Early March

Very early March saw the first celandines in flower of the year, in Manor Green Road, noticed at reference 1. The following day it was the turn of the raised bed, in the same road, where the spring flowers have been looking very well indeed on sunny days. Including some fine miniature tulips.

Not far from the new garden wall, now completed. Subsequently rounded off with wrought iron gates, looking oddly insubstantial next to the wall. Prices on application.

The patch of waste land at the bottom of Stones Road has been upgraded, presumably by a resident rather than by the Council or the heritage people. One time home of the small horse, noticed more than a decade ago at reference 2. There are still chickens to be heard. And, sadly, plenty of litter large and small over the fence leading to the Screwfix underpass.

I finally get around this morning to checking that the hard standing provided for travellers is indeed just the other side of the new nature reserve. I don't think I ever knew about the section containing the pond. The orange spot marks the position of the new sign.

I wonder whether this was one of the bits of land 'somewhere else' that our former MP had in mind for housing development.

Interested to see that the satellite image has been tidied up to the extent of adding in the path connecting Stones Road to the right of the railway to Blenheim Road to the left. Did this require manual intervention or was it the work of some tricky computer program?

Looking at the area around, it looks as if there has been a fair bit of tidying up and labelling of roads, so my guess would be computer. Google are not going to want to spend the sort of money required to do it by hand.

The Screwfix whitebeam, with vehicle No.100 from First Line Recovery still visible behind. The liquidators have not yet found a taker for this fine new-looking vehicle. See reference 3.

How much will the eventual buyer have to pay for a new paint job?

On past a rather bigger patch of celandines than I had spotted the previous day.

An elderly trolley from M&S, outside Pound Lane School. Made as long ago as 2018, unusually old for M&S. But it had been through the hands of Reviva rather more recently.

I don't think I ever knew before that Reviva are part of the Wanzl offering. Do they only take on their own trolleys? What about the Spanish trolleys used at Wisley? Or the trolleys used by B&M?

And I certainly never knew before that B&M was named for the founders, Malcolm Billington and Brian Mayman.

Home to have the ash tray, picked up off a verge somewhere, cleaned up and put into service as a receptacle for used tea bags, the previous incumbent of that post having suffered unsightly damage. We thought perhaps sub-continental in origin.

The following day saw a return to the soakaway at the bottom of the hill once occupied by our local convent.

For the first time ever, there was some visible water in it. There were also some fine clumps of celandines, but I thought better of climbing over the fence and down the bank to get a decent shot at them.

Having a while to wait to collect some pills - which, as it turned out, I might just has well have bought over the counter in town - I took a snack at the hospital, having failed to discover the canteen proper until it was too late. From which snack I learned that hot tuna in a panini tastes much more like tinned sardines than I had realised. Not like the tinned tuna in salad cream that I usually take at home at all.

PS 1: in the margins of this post, I started the first loaf of batch No.770 for breakfast this morning. It went down very well with butter, so well that I took rather more than I should, considering that I am trying to lose a few pounds after recent excesses.

PS 2: just two emails from Match so far this morning. Gmail puts them under the 'Social' tab which is fair enough.

PS  3: I was interested to see the other day at reference 5, the sort of people who are being sucked into the Reform camp.There must be some design flaw which means that a lot of people who love the Lord also love populist leaders of the right, leaders who generally have no private interest in the Lord at all.

This Orr being a classicist first, then a corporate lawyer (maybe an articled clerk rather than a full blown lawyer), then a member of the faculty of Divinity at Cambridge. Maybe as a classicist he can actually read the Bible in Greek, unlike most of today's Church-of-England clerics, most of whom are either women or second career men. Or even second career women.

It so happens, that I was reminded yesterday of the bit in the Bible which reads:

'.... Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain...'.

And which Orr, no doubt, knows all about. Good advice for said camp followers, these populist leaders being known for their very thin skins. They love knocking other people, often rather crudely, but they can't take it themselves. Do not make jokes at my expense. An even worse crime than disagreeing with me.

Orr's wife has custody of the handsome church snapped above. I dare say once a thriving parish, offering the incumbent a comfortable living; now merged with Kneesworth.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/second-outing.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/01/horselet.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-first-circuit.html.

Reference 4: https://www.wanzl.com/en_GB/360-degree-service/Reviva.

Reference 5: Farage misses out on Trump meeting as their relationship cools: British populist politician aimed to reinforce his view about the UK’s Chagos Islands deal in conversation with US president - Anna Gross, Lucy Fisher, Joe Miller, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Orr_(philosopher).

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