Cheese time

The stocks of Lincolnshire Poacher were running dangerously low on Sunday, so a visit to Neal's Yard Dairy next to Borough Market clearly indicated on the Monday. As it turned out, bright and clear, so a good day for it.

A further boost outside the station, as I scored a '23', just days after the '22' noticed at reference 1. Attached to something over 2,100 kg of Mercedes, weighing in at something over £25,000 when new. Perhaps ten times the value of our own car.

Station quiet at 1100, with the ticket office shut. Tap on the ticket machine was mandatory; no insert available.

The journey to Waterloo was made interesting by a young man whom I could not see but whom I could certainly hear, having two conversations. The first with what sounded like a customer and the second with what sounded like his manager. The customer was perhaps in the IT department of a company which operated trading desks involving maybe 150 servers, so presumably not all in the same place.  I thought the young man perhaps worked for a company selling some kind of security product, either Sophos or linked to Sophos (of reference 2) in some way. It all sounded quite serious and the young man said at one point he had had little sleep for the past few days. He also sounded quite calm and collected, considering.

It seems that the customer had been the object of a virus attack which had done a lot of damage to back-office files, although front-office operations seemed to be OK. Some talk of the attack files in question containing data about both customer and company, so perhaps a targeted attack rather than a fishing expedition; drop your virus in the pond and see where it goes sort of thing. I thought some talk of a Russian flavour to all this. Some talk of security all being a matter of how much the customer was prepared to pay. With this company perhaps having gone for not quite enough. Some talk of incident management protocols, which I remember from my days at the Home Office.

All of which left me saddened by the huge amount of time and treasure being spent on what is, seen from Mars, completely unproductive and unnecessary. Depressing that people educated and clever enough to mount these attacks don't want to do something better with their lives.

Diversion at Wimbledon in the form of a large number of angle grinder discs scattered along the tracks. Presumably left over from some engineering work or other.

Partial view of a very large mobile crane at Vauxhall. The same sort of thing, but probably not quite as large as the one above, lifted from the Liebherr web site at reference 3. Looks as if it is being used to dismantle a tower crane, the building it was attached to nearing completion.

One aeroplane, to the west, scored as I came into Waterloo. Which was quiet, as were the roads round about.

For the first time ever, the Bullingdon stand at Southwark Street, the one visible immediately above the Breakfast Club in the snap above, was full. After some circling about, I lighted on the one at Lavington Street and made my way, via the back, that is to say via Redcross Way and Park Street, to the cheese shop, thus avoiding any crowds there might have been in Borough Market.

Took four good looking Jupiter apples, in addition to my kilo of cheese. As it turned out they were in very good condition, very fresh, but I thought not as flavourful as the Ellison's Oranges I had bought in Short's Gardens a couple of weeks previously, as noticed at reference 4. But much better than our usual offering from Sainsbury's.

Passed on speck on this occasion, but I did pass a branch of the Ginger Pig butcher who had a large, wall mounted chiller that you could see into, full of all kinds of beef. All very fancy, and, no doubt, very expensive. Next time, I shall have to ask if they can do me a top rib or a back rib, two cuts which were readily available and very much to our taste when we were young. Didn't think on this occasion.

Shiny new Bullingdon to carry me back to the pole position at Waterloo. Note the trusty sisal twine used to hang my lunch underneath my jacket, there being no room at the inn, as it were. Last deployed on the occasion at the beginning of the month, as noticed at reference 6.

Caught the 1239 with a few minutes to spare. Journey only marred by one end of my carriage containing a young man eating a noisy snack and the other end containing a young lady playing music rather loudly on her telephone. I couldn't muster quite enough anger to ask her to turn it down.

Total cost of expedition about the same as delivery of the cheese would have cost. But on the upside, I got an outing, my cheese on the day that I wanted it and some quite decent, if not excellent, apples.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/no22.html.

Reference 2: https://www.sophos.com/en-us.aspx.

Reference 3: https://www.liebherr.com/en/deu/start/start-page.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-return-to-metropolis.html.

Reference 5: https://thegingerpig.co.uk/. Not too sure about the soft rolls featured on their opening page. Look a bit too soft inside and too chewy outside to me.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/london-town.html.