Reading the brain

As a lapsed subscriber, I get emails from the MIT Technology Review from time to time, and yesterday's about work with brain computer interfaces caught my eye. References 1 and 2.

The point of the work is to help people who can no longer talk very well because of damage to their brain, to maintain contact with the world - and with their computers. In particular people with what we in the UK tend to call motor neuron disease. Gemini was very firm that this sort of invasive procedure is completely prohibited with healthy people; the risk of complications arising from the intrusion are just too great.

As can be seen from the snap above, lifted from reference 2, the machinery is both intrusive and rather cumbersome. Nevertheless, the main point of the paper is that it is something that can be used at home for months, if not years, and that from this subject's point of view, it was well worth while.

What the machinery does is synthesise speech from speech thoughts in the motor cortex and simulate mouse control - and certain other screen functions - from thoughts about that. To the point that the subject can manage his email and participate in video calls.

With the point of particular interest to me being that if you place arrays of electrodes - for which see reference 4 - on the surface of the brain, with the tips of the electrodes about 1.5mm down, in the middle of the cortical layer, you get signals which can be successively analysed into phonemes, words and sentences. With impressive accuracy.

This is a big step up from telling whether you are thinking about playing tennis or watching elephants in a zoo - which activities can be distinguished using arrays of (much bigger) electrodes placed on top of the scalp, without the intrusion.

This particular subject, once he had got the hang of things, asked for a 'private' feature, whereby he could think in private, without his thoughts being transcribed onto the computer adjacent. I suppose he could also insist on redacting whatever transcripts there might be.

Something which I had not thought of is that the brain appears to drift. This means that the system needs to be regularly recalibrated, either from time to time - or continuously, in the background, if things can be so managed. I had thought that once the brain had learned something, the neurons involved and their connections would be set, more or less for life. Or until recycled by garbage disposal.

There has been a problem in the past with the performance of these arrays degrading over time, say over not very many months. The present work is clearly an improvement in this regard, but I did not work out quite how much of an improvement.

In the course of reading this paper, Gemini was very helpful in providing tutorial material about various tricky words and phrases. But sadly, he lost our conversation and I did not make much sense of his explanation about how this happens - although it seems clear that it does happen often enough. You can, of course, get him to go through it all again, but that is not quite the same - or very convenient.

Nor was I able to make much sense of his advice about how to log out of Gemini direct, from within Gemini. I usually log out of Gemini by logging out of gmail, which does come with that feature - and which I had thought might have been mixed up with loss of conversation.

PS 1: I remembered that Mr. Musk is into this sort of thing too with his Neuralink company (reference 3), which I first came across near ten years ago. So far I have found out that he is using much more cunning, less damaging electrodes, but that this work is a bit behind that described here.

PS 2: in the margins, I came across a report that the wonks of Bond Tower, across the road from Vauxhall railway station, were up last night puzzling over a report from G7 that POTUS had broken wind upwind of our Starmer, in conversation with Macron at the time. What might this mean for the special relationship? A bit tricky for them in that the surveillance footage concerned all comes from their French colleagues.

References

Reference 1: Casey Harrell uses his implants to talk to friends and family, read to his young daughter, and perform his job – Jessica Hamzelou – 2026. MIT Technology Review.

Reference 2: Long-term independent use of an intracortical brain–computer interface for speech and cursor control – Nicholas Card, Sergey Stavisky, David Brandman and others – 2026. Nature Medicine.

Reference 3: https://neuralink.com/. The Musk connection.

Reference 4: https://blackrockneurotech.com/products/utah-array/. Nothing to do with the finance people, but everything to do with the long running Utah arrays.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALS. ‘Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a rare terminal neurodegenerative disease defined by the progressive loss of both upper and lower motor neurons that normally control voluntary muscle contraction. ALS is the most common of the motor neuron diseases…’.

Group search key: aisk.

Transient tendency

A week or so ago I was having a lot of dreams involving a complicated looking computer screen full of text data. Lots of different colours and formats, complicated in the way of the front page of a tabloid newspaper - or, indeed, of the Guardian, which goes in for the same typographic complexity, in a more tasteful and restrained way. All to do, I am told, with making the page look lively and interesting.

I had at first thought that Bing or Google would turn up something suitable by way of illustration to this post, but despite trying various clues, no, and I was reduced to knocking something up in Powerpoint using snippets from the screens that Bing and Google did turn up.

In the dreams, although the image was static, it did not, for example, contain rolling text in the way of an Arterio in-carriage display, my impression of it was fairly mobile, with my attention flicking from one part to another. And there was no depth to the image: even when, in the dream, I attempted to home in on this or that panel, the text remained illegible. I had no idea what it was about - and in fact, is was not about anything. So the dream, while being about text, was not text, not words, it was entirely image.

Dreams of this sort went on for a couple of weeks, but now seem to have gone away again. No idea what prompted their coming.

PS 1: web designers are now rather overdoing this complexity to my mind. The Financial Times website, for example, has plenty of image panels with moving text overlays. Lesser sites have moving image panels with a sound track; not exactly films, but tendencies in that direction. I find all this sort of thing irritating and annoying rather than helpful - or even interesting. While the Sun is just loud.

PS 2: I am reminded that a correspondent recently told me that the way to avoid trouble at the FT is to use their paper facsimile rather than their main website.

Now found. Down the very bottom of the webpage. The thing called 'FT digital edition'. First impression is that while you get rid of the irritation in question, not as convenient in other ways.

And I am reminded that the FT is now a Japanese property.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_701. For Arterio.

Reference 2: https://www.ft.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.theguardian.com/uk.

Reference 4: https://www.thesun.co.uk/.

Lime not plane

Back at reference 1, I had been worrying about whether a large park tree was a plane or a lime. And then forgot to check out the plane side of the story.

Catching up this morning, I am reminded that plane leaves are quite different from lime leaves. What could I have been thinking of? Plenty of plane trees to be seen in London, not least in Cavendish Square which we visit on a regular basis. Bing turns up the screenful above, while the Wikipedia story is to be found at reference 2.

Also this morning, MSN brings me the sad news of the collapse of a company, the Millennium Dough Company, which worked hard at supplying higher grade pizzas to the trade. Healthy sounding talk of long fermentation, something that most bakers do not bother with these days.

Branching to Companies House, I find that the dough people are mixed up with an entity called 'Opulentia Spv Holdco 16 Limited', about which Bing can do little more than refer me back to Companies House.

Gemini is more helpful, getting me to Opulentia Holdings, which Copilot then tells me is based in Dubai. Google then turns up 41Kong of reference 4.

Then back with Gemini, I get a rather sad story, the middle of which is snapped above. I remember now that about the time I was graduating, being a bit of a lefty, I did not want to go into something called 'business', not that I had much idea of what that might be. But maybe I was right after all!

Rum that I should be getting all this from a product from a very large company which has probably played a bit rough itself, at the margins, in its day. I associate to some rather gross behaviour on the command floor of Microsoft House, captured on tape for some reason. This being turned up quite a few years ago now, in connection with something that I have completely forgotten about.

Is Gemini learning to play to said lefty leanings, all part of his working at keeping the customer onside?

Last up, some good news from Dignity in Dying. Maybe the bill will be brought back to life, obstructive behaviour by a few noble lords notwithstanding.

News brought to me via 'The Independent'  out of MSN at reference 10. I was a little surprised at the negative tone of the piece, remembering the days, back in the 1980s, when the Independent was a bold attempt to introduce a new left leaning broadsheet. Which also got itself in the news with the first full page nude - Vivien Neave - as I recall. Now long gone, with this online offering being about on a par with the Sun website. Awash with advertisements and other features which talk to you. A disease which, I might say, has reached the FT. Only marginal so far, but it may get worse.

PS 1: I thought to chase up the nude, resulting in another chat with Gemini.

I shall continue to ponder about the memory lapse. Not sure that Gemini has got that right - with his first point being more convincing than the other two - but then, how could he. Not enough information to go on.

PS 2: trying to find a copy of the photograph in question, this to try and check part of the Gemini story, which I had thought had gone a bit wrong, took me into all kinds of peculiar places, bumping into Google censorship along the way. I think I had better let the matter drop.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/tall-tree.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus.

Reference 3: https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/39384480/british-pizza-supplier-crumbles-into-administration/.

Reference 4: https://www.41kong.com/.

Reference 5: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/news/dying-people-given-renewed-hope-as-lauren-edwards-mp-takes-forward-the-assisted-dying-bill/.

Reference 7: https://laurenedwards.uk/.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Edwards. There appears to have been trouble with social media. It was quite a long time ago - and perhaps illustrates the trouble we can get into with loose language in a semi-public place, more than anything worse. I remember that is in my younger days, one's silly and occasionally offensive remarks were usually confined to the public bar - and no-one remembered them the next day, let alone recorded them for posterity.

Reference 9: https://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/i-thought-people-who-stood-for-parliament-were-not-of-sound-294260/.

Reference 10: Attempt to reintroduce assisted dying bill sparks new Labour civil war: Rochester and Strood MP Lauren Edwards will reintroduce Kim Leadbeater’s highly controversial Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill which would allow assisted deaths in England and Wales - David Maddox, The (online) Independent - 2026.

Back on the bike

At the beginning of the month, my first ride on a bicycle for a while. - with Bullingdons being much easier to ride than my own bicycle, which I have not ridden in a regular way for even longer.I wonder this morning whether I will ever get back to cycling into Epsom for odds and ends, rather than walking. A challenge for this summer?

This outing was mixed up with a visit to Neal's Yard Dairy at London Bridge. It was overcast at 09:00 and rain was said to be on the way, but I took cycling gear (and folding umbrella from the late lamented Hudson Bay Trading Company - well over ten years old now - built to last).

Umbrella not deployed in the way to the stations, despite some light drizzle. But there was a small rat on station approach followed by a large trolley from M&S - a trolley which I did not return on this occasion. Just about a year old.

Took a train to London Bridge. Unusually, plenty of people got on at London Bridge, resulting in some standing.

While I wondered whether my difficulty with music theory was my lack of grounding. I could understand what was being said, I could understand the words, but I could not hear what they were talking about? A poor ear for that side of music, part of which was my poor ear for time. Which meant that in the far off days when I was trying to play the clarinet, I could never 'hear' when I was supposed to come in. I could read the music, my brain knew how many beats to wait, but I couldn't translate that in a reliable way to starting to blow at the right moment.

The same lack of grounding in vision which quite often catches Gemini out when he is explaining something with a spatial angle?

And then there are the precocious children who can say things which are true about society, about politics, without having any real grounding in either. Just book learning. But learning enough that they sometimes get it right.

And so to the cheese shop, where I picked up my usual kilo of Lincolnshire Poacher, a cheese I have been eating in a regular way for quite a while now. Not sure how long, but see below.

A bit wet at this point, but I sheltered for a few minutes under a railway bridge and then pulled my Bullingdon and pedalled off to Waterloo, then onto Vauxhall. A soft route to get me started, and I could always stop at Waterloo if I was getting tired. In the event, a pause for more rain at Elizabeth House in York Road; a house which I once visited in connection with the statistics of children at school by area; this in connection with the population estimates for said areas. Now awaiting redevelopment or demolition.

Then left at the big Fire Station on the Embankment, past the Queen Anne, now some kind of café rather than the public house which I remember, and onto to the Tea House Theatre. I didn't think to look out for the 'Jolly Gardeners', another establishment I once used to patronise. Where I once remember talking to a chap about the large vivariums in his council flat, in which he kept various interesting reptiles, I think more lizard than snake, but I can't be sure.

At the Theatre I took steak and kidney pie (back on the menu) and Spitfire. With plenty of sauce on the side. If I had been a sauce person, I might have worried about hygiene aspects of same, it not being clear how often the bottles, particularly their necks, got washed.

The pie itself had morphed from a portion of tray bake to something more individualised, more Cornish Pasty in format. But still good gear - with some of the best restaurant vegetables that I know.

What with the Spitfire and the pasty, I got to wondering about all the different forms that suet puddings come in - this supposing the pasty to have been made with suet pastry. There is the plum duff of the Hornblower books, which I believe is a steamed suet pudding livened up with some plums, presumably dried. Then there is the bacon pudding which I learned about at TB - a substantial suet pudding livened up with bacon. And the various dumplings of China, sweet, sour and savoury. Not to mention the serious short rib pudding served at the Wolseley, noticed at reference 4.

Service a bit casual, but pleasant. Real white napkins. Fancy tea available, in pots. The thinnest carpets in the world? Musak light classical, from Classic FM. Quite a lot of young mums, some feeding, reasonably discretely.

Outside, it was all much greener than I remember, with lots of acanthus in flower. And the trees were more than twenty years older than when I first knew them.

On the way home, I learned of Sistine in a shed, noticed at reference 5. And to be noticed again in due course.

One train cancelled because of flooding. Another train delayed because of the misbehaviour of passengers

So back on the bike was OK. It was like I had never been away, which was good news.

PS 1: the October ride is to be found at reference 1, another visit to the cheese shop. Where I came across Gemini's explanation of why I seem to be a bit more breathless when it rains than otherwise, nothing to do with the rain soaking up the oxygen. Something I have noticed once or twice this year. There is also mention of the rotting cycling gloves, which I think we actually discarded in a litter bin in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on the present occasion.

    +

PS 2: 'Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens' on gmaps, although I do not remember them as having exactly that name. Presumably a heritage nod to the pleasure gardens of old, featured near the beginning of Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair'.

PS 3: I go to search the archive for the cheese, and find that the relevant folder has gone missing. Which is worrying, but it turns out to have been accidently moved inside some other folder at the same level in the hierarchy. Now moved back to the right place, but this seems to have disrupted the Windows search feature, which is behaving as if it is having to rebuild its search index for this folder, even though all the files involved are online. Necessary, as offline files seem to be excluded from search. All very tiresome. I suppose, when I have a moment, I had better take an offline copy of the folder in case of further accidents.

A little later, the index seems to be coming on, and there now appears to be mentions of the cheese back in 2011 and of Neal's yard as long ago as 2009, this last at reference 2. To think that, back in those days, I bothered to mess about with veal chops. Work in progress.

A little later still, and I remember that I did not start with Lincolnshire Poacher at Neal's Yard. I at first thought Waitrose, back in the day when Epsom Waitrose ran to a cheese counter. On the other hand there is talk of market stall at reference 7. So lost in the mists of the early years of the second decade of the new millennium.

I also remember that said cheese counter sold little bricks made of some kind of fig paste. Rather good they were too, but I have not seen them since. Gemini comes up with the answer fast enough - and it will be easy enough to check next time I am in Borough Market.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/11/crabs.html.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/12/lentil-lore.html.

Reference 3: https://www.teahousetheatre.co.uk/. A website which comes with free Bach.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/trolleyfest.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/fake-199.html.

Reference 6: https://www.thejollygardeners.co.uk/. Perhaps time to pay the place another visit. Not the place that I used to know at all.

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-search-of-chocolate-lollipop.html.

Tall tree

I have been wondering about a tall tree in Court Recreation Ground for a while now, but yesterday I got around to going to take a closer look, and, as luck would have it, there were some lower branches which were well within reach of my telephone. The trunk was getting on for a couple of feet in diameter at head height and I thought maybe a plane or a lime.

I gave Google Images the snap above, together with the clue: 'From a low branch from the tallest tree in Court Recreation Ground in Epsom. A good bit taller than the mature oaks nearby. Clusters of seeds with wings under the upper branches'.

He does not seem to have much doubt that it is a lime tree of some kind - 'a Large-leaved lime (Tilia platyphyllos) or the Common lime (Tilia x europaea)' -  which I now know can grow taller than oaks.

The tree in question to the left in the snap above, the oaks to the right.

The Google story is consistent with that in Wikipedia, at reference 1 below. And the picture of flowers there is consistent with what I could see from below. So while I would not go to bat for any particular sort of lime, lime will do for identification for now.

PS 1: the snap at the head of this snap took a while. As is all too often the case, a breeze sprang up as I approached with my telephone. Shy trees or what?

PS 2: the close of reference 1 caught my eye:

'Tilia wood is used for carving, and almost all parts of the tree can be used for fodder, ropes or firewood. Bast and honey, which were historically the main products of Tilia, may have been an important factor in the spread of the species and its status as a typical agroforestry tree in the Middle Ages...'.

From where I associate to the similarly versatile Western Red Cedar of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Of recent interest and to be found, inter alia, in the ceiling screening at London Bridge Station.

But I wonder whether the Wikipedian has overdone the importance of the honey: is honey really a sufficient reason to be planting large trees? Which honey, however, Bing/Copilot knows all about.

PS 3: MSN tells me that 'Nigel Farage vows to evict all foreign nationals from social housing'. Whatever is our green and pleasant land coming too? We can't dump all the blame on POTUS and his Magans for legitimising this sort of talk.

PS 4: and while honey is in mind, there is the matter of the honey from the roof of the UBS building in Bishopsgate. We had thought of a superannuated doorman, living in a hut on said roof, tending the bees, something in the way of one of those fake hermits, sometimes used to decorate the grounds of stately homes, but this is quite wrong. Tending the bees has been contracted out to the people at reference 2, who appear to be strong in North America, but who are a bit coy about where they come from. Presumably nothing to do with the French biotechnology company of the same name.

But Gemini is on the case. A Canadian outfit which projects an allotment, hobby beekeeper image.

'... They essentially operate like a tech-enabled facility management company—just with bees instead of HVAC systems. This corporate, scaled-up approach is exactly why their public branding focuses heavily on localized sustainability narratives rather than their central corporate structure'.

Gemini's close.

I don't think that I would catch out by checking any of this. But there is the matter of honey hygiene. How carefully do alvéole clean down the machinery between batches? Can you be sure that you are eating USB honey from No.1 Gracechurch Street (or wherever), not Deutsche Bank honey from No.1 Cheapside, down the road? Or, heaven forfend, from Credit Suisse? Maybe I should check how many bees an acre of prime City can support: it is not as if it is all a field of clover, or even of lime trees, the greened moat of the Tower of London notwithstanding.

Maybe we should get DNV to do an audit? Last noticed getting on for five years ago at reference 4. The usual management consultant charge sheet would, of course, be applicable.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia_platyphyllos.

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

Reference 3: https://www.dnv.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/facts-not-opinions.html.

Group search key: 20260614.

Titbits

A few titbits arising out of breakfast this Sunday morning.

First, I was prompted to wonder about the ways in which charismatic people with a message for the world control the message, this prompted, as it happens, by looking something up in the Quran. On the one hand, you do want your message to reach the world, to touch millions of people. On the other, you also want it to be your message, uncorrupted by transmission, time or anything else. There is a tension here, a tension to which there is no easy solution: you cannot have it both ways.

One way to approach this is to write a great deal, to set out your message at great length. This will not stop people writing commentaries, but it does make it harder for commentators to stray from the True Path. I have not done the sums, but Freud's collected works are many times longer than the Quran, the whole of which can, I believe, be recited as part of an edifying evening's entertainment for one's guests. But that has not stopped the production of an even larger amount of commentary - in which there is a fair amount of material disputing who in on the True Path and who is not.

I might add that I do slightly covet the new edition of Freud's collected works, snapped above, but I am not going to pay £1,000 - or anything like that - for it. I might also add that Amazon, on this occasion, is significantly cheaper than either Abebooks or eBay - although eBay did offer rather more choice - with some much cheaper copies of the first edition. I shall continue to rely on my large pdf, free or near free, from one Ivan Smith, about whom I have managed to find nothing at all, despite trying on various occasions. So not much provenance- not that that really matters for my modest needs.

The Bible is another important book which attracts a lot of commentary. And I imagine that in the eastern bloc of old, the collected works of Marx, Engels and Stalin attracted plenty of discussion, although I don't know to what extent commentary was allowed. And I don't think that Stalin was actually much of a writer, much of a theorist, at all - but he did like to be included in the canon.

Moving on, there was the matter of our Smart television from Samsung, so smart that it had lost its connection to terrestrial TV, a significant nuisance in some parts of the family. I had asked Gemini to sort me out and he delivered some neat and tidy instruction on how to get out of this fix, including the time-honoured device of taking the power plug out of the wall, and then counting to a hundred before putting it back again. A sovereign remedy for all kinds of computer complaints when I was in the world of work.

But the more cunning part of his story was to go into settings and fiddle with the broadcast section thereof. Sadly, I could find no such section in the settings and there the matter rested. Then yesterday, a much younger person was put on the case and he explained that the settings you got directly from the television and those you got by pressing 'settings' on your remote were not the same. He went to the latter settings and the problem was solved. Terrestrial TV now present and correct.

Perhaps if I had persisted with Gemini, he would have got there too, but he did not mention this distinction in round one.

Last up, I was amused to read at reference 1 about the mystery that is big companies' basic lack of good manners in the matter of dealing with rejected job applications. Rather glad that I was never really part of that scene!

References

Reference 1: Why do employers think it’s OK to ghost job applicants: Businesses that complain it is hard to recruit the right staff should look at themselves too - Robert Shrimsley, Financial Times - 2026.

Fives

Following the bramble-blackberry alert at the beginning of reference 1, I have been on the lookout for clusters of five and three leaves.

With this modest, but clear, example turning up on the pavement of Manor Green Road, near its junction with West Hill.

Clearer still under zoom. Alternating laterals. Perhaps one could take a phyllotactic interest in the position and orientation of the substantial thorns on the stem.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/modigliani.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus. The whole bramble genus, with several hundred species, depending who is doing the counting.

Group search key: 20260609.

ASK

The end of last month saw a Saturday evening visit to ASK, a place we used to use quite often, but last visited just about two years ago, as noticed at reference 1.

A company founded in the mid 1990s by a couple of brothers, but according to Wikipedia now with Towerbrook. A restaurant chain owned by an investment platform owned by a value investor. Let's hope the founding brothers are enjoying a no doubt well earned retirement. We must have first used the Epsom branch not long after the chain was founded and we certainly used the building, once a branch of NatWest, when it was a public house, catering mainly to people younger than ourselves. I remember that I once nearly lifted an old copy of Morley on Gladstone from one of their piles of decoratively dusty old books, but actually ended up reading the copy held by the Treasury Library, before, that is, most of the older stock was sold off to a dealer.

I think Towerbrook live in the building right in the snap above, while I once used to visit the Swedish restaurant left, closed for some years now. It did good food, but was expensive (for me) and never seemed to be very busy, at least not at lunchtime. It says 2022 on the snap, so a while since the Street View camera van passed by. See reference 6 for an earlier notice.

On this occasion, we parked at the Eclipse and had thought to join the Saturday evening throng at Wetherspoon's, but we failed to spot a suitable seat outside and so migrated over the road to the Marquis, where I took Hogsback bitter and BH took one of their non-alcoholic but decorative drinks for ladies. The bitter was new to me, but rather good. We took half our drinks inside and half outside, our seats inside catching a draught from somewhere: pleasanter outside, although the musak was a little loud.

BH pretended she was not with me while I captured a moment with a slightly bent trolley from M&S. Made in March 2025, about average for M&S. No.1188, new style.

ASK was pleasantly busy, although not full, and we probably would have got in without booking. A booking made because we had been turned away on a Saturday in the past.

We were taken in hand by a pleasant young waitress from somewhere in the further reaches of Europe.

Bread not bad, although a little undercooked, as is often the case both in restaurants and supermarkets. In too much of a hurry.

I took linguine, something of a favourite at the moment, while BH took a chicken salad. As it turned out, she did better than I did, as my linguine was too wet and contained too much tomato. And the pasta was rather soft, in the way of spaghetti from a tin. Been standing too long. Washed down, I think, with a half litre of red.

An efficient young man who seemed to be the duty manager. He spent a lot of his time keeping an eye on the central computer, but darting out to do stuff as need arose. This including dealing with the take-outs, which were rather nicely packaged.

A relic of the building's days as a bank. In the days when small town banks still carried a serious amount of cash. I remember that last time I wanted a few thousand from HSBC - something to do with the deposit for a flat as I recall - I thought it best to make inquiries in advance.

Unusually these days, service was not included in the bill and the waitress suggested that cash would be better, presumably because she did not then have to share - or to pay tax. I went along with this, although I rather like the post-COVID arrangement whereby service is just included in the bill. All much simpler for both parties. I associate this (Saturday) morning to the old story from some hospitality staff that the whole business of soliciting cash tips is a bit demeaning for them. And once or twice, my cash tips were refused, presumably on grounds of this sort.

An entirely satisfactory occasion, linguine notwithstanding.

On exit, we passed on Wetherspoon's again, opting instead to return to the Eclipse car park.

Where we came across a new-to-us brand of hire bicycle. Or rather pedal assisted motor bike. About time they changed the rules for these things. This one stayed there for a few days.

According to reference 8, a speciality operation for delivery boys.

'At PORT, we believe urban logistics must be rethought for modern cities. We orchestrate a complete last‑mile delivery ecosystem, enabling couriers and logistics firms to maximize performance'.

And lots of arty snaps of bicycles.

When we will be back again? Will it be another two years?

PS: I see from reference 9 that the Trump family business is looking to capitalise on their military investment in Venezuela.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/indecision.html.

Reference 2: https://www.askitalian.co.uk/. It seems that 'askitalian' is a more reliable search key than 'ask'.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASK_Italian.

Reference 4: https://www.azzurrigroup.co.uk/. '... one of the UK’s largest and most successful hospitality investment platforms. We operate two leading national Italian full service brands, Zizzi and ASK Italian...'.

Reference 5: https://www.towerbrook.com/. '... We are modern value investors focused primarily on transforming services businesses...'.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/09/aquavit.html.

Reference 7: https://hogsback.co.uk/.

Reference 8: https://port.app/.

Reference 9: Small financial group close to Trump family plots $200mn Venezuela Spac deal: Yorkville seeks investment to capitalise on improving ‘commercial conditions’ in Latin America - George Steer, Financial Times - 2026.

Medical nightmare

 

Well, not exactly, but it remains true that I take about 12 pills a day and that BH takes about 6, with a modest amount of overlap. There are a lot of pills in the house.

This morning, we contemplated the possibility of minding our granddaughters for a bit, but taking our eyes off the ball.

After a quiet couple of hours, in they bounce and explain with great gusto that they have taken all our pills out of their popper packs, sorted them by colour, and made a really super picture with them on the dining room table. We did try eating a few, but they were not very nice.

PS: in digging the snap above out from Bing, I learn from Copilot that there is a whole genre of art involving making pictures out of pills. Something I believe that the dead sheep man, aka Hirst, is also into, although he did not turn up this afternoon. He seems to love all this medical stuff. I wonder now whether he loved or loathed the cadaver man. Cross that he didn't think of it first or what?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/diomed-etc.html. Recent notice of the cadaver man towards the end.

A circuit

 A more or less uneventful circuit in the morning, although it was followed by the equine sculpture noticed at reference 1 and the Serbian spruce at reference 2 in the afternoon. It was also the first day of Google's time line, which now tells me that the morning Screwfix circuit did not include the Middle Lane extension - which I would be hard put to comment on otherwise.

But I did take in the Big Yellow project in East Street, where the finishing ground works seem to have ground to a halt, with no-one to be seen.

Gemini assures me, in very checkable exchange, that all is well. I lift a few points:

• The company is in good health financially
• The site has been the subject of long planning negotiations. The flexible office facility, Sainsbury's side as you walk up East Street, was part of the package agreed with the Council. It will be interesting to hear how it does
• There has probably been a switch from the contractor which put up the building (Curo, a name I remember noticing before) to their internal fit-out team.
• External groundworks are probably down to some sub-contractor and could have been paused for a variety of perfectly innocent reasons.

Trying to run down some previous posts which noticed this development with the search key 'big yellow east' was hopeless, turning up all kinds of other stuff. Searching for 'majestic', the name of the previous occupant, the people given rather short notice to quit, does rather better. See reference 3.

Going on, Gemini is doing well agreeing with me this morning! He goes on to explain that Majestic are quite keen to get back into Epsom and are actively looking for a suitable site.

Some of this stuff comes close to what we (in the civil service) used to call 'commercial in confidence'. I assume that Gemini's legal people have provided them with proper legal cover should I get into financial trouble using any of the stuff provided by Gemini. Unlikely to happen to me, but it easy enough to see how it might happen in the outside world.

Moving on, the convolvulus in the passage, previously noticed, was doing well this morning, not that my snap really came off. Wrong angle.

The Screwfix whitebeam.

The travellers who had been camping at Blenheim Road had moved on; perhaps they had come down for the Derby, something of a big event for travelling people. And someone had done a very good job of cleaning up their camp site. Either them or the Council or some combination thereof. A few bits of litter, some scrape marks on the grass and that was about it.

There was more water in the stream after the rain. But I don't suppose it came close to flooding down the other end.

There was action in the unit in Manor Green Road which used to be the butcher. No idea yet what might be coming. I refrain from asking Gemini!

A bit further along, someone has created an interesting instant garden with a planter at the front and some pots behind. And going so far as to label some of the plants, in the way of a botanical garden. Among the plants, you had the striking leaf snapped above, labelled as Brunnera macrophylla.

Google Images spot on, with his AI reply starting: 'The plant in your front garden planter is Siberian Bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla), specifically a variegated variety such as 'Jack Frost' or 'Silver Heart'. It is a hardy herbaceous perennial characterized by large, heart-shaped leaves with a distinctive silvery-white frosted pattern and prominent green veins...'. Not often that things are so easy to check!

On this occasion, for once, Wikipedia at reference 4 would not have been very helpful.

I wonder what mathematically minded botanists would have to say about the network of veins, a network which is vaguely tree-like but full of loops. A directed network? Maybe all those loops provide protection against damage. Maybe human veins show a similarly redundant structure?

A reminder that I should be getting on with reference 5, a left-over from last year's excursion into the world of phyllotaxis, for which see reference 6.

PS 1: BH tells me that the Epsom Civic Society, the people who always seem to be saying 'no', had their fingers in the Yellow Box pie. To my mind, very much part of what is gumming up our planning system.

PS 2: a bit later on Friday: I have now paid another visit to Big Yellow in East Street. The site looked completely deserted with nothing going on, inside or out. But security was alive and well, as not many seconds had passed before a security man appeared and explained that the taking of photographs was not permitted - which I think is going rather beyond his powers, if not his instructions. He also explained that all work had been paused and that, hopefully, it would restart before too long.

I was impressed by the shiny new pole, centre left in the snap above. Something to do with entry control, in due course.

Gemini is not at all put out by this new information and explains that Curo, the contractor for the building have done their bit, been signed off, and that we are now waiting for one of the Big Yellow fit-out teams to turn up - with Big Yellow presently being busy on a number of new sites, in and around London. And that the sub-contractor doing the ground works outside has just been paused for the time being. Simpler and more secure just to shut the site up completely than to have odd bods fiddling about outside. Plus said bods need to work around the utility people putting in power, communications and so forth.

Not completely convinced, but I shall wait and see how things turn out.

A bit down from the heady heights of 2022, but there does not seem to be anything bad going on here. But see reference 7 for more.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/diomed-etc.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/cherries.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=majestic&max-results=20&by-date=true.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunnera_macrophylla.

Reference 5: Do plants know maths: Unwinding the story of plant spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to now - Stéphane Douady, Jacques Dumais, Christophe Golé, Nancy Pick - 2024. Published by the Princeton University Press, printed in China.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllotaxis.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Yellow_Group. A company which appears to have done well in 25 years.

Group search key: 20260608.

Cherries

We took our first cherries of the year yesterday, from Greece out of Sainsbury's. I had spotted some cherroes previously, not least in Borough market, but I had been put off by a combination of price and doubts about the quality of what I supposed were foreign cherries.

But yesterday, BH noticed that they were half price with her nectar card, so went for a packet. As it turned out, they were rather good, with just the odd dud. Checking this morning, the Sainsbury's website offers a generic country of origin  - 'Grown in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Greece, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States' - presumably reflecting the vagaries of the wholesale cherry scene.

Checking the archive this (Thursday) morning, it looks as if we are a few days ahead of last year, with the first of last year being a little later in the month, from M&S - for which see reference 1. Country of origin not supplied.

While a couple of days ago, I thought to have another go at identifying our Serbian spruce, for which see references 2 and 3. The prompt being the appearance of two sorts of cone - large female and small male - which ought to give Google Images something good to bite on, in the absence of the shape of the tree generally.

I try helping him along a bit, albeit getting it slight wrong. Get him to focus on for and against the Serbian Spruce, rather than dissipating his effort across a wider field. He sticks with his previous identification - but is he really adding any value?

The business of the stripes on the needles is a plus point, although it is far from clear in my snap that the stripes are on the underside. Need to take another look for the shape of the needles.

I try again, this time prompting him to say something about the cones - having been disappointed that he had not managed this unprompted.

I find the information about cones convincing, although I don't see anything purple about the larger, female cones - although they do look to be hanging down. And I don't see that he has got enough to go on to talk about upturned branches. And I certainly have yet to see a shimmer, although with the two-toned leaves I can see that there might well be one.

In sum, the identification has not been disturbed, but Google Images has work to do on presenting his results. I would like better differentiation between what he has deduced from the image supplied, from the clue supplied and what the identification supplies from his own database.

Noting that, in this case, he did correct my clue 'Serbian pine' to 'Serbian spruce' first time around. He does not always believe what I tell him - which has been a problem with Gemini in the past.

I think it unlikely that he has referred back to my previous inquiries about this same tree, although that may be coming in due course.

Hopefully, I will remember to check that the male cones do indeed fall off sometime soon. This seems quite likely, as I do not remember noticing them before.

PS 1: there will be problems with him using previous inquiries. It is easy enough for Google Images to know when I have asked him about Serbian spruces, but how does he know that I am asking about this particular one and to tie in the right previous images to the current query?

Prompted by a neighbour, I have in the last few days turned on timelines in gmaps and I have been a little surprised how inaccurate the resultant maps are (on my telephone). The sample above was turned up by Bing from someone else's telephone.

Perhaps, Google is only bothering to record my position from time to time and it only joining up the dots with straight lines, rather than trying to make intelligent use of his maps. On the other hand, he does seems to get the time I leave home for my walks and when I get home again right, and he does know that I am walking. But I will know more when I have built up a bit more data. And maybe there are settings that I can fiddle with.

Then sometimes, I feed Google Images raw images from my telephone camera, and the filename includes a date stamp. In fact, in this case, is a date stamp: '20260608_165420'. So he could, in principle, bind together my images of this particular tree by using location data. Provided that is, that there are not several such trees visible from the one location.

In any case, this all falls apart when, as I often do, I help him along by using the Snipping Tool to home in on the object in question. Then the date stamp of the file I pass to Google Images will tell him that I am at home, which does not help him very much. Unless the metadata gathered up by the Snipping Tool carries forward the name of the original file.

Clearly time for breakfast.

[Kallas, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US Vice President JD Vance during the AI Action Summit in Paris, 11 February 2025. Lifted from Wikipedia at reference 6]

PS 2: interested to read at reference 5 this morning of an external relations power struggle within the European Union. And from reference 6, I learn that Kallas, one of the protagonists, as an Estonian, has a complicated relationship with Russia. Plenty of history there. I associate to the very public power struggles within the Labour Party, at a time when there is plenty of proper work to be done.

PS 3: and the piece at reference 7. Maybe the Russians cutting themselves off from their regular diet of Internet will achieve more than other kinds of sanctions?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolley-880.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=serbian.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/search?q=serbian.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_omorika. The story according to Wikipedia.

Reference 5: EU countries weigh ‘tearing apart’ bloc’s diplomatic service: Chief diplomat Kaja Kallas and her EEAS are in capitals’ crosshairs over leadership and co-ordination issues - Henry Foy, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaja_Kallas.

Reference 7: How the FSB cut Russia off from the internet: Shutdowns have made one of the world’s most online nations resort to cash, paper maps and pet cams - Anastasia Stognei, Max Seddon, Financial Times - 2026.

Group search key: aisk.