind at the time, but seemingly more current in north America than over here, where we talk of ploughs and bears. I usually tend to think of saucepans. From all of which I associated to the soppy Madeline Bassett of Jeeves & Wooster - but not so soppy that she did not end up marrying an older man for the sake of his title. And after which I read of asterisms, entities I had not before heard of. Another north American usage?

PS: 'not so soppy that she did not' is a bit nonsensical, but I think it is the usual way of saying this. The Queen's English. Or perhaps Oxford English.

Reference 1: https://christoph-kern.de/.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/beethoven-250.html.

Privleged conversations

Concerning the recent reports about conversations that President Trump (US) had with President Zelensky (Ukraine), I only observe that if the conversations between presidents and their diplomats do not in general remain private, diplomacy is going to become impossible. Tricky conversations do not go well in the full light of day, as we in the UK should know only too well.

So while, for various reasons, it may well be appropriate for such conversations to be recorded, those records should not generally become public records. And in the event that they do, for domestic reasons, a country should only release its side of such conversations. And if, given that if I talk to you in private, I have a right to expect that what I say remains private, whatever you might do with what you say, any such release of what you said should be edited so as to respect that privacy, preferably by mutual agreement. So there.

Fruit three

I notice the liriodendron tulipifera on West Hill once again. The state tree of Kentucky for those readers with poor memories.

This afternoon, having decided that the fruit were not going to grow any more, I picked one and cut it in half. A fairly serious business, requiring a lot of force on a serious kitchen knife. Not something for someone without a steady hand. While BH worried about plant toxins on her chopping board, without my having prompted her to read about them at reference 2.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/fruit-two.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/guardian-on-pain.html.

Trolley 301

Captured this afternoon in the Ashmore passage and returned to the M&S food hall.

Rewarded with a BUPA token, the first time for a while. With the very first appearing to have been at the end of 2017 and the one after that (with illustration) in April of the following year.

So this trolley takes the M&S BUPA score to two while Waitrose remains on one. Perhaps all these tokens of private health care are coming from all those ladies from Leatherhead who drive their Range Rovers into the car park at the back of Waitrose, to do their shopping there or in M&S next door before they move onto lunch.

PS: Sainsbury's trolleys from down the road at Kiln Lane do not have handle locks. But then, tone of the store apart - although proper slumming it in Aldi or Lidl does count as cool - there is nowhere convenient to lunch, the in-store cafeteria not qualifying for said ladies.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/12/trolley-114.html. For M&S.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/fake-31.html. For BUPA.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/trolley-141.html. For Waitrose.

Electrical arrangements

The electrical arrangements below and to the right of seat F19, that is to say far right, towards the front, at the Wigmore Hall. Possibly something to do with the streaming equipment sometimes erected above, possibly something to do with the cluster of microphones usually suspended over the front of the stage, possibly something else entirely, perhaps to do with some other use of the hall, perhaps when they let it out to aliens during the day. Or given that modern equipment would not involve all that brass, possibly obsolete.

Maybe there is an electrical person out there who can work out what is going on from what can be seen here.

Beethoven 250

The Wigmore, along with other places, is running lots of concerts to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. Some of the concerts we might otherwise have gone to were at, what for us, were unsuitable times like 2200 - but we did find one lunchtime one to go to, Sunday before last. As it turned out a bright sunny morning, Waterloo trains down but Victoria trains up.

Flower power

Although Waterloo trains were not so down as to stop the coach with a flower turning up, No.62814. Number logged as my theory is that there is just the one of them, done for some reason at about the time the current people took over from Southwest Trains.

We were sat next to a talkative group of young people, a touch irritating but not so much that we moved. There were also a noticeable number of young ladies through the day wearing an approximation to beach wear, an approximation involving a gap in the middle and plenty of leg. Perhaps it is this year's fashion.

No.67001

And then as we approached Victoria, we had the rare treat of a sighting of a Class 67 locomotive, possibly drafted in to pull out the fancy train set sat at the station, the train set seeming to have lost its Puffing Poirot, that is to say steam locomotive. Steam locomotive which the punters paid good money for. Talking of which, it would be interesting to know if Suchet actually smokes, given that he makes something of a thing of smoking fancy little brown somethings on the screen, even to the point of appearing to enjoy them, which is more than many much younger actors can manage these days.

I was not fast enough on the draw to get a snap myself, so offer this one from Flickr, of what is presumably the first of class.

Brass plates

We went on to renew our acquaintance with All-Bar-One in Regent Street, having remembered in the nick of time to get off after two stops rather than four. There was also rather a long walk under Victoria Station, presumably something to do with it being remodelled. And we wondered who might be prepared to pay a lot extra to get medical attention from someone with such a scruffy looking door as that snapped above. What sort of medical attention was on offer? And just a short step from Harley Street too.

Programme

Concert very good - with the first item, which we knew, going down even better than the second, which we did not. With the Škampa String Quartet having been first heard about eight years ago, at the same place, and maybe three times since.

Soave

Rolling pins

We had though to fish and chip it at the Golden Hind (reference 1), but I had forgotten that it did not open on Sundays, so we settled for the Caldesi opposite instead. Bread, mixed hors d'oeuvres, a sort of pasta in a green sauce, tiramisu (good, for future reference). Taken with a 2017 Soave called variously Castelcerino, Filippi and Colli Scaligeri, which we rather liked. A type of wine first noticed at the end of reference 5. And I wound down with a spot of grappa - settling for white as the yellow was no longer available. The grappa glasses seemed to have been downgraded a bit, but this may have been the alcohol or the light talking.

The only slight downer, soon dissipated by alcohol, was that BH was not too pleased to be sitting under a bunch of rolling pins, which she thought belonged in the kitchen. While I thought the bottom one was perhaps fancy enough to sport bearings for the handles, for the comfort of the professional user.

This time

Last time

Out to stroll down to Green Park.

Nostalgia

A spot of nostalgia on the way in the form of a shop which had once been one of those United Dairies convenience stores, common when we were young. With one in particular being in range of the Uplands student (teacher) accommodation blocks in Leigham Court Road, in Streatham, a place we used to buy bread and cheese from on Saturday afternoons, both being quite respectable by today's standards. Oddly, the only place of that name turned up by gmaps is a care home which I do not recognise at all. The accommodation blocks were fairly new when we knew them, more than fifty years ago now, so perhaps they have been knocked down in the interval.

Affordable housing?

Ukrainian Church opposite firmly shut, as usual. On past some Peabody flats, which I thought were the council houses of their day, and so affordable, so perhaps things have moved on, this being Mayfair. Maids and so forth, when not living in, expected to live out in Essex somewhere and commute in.

Onto Grosvenor Square where there was some sort of butterfly festival - 'Butterfly biosphere: pleasures of the nectar dome' - going on inside a plastic dome, but the queue was rather long and we passed on to the open back door of the (Jesuit) Church of the Immaculate Conception.

Decoration of a chapel

Highly polished pine pews

A very grand church, elaborately decorated. With pine pews by way of contrast, when one might have expected hardwood. There were also a couple of pianos, already noticed at reference 6. A place last visited about five years ago, as noticed at reference 7. A rather short visit as we were not quite sure that we were supposed to be there, with the back door perhaps only having been left open so that a Chinese family could come in for a baptism. But definitely a place to go back to for a proper look.

Posh numeral

We wondered how much the car above, snapped (I think) in Berkeley Square, would be, including the expensive looking registration number? Or plaque minéralogique as they say in France. Finding out why is left as an exercise for the reader. Is it owner occupied (as it were) or a car hire job?

There was some kind of function going on in one of the houses nearby, minded by chaps in blue fancy dress. But they were very coy about what was going on and we learned nothing at all. Perhaps the word in discrete.

Cats and dogs

Onto to Victoria for our train, on which we wondered, not for the first time, why Battersea Dogs' Home did not sell up and come and live out in the suburbs. One might have thought that sale of such a site would pay for a lot of stray dogs. A bit hemmed in by roads and railways, but plenty of other flash developments in the immediate vicinity. And plenty of bits of marginal farm land which they could run their dogs on here in Epsom. Perhaps Glanmire Farm near us (reference 8), people who already know about animals. But then again, perhaps they are hanging on in the hope that they will be able to sell up for housing one day.

Saw an advertisement for a film of the International No.1 Bestseller about goldfinches noticed at references 9 and 10 - but we thought we would not bother. Maybe just a quick peek when it makes it to early evening viewing on ITV3, as sponsored by Viking River Cruises.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=%C5%A0kampa.

Reference 2: https://www.goldenhindrestaurant.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.caldesi.com/.

Reference 4: http://www.cantinafilippi.it/. This website, given on back of the bottle, appears to be under construction, but also, oddly, to be part of a campaign funded under EC regulation No.1308/13. Perhaps one more bit of European nonsense for the Brexit crew to lock onto?

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/another-important-place.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/piano-24.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/03/wooden-boxes.html.

Reference 8: https://www.glanmire.co.uk/. With the picture here - all you get - not being much like what you see from the road.

Reference 9: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/05/goldfinch.html.

Reference 10: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/05/tartt-failure.html.

Something wrong down t'cabbage patch

I bought the cabbage snapped left from a market stall this morning for 90p. A market stall which I might say gave far more space to exotic fruit and vegetables - no doubt some of which came from other parts of the European Union - than home grown staples like apples, cabbages and carrots. Tastes in such matters have clearly moved on in sixty years.

But the point of the post is that this cabbage cost the equivalent about 5 minutes work at a minimum wage of (say) £10 an hour.

In my capacity as a not very successful allotment holder, I very rarely managed a cabbage of this size and appearance, but if we suppose I managed to grow twenty such, I estimate that this growing would have occupied me for of the order of thirty hours, an hour and a half per cabbage. So what on earth do commercial growers do to get this down by a factor of getting on for 20? By even more if one allowed for the costs of packing, distribution and sale.

I leave aside questions of quality. My cabbage would probably be more organic, but would also likely come with a variety of unsightly livestock. Bought cabbages are apt to be much more clean and tidy - and apt, in consequence, to taste better, pride in production aside. Deadstock on the plate - that is to say boiled livestock - is surprisingly off-putting.

My estimate went as follows. Allow half a square yard for each cabbage, making 10 square yards, probably a strip one yard deep and 10 yards wide. Allow 10 hours for digging and ground preparation. Allow 20 hours for sowing, thinning, weeding and general maintenance. Including the provision of netting to keep the birds off the growing cabbages - netting which needs to be taken down and put up again every time one does a bit of work.

I did not use bought fertilizers so I allow nothing for materials.

Tree down

The damaged tree on Clay Hill Green, noticed at reference 1, was condemned and taken down earlier this week. Maybe someone will see fit to replace it.

Maybe the threads visible bottom right are fungus - and the cause of the condemnation.

Will the trunk be left as a beetle preserve, a small contribution to eco-diversity? I rather doubt it: the form seems to be to leave the trunks around for a few months, for long enough for us to get used to them, perhaps for the stump, or even the trunks to shoot (willows being quite strong in the shooting department) and then to ship them out.

PS: with the bottom snap, viewed from a suitable distance, being not that far from a bit of roast beef.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/art-fair.html.

Trolley 300

The 300th trolley was captured in the margins of the ongoing repaving of the market square, now well into its 44 weeks, reported in February at reference 1.

Returned to Waitrose and I thought that the first part of the celebration might be a fried egg sandwich on white for lunch. And maybe the M&S bakery was better for that sort of thing than the one at Waitrose, where the small loaves are apt to be described as French country style and come in a bit heavy. So for £2, I bought a well presented small white bloomer. Hard crust, but the crumb of the cut bread looked good. It tasted good with fried egg (I have got used to using oil rather than lard for the purpose), until about half way through when I detected the slightly sickly taste of an infestation by sour dough, a disease which seems to have afflicted a large proportion of our commercial bakers. So it remains a pity than I don't seem to be able to make decent white bread myself.

Just about nine months to the day since I reported reaching trolley 200 at reference 2. So I am contemplating running a book on how long it will take to lap the year, with quick calculation suggesting a little over two years, if I can maintain momentum.

Perhaps I can persuade a child to help check the record, but the vast majority of these trolleys must have come from Waitrose or M&S in the Ashley Centre here in Epsom or from Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane. A few from Wilko in the High Street and then we are down to exotics, like the ancient Boots trolley captured in Tooting High Street. See reference 3.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/trivia.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/trolley-200.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/08/trolley-84.html.

Wanted!

According to that fount of much wisdom, crime drama on ITV3, lying to the police can be a serious offence, punishable by imprisonment. So one might think that lying to the Queen, our supreme policewoman, as it were, was a very serious offence indeed.

Exemplary punishment indicated?

PS: I am reminded that one of our Prime Minister's cabinet colleagues is on record as saying that the Prime Minister was not a fit person to hold public office. A saying for which he must have made very humble apology, perhaps on his knees before the spare throne kept in Downing Street, but which turns out to have been true.

Heritage day one

It being heritage time of year again, about ten days ago we picked out two heritage offerings from our Surrey booklet of same: the Catholic church at Leatherhead and special needs operation at the Grange, just outside Great Bookham.

The Calvados

First stop was Majestic Wine to stock up on Villa Maria. Where we found that Villa Maria had moved on to the 2019 harvest and that they had dropped their middle Calvados, leaving a top one which was rather dear and a bottom one which was not. A slightly suspicious looking own brand affair, which turned out to smell of cider (which most Calvados does not, despite the ingredients), but also to drink rather well. I dare say we will be buying it again. Not least because we were charged roughly the same for a 750ml bottle as Waitrose charge for a 500ml bottle. And with the one at reference 4 being even dearer.

We had failed to get inside the Catholic church on the occasion noticed at reference 1, so we thought to try again at a time when it was advertised as being open for an hour.

Juxtaposition

While we were waiting for the morning service to end, along with several other heritage lovers, we noticed a curious juxtaposition of shrine and fungus outside. Including also floral offerings still in their plastic, a practise which I find rather unsightly but which is now common in cemeteries. It seems to be the fact of the flowers which is important, not their arrangement.

View of the interior, from the balcony

Larger inside than you might think from the outside. Quite richly decorated, but a decent and dignified space nonetheless.

The northern chapel

Site constraints meant that the church was orientated towards the north east, rather than towards the east, which puts the shrine above in the northern chapel, to the left of the altar. A sanctuary light was present (left), but not lit on this occasion.

First detail

Second detail

Third detail

Some of the detailing caught my eye. First the rather cluttered window, as seen from the balcony. Perhaps the balcony was an afterthought. Plus I did not think that they had got the junction of the vertical and horizontal elements of the window frame quite right. Which they had got right in the second snap, highlighted with a paint job. While the third snap was a reminder that it is hard to keep maintenance work up to the standard of the original construction.

Picking apart, it was, as already noted, a decent and dignified space.

Extra cow

First tree

And so onto the Grange, a place lucky enough to have some handsome trees in their grounds. According to gmaps it also has one of the fake cows noticed at reference 5, but we did not see it on the day.

A place which started out as a place to train nurses who had been damaged in the first world war in needlework, hopefully enough for them to become economically active again. They took over the present premises, which started life as a large private house, in 1938, and gradually expanded their brief to provide various kinds of support, including supported living, for those with special needs more generally.

In the heritage room, we learned something of the lace industry from a lady who makes the stuff. It seems that in the olden days it could be a hard way to make a living, with a lot of poorly paid home-workers, gang masters, company shops and all the rest of it. With one curious fact being that a gang of them made their way down from up-north to Tiverton in the far-west and set up shop there. Perhaps with ties to the Honiton lace industry? While I muddled up D.H. Lawrence writing of drafting patterns for lace in 'Sons and Lovers' with actually doing same in real life, which he did not. He did a short stint in the office of a manufacturer of surgical appliances.

Shed - Google

Shed - Bing

Good tea and cakes in what had been the ballroom when the Grange was a house. A rather grand affair with lots of nice cubbyholes for private chats and so forth. I associated to the heavy wooden snogging sheds scattered about the gardens of Ham House, which get a mention at reference 6. I asked both Bing and Google for an image of one of these snogging sheds and while both turned up various garden furniture, neither turned up the sheds that I remember, with the snap above being the best that they could do; something to do with something called the silent garden. Maybe my memory is defective, with the snogging sheds being real enough but having got attached to the wrong bit of heritage.

Ballroom ceiling

Plenty of volunteers about who seemed to know their business. I was also impressed by the smart appearance of the place, it being all too easy for places of this sort to slip into a sort of institutional shabbiness. Perhaps they attract plenty of donations from all the rich people round about.

Contraption

What I took to be a contraption for taking wheelchairs up and down the stairs. A sort of specialised wheelbarrow. Made by a German company called Bartels who make a large range of such things. See reference 7.

Gold fish

We took our picnic by the handsome fish pond, including, for once, goldfish which actually were gold in colour. We thought that the wire strung around the perimeter, part of which is visible bottom left, was to do with keeping the herons away, although the gentleman standing hard by was very doubtful; he thought that they would just land in the middle of the pond, instead of surveying the scene from the bank. While my view was that if the wire wasn't doing it, it was hard to see what was: I couldn't see the Grange people taking a couple of hours or so each day to take a cover off in the morning and then to put it back again in the evening. And even then, would the herons not come in at quiet times during the day?

Second tree - birch

Third tree - oak

Pumpkins

Through the splendid trees and on into the walled garden, several acres of it, donated by the owner of the house to the south of the Grange. All manner of stuff being grown. Including some handsome looking cordon apple trees which seemed to be largely without apples. A gardener explained that for some reason unknown, it had been a very bad year for apples.

In any event, one hopes that they have a big enough canteen operation on-site to make good use of all the produce.

Fourth tree - left

Fourth tree - detail

On exit, the fourth tree, on the basis of peering at the leaves, was ruled to be a poplar. Happy to be corrected should there be a reader who knows better.

An interesting visit to a place which, in some ways, was quite like the Camphill operation which we know in Buckfast, in Devon. No way of knowing whether its rather smarter appearance is a function of its being located in a rich area near London, of its customers being less disabled or what.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/two-failures.html.

Reference 2: https://www.grangecentre.org.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.grangecentre.org.uk/our-history/. A brief history.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/click-ncollect.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/pit-stop.html.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/thrones.html.

Reference 7: https://bartels-germany.com/catalogues/bartels_stair_climber_catalog_2017.pdf.