Fake 98

Fake 98 came with an important communication from UK Power Networks, in the form of printing a fake curled up page corner bottom right. A device sometimes used by the software which browses books and book-like objects online, to remind one that pages can be turned.

Which some part of my brain might have known all about, but it took BH to observe that what I am calling a fake was actually a hint to turn the page over to look at the important information there, helpful information about what to do before the scheduled power cut and what to do afterwards.

Helpful information which did not say anything about the electrical aspects of gas central heating boilers, owned by nearly all the recipients of this communication. Which I thought careless, if not sloppy, on the part of the Power Networks people. I shall phone up my (rather expensive) gas helpline people tomorrow.

PS: Monday morning: I don't seem to get a telephone number with my gas service, in the way that I do with BT. But along with everyone else, I do get invited to chat. Which did well enough, and the advice was to disconnect the power from the control unit (on the wall, next to the boiler) before the cut starts and reconnect it when the power comes back. Using the switched 13 amp socket into which the unit is plugged for the purpose. They tell me that everything will spring back into life when I reconnect. We shall see. And while the chat system has its points, it is not the same as talking to someone who sounds like they know what they are talking about.

A kind of rubbish

Two children's bicycles in the stream at the bottom of our road. With a place which has been good for blackberries off camera to the right - now cut back hard by someone so we shall have to see what the year brings. Apparently in working order, although one can't be sure from above.

I assumed that they had been dumped after being stolen, perhaps ridden around a bit, by a couple of young men, perhaps no older than the children to whom the bicycles belonged. But, as BH points out, there are other possibilities. Like they had been sat in someone's garage for years, a someone who finally wanted rid of them but couldn't be bothered to go to the tip.

Will I fish them out with the trolley iron of reference 1? Not having any suitable grandchildren immediately to hand, what will I do with them if I do - and it turns out that they are indeed in working order? Lean them against a bridge with a note suggesting finders keepers?

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/12/santa.html.

Waterworks

There has been a Thames Water tanker parked on this spot, more or less opposite the Rifleman at the top of Hook Road for a week or so now. And there is a special big one today, with engine running.

The water man is explaining to the young lady - who lives above the shop behind the camera and whose sleep is being disturbed - that it is all about a collapsed sewer behind this row of shops, probably quite old, backing onto the railway embankment. It seems that dealing with the sewer is down to whoever owns the buildings rather than to Thames Water and there was dark talk of disturbance to the foundations to the back walls. Maybe even of a void in and around the collapse. All very tricky.

In the meantime, I guess the tanker is pumping out the waste water. I didn't get to find out whether it needs to be there 24 by 7, but the water man did say that he was working a very long day to have his tanker there in visible hours. Perhaps what is left of the drain out back can cope with the modest overnight load.

Epsom's (reasonably discrete) strip club is the red trimmed building right.

A policeman behind bars

Sunday is our day off newspapers, while Saturday is our day off the Guardian, in part because this last is too posh to recognise ITV3 in its TV guide for the week ahead. Added to which it is printed in a rather tatty little booklet.

So I was interested to read in a short report in today's DT about a military policeman who had been jailed for trying to touch up a sleeping colleague, with whom he was sharing a bed, in her quarters, presumably at her invitation. Drink had been taken. And puzzled as to why the court took such a serious view of the matter. And as to why the colleague chose to press charges when she woke up. From this distance jail seems quite disproportionate - but perhaps the DT is not telling us the whole sorry story.

A military court if the accompanying picture is anything to go by. And I was once told that military prisons - of which there used to be one at Colchester - were pretty grim places. Perhaps even worse for a disgraced officer of the military police.

PS: in the margins, I learn that pictures on the DT website can come in something called JXR format, known to Microsoft but not to Google, at least not to the blogger part of Google. Day saved by the Snip & Sketch tool.

A minor irritation

Peering at my bank statement this morning, I found that someone called 'Gocardless' had removed £40 from my bank account, claiming direct debit authority. Which, even by the standards of bank statements, was fairly meaningless to me.

No corresponding payment the previous month.

I then ask Google and I learn that Gocardless is some sort of collection service provided to the holders of direct debit mandates. I also get taken to a pop-up into which I type some reasonably innocuous details and up pops the answer. Westminster Abbey, so entirely proper and respectable.

Perhaps in some future iteration, Gocardless will see fit to append something helpful to the presently unhelpful messages that get onto peoples' bank statements.

Reference 1: https://gocardless.com/.

Trolley 375

Captured in Station Approach, more or less opposite the entrance to the station, at the head of the eastern passage from the High Street. With the more usual Ashmore passage being the western passage.

Another M&S food hall trolley, but no reward for this one. Just a local of older people cluttering up the aisles with their trolleys. Plus a couple of M&S store dressers who had chosen a bad time to park their trolley full of long strips of something or other in the main aisle. Long strips sticking out all over the place, much to the disgust of one of the older people - who pulled up alongside while she vented her disgust. Aisle completely blocked.

Group search key: lkc.

Trolley 374

Captured on the spur of West Hill which heads north from the junction of West Hill proper and West Street on the way out of Epsom. The first time I have captured a trolley there.

Returned to the food hall where I was able to claim my £1 reward when I chained it in.

Group search key: lkc.