D929

Near a fortnight ago to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Gaspard Trio give us Schubert's D929 trio. A trio we have heard three times before, once in each of the past three years Notice of same being found at reference 1.

A bright start to the day, but then rain was threatening by 10:30 and there was a cool wind. But we got away with it.

Announcements on the train - Southwestern Railways - particularly irritating on this occasion, with us both thinking, more or less at the same moment, 'for God's sake lady, shut up'. Or something to that effect. To think that that is how the lady in question goes down in history. Maybe she was well compensated.

We also noticed a curious phenomenon at Vauxhall Station whereby people ignore the instruction about going down the stairs from the platform on the right. Which is confusing for the people coming up the stairs who try to follow the instruction. Something we have noticed several times now.

Then, in the tube station, a young lady dressed for the gym was running up the escalator. OK, it was the up escalator, but it is quite a long time since I was running up one.

Followed by a large advertisement which seemed to take a dim view of the fact that most of the pigs slaughtered in this country were slaughtered by asphyxiation in carbon dioxide. Today, Copilot tells me that there are serious welfare concerns about this. Concerns which were confirmed at reference 7. I dare say one problem is that carbon dioxide is a cheap and effective way of stunning pigs before bleeding them. But is also looks as if it is time for a change, even if the price of pork is going to have to go up a bit to pay for something better.

Followed by toast and so on at All Bar One. Plenty of misbehaviour by cyclists at the lights outside. But not many joggers on this occasion.

A florid display in one of the bins at Cavendish Square.

Then to the bottom of John Lewis, where the security chap at the ground floor entrance did not have a clue about whether the cafeteria on the fourth floor had been reopened, after being made over to Benugo. There was a large advertisement for a Jamie Oliver offering, but I don't care to use place named for a chap who is too keen on putting himself and his name about for my liking.

Reference 2 suggests that Benugo are on the second floor, not up on the fourth floor at all. While reference 4 talks of 'Huffkins Cotswold Cafe & Bakery' being where the cafeteria used to be. So maybe the story we told at reference 3 is all wrong. Clearly we need to take some time to inspect things in person.

In the meantime, a very smart and serious lorry from Monex in Old Cavendish Street, of references 5 and 6. I did not notice at the time, but what can be seen of the registration plate in the snap above, suggests that Mr. Monex might be into personalised registration plates - and he would not be the first so to be in haulage services. 

Reference 6 suggests that they are into crane assisted delivery, rather than full-on cranes in their own right - but impressive looking for a lorry mounted hydraulic arm for all that.

Have to take a closer look should we come across the company again.

We arrived at the Hall at the same time as someone sufficiently important for the director to come down and greet him at the door of his car, a 2022 Jaguar XJ JG SOV V12 according to Carcheck. Registration PXK 1. Oddly, while the director went on to make an appearance in his usual seat in the right hand aisle block, he did not have the someone with him. And the car was still there when we left, more than an hour later. What was going on?

The Schubert was very good, and seemed very familiar - although I don't seem to own a copy. And while the archive reveals two hearings, in 2023 and 2018, that does not seem to account for the familiarity - which I had puzzled about back in 2023 too. Enthusiastic audience.

An encore with a trick ending, that is to say a first ending which was not an ending and then a second ending which a good chunk of the audience - including ourselves - were not sure about.

Afterwards we thought to take lunch at the Running Horse in Davies Street and then to take a look in Hedonism, just in case something caught our eye. 

The Running Horse was submerged in scaffolding, and while both Bing and Google turn up plenty of running horse, no website. No news about whether or when it will be reopening. However, a bit further down, Hedonism was alive and well and we did turn up something which suited. We also spotted a familiar bottle of Greco di Tufo, a wine we were chasing around for a few years back, but I couldn't remember where I had come across this particular one before. For some reason, I did not buy a bottle so that I could investigate properly. 

Some consolation in that the archive turns up reference 8 fast enough, which I think is the wine in question - five years ago too. Restaurant in question long gone, which was a pity as we rather liked it.

It turned out that neither  Davies Street nor Berkeley Square offered eateries that suited and BH was getting a touch restive about her lunch. But there was a fine rose, very like a dog rose, in the hedge around the square.

I had thought that there was one of those places by Green Park Tube Station that did coffee, fancy cakes and light lunches - possibly called Concerto - but in the event it seemed not. We were almost reduced to buying sandwiches in the M&S there, but in the nick of time I discovered a place called Robuchon - not the place I was thinking of at all, but the offering inside was about right. See references 9 and 10. The snap above being offered by Bing.

The cupboard was a bit bare by 15:00 on a Monday, but we managed to both get seats - rather than high chairs - and a lunch which suited. I was rather pleased with my beef - both as to quantity and quality, while BH went for something more veggie. And the little pastries in a bag left did for dessert. Very light, just about a mouthful apiece.

Pleasant and efficient service from the counter.

A bit off our beaten track these days, but I dare say we will be back. And it clearly fancies itself if the snap above, lifted from reference 10, is anything to go by.

Down the hole at Green Park and so to Raynes Park where the platform library (aka RPPL) was well stocked but closed for renovation. So we had a cool wait for our train outside instead.

PS 1: Amazon has being going on about passkeys for a while now, and I may have finally taken the plunge, it seeming to require no more than the PIN I use to start up this laptop with. Not too sure about all this at all. I also found out that the price of CDs of Schubert's two piano trios varies enormously, settling for an older and cheaper offering from Deutsche. Reference 11 will do in the meantime.

PS 2: along the way to this post, reference 12 caught my eye, in part because of long-standing irritation at the vast amounts we pay the private sector for residential care for the vulnerable, young and old. Seemingly vastly more than we used to pay in the good old days - to be fair, rather scandal-ridden days - of public provision. Care related scandal that is, not money related. While top civil servants in my day did not get their hands in the till, as it were: they were content with their gongs and comfortable pensions. Conflict of interest in high places was more or less unheard of until the Thatcher 'reforms' came along. She looks innocent enough too, in the snap above.

There was never a whiff of bribery about the sometimes tricky population estimates going into the Rate Support Grant - this grant involving very large sums of money - estimates I was close to for a while -and the scandal in some procurement part of MoD/PSA down in Portsmouth was a rare exception.

Google knows all about it, ending with chapter and verse from the Public Accounts Committee. The connection not being clear at all at first glance, but I dare with a little time and work, it would become so. See reference 13.

Perhaps it is only to be expected that a corporation like Google would get quite excited about corruption in public provision. A handy distraction?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=gaspard.

Reference 2: https://www.benugo.com/sites/cafes/john-lewis-oxford-street/.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/arod.html.

Reference 4: https://www.johnlewis.com/our-shops/oxford-street?msockid=0aacbea93f5561f91afeabb83eca60cd.

Reference 5: https://monex-group.com/.

Reference 6: https://monexlogistics.co/services/hiab.

Reference 7: https://www.countryfile.com/environment/pig-slaughter-carbon-dioxide.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/access-denied.html.

Reference 9: https://jrobuchon.com/our_locations/le-deli-robuchon-piccadilly/.

Reference 10: https://jrobuchon.com/.

Reference 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlCXE2wEe7w&t=38s.

Reference 12: Top health official held shares in key children’s home operator: Samantha Jones, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, had multiple private-sector interests - Gill Plimmer, Josh Gabert-Doyon, Chris Smyth, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 13: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1986-07-03/debates/14420965-516c-44b0-8c2b-6ba1935e76de/PublicAccounts.

The third day

Not so early out on the third day of the heatwave. But I was awake eough to notice a new-to-me hole in a hedge at the West Hill end of Manor Green Road.

Was it just the removal of what appears to be a dead branch of modest size? Lower left, in the snap above.

Zoomed above. Despite walking past this hedge maybe half a dozen times every week, I could not bring to mind an image of what it was before. I don't think that I had noticed that it was a yew rather than a leylandii either. Yet another example of seeing things without taking them in. If it had changed overnight from being a yew to being a leylandii, would I have noticed that?

On the first early start, earlier in the week, I had noticed a whole lot of flat cardboard boxes on the front counter of an otherwise empty and shut-up Gail's. On this occasion, perhaps an hour or so later in the morning, someone was busily unpacking bread from a similar lot of boxes. So if the Gail's delivery lorry comes around in the small hours, before anyone has turned up, how does he get in? Do Gail's trust their drivers with pass keys for all the shops on their round? Does one key do all of them?

Maybe I will remember to ask the next time I have occasion to use them, which is not often.

An early convolvulus on the town side of the Screwfix underpass. The snap not quite capturing the intense, creamy whiteness I so admire in these flowers.

The Screwfix whitebeam. Coming up to 07:00 and the sun had not got to it yet, at least not past the top of it.

Some nettles above the Longmead stream in full flower. And they were not wilting, as some of them had been the day before.

By the fifth day of sun, the white pyracantha flowers had gone over. This being around 06:30 on Friday morning.

A bit cooler, so I went for a mid-morning circuit, picking up a few trolleys, 

I went on to forget to pick up my pills. On the other hand, I had suddenly had a fancy for raspberry jam, so went into Waitrose for that, to find that a good portion of the space which had been grocery, had been given over to household goods. I remembered reading about some directive from some new director at Waitrose, fresh from Tesco's or somewhere like that, ruling that it did not make good retail sense for Waitrose not to stock the household goods carried by John Lewis. He may be right, but I was just annoyed by the reduction in grocery: I only very rarely buy household goods.

A reduction which seemed to mean that I could not buy raspberry jam; rather, I had to buy foreign jam, in this case a fancily got up brand called St. Dalfour and a spread rather than a jam. Got it home to find that it was made from raspberries, grape concentrate and date concentrate, this last so that they could claim that it contained no unnatural sweeteners - by which I assume they meant sugar from sugar cane or sugar beet.

I tried it this morning and was not at all impressed. A sickly, syrupy quantity nothing much like the raspberry jam we used to make at home all those years ago. Probably involving both an evil copper preserving pan as well as sugar.

Maybe it is all a plot to take in surplus product from the vine growers of France and the date growers of what was French North Africa?

In any event, a triumph of packaging over jam.

Out again in the afternoon, Coming across another trolley - and a serious leak outside the house which used to be called the Albion. Water bubbling out nicely from under the displaced bricks, upper centre in the snap above. Still bubbling nicely the following morning, that is to say this morning. Trolley visible left.

Got my pills this time round, and onto Stones Road, where I came across this handsome shrub. Google Images says ballerina rose, which looks plausible enough.

I then try him on a zoom from the same snap. He agrees with himself, which is as it should be. Further corroboration at reference 1.

Although it does occur to me that there might be lots of flowering shrubs of this general appearance. How do I eliminate that possibility?

Another puzzle is how Google Images does as well as it does on plant identification without having been taught anything about botany and the anatomy of plants, detailed knowledge of which is used by  humans for such identification. Is all that sort of thing hidden inside Google Image's learning process, or is it just using a statistical sledge hammer? Brawn rather than brain?

I should say that he does, in his commentary on images of flowers, use some floral jargon, but nothing like as much as, for example, is to be found in Bentham & Hooker.

On into the passage leading to the Screwfix underpass, where I came across a surprise small clump of large leaved ivy. Perhaps it is nothing to do with ground condition and position, rather a mutant?

Plus some half opened convolvulus flowers, with the five petalled structure being much more prominent than in the fully opened flower above.

And I had remembered to carry along my secateurs and clasp knife. So I was able to take the year's growth of ivy off the base of the whitebeam. A lot of it, but easy enough to get off with the clasp knife's spike, so need for the secateurs at all.

Trunk snapped above after removal with the bark contrasts in the snap above nearly all down to the light. Nothing much to do with the bark itself.

The ivy had grown around the sunny half of the trunk. 

I did not remove all the ivy last year, just taking out the bottom foot or so, and some of the relics of that operation were down to fragile tubes, off white in colour, the insides having rotted away. While one or two of them were still showing life, just about sucking a living from the trunk below. Or perhaps from the water caught up in debris accumulating in odd places.

The year's harvest. Now in the brick compost bin at the top of our garden. Seemed a bit untidy just to chuck it in the hedge adjacent.

PS: I didn't know what to make of the scheme advertised at reference 3. Bonkers it may be, but it seems to be getting both funding and air time. Was the FT having trouble filling up its quota of square metres that day?

References

Reference 1: https://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/products/ballerina.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/chicken-dinners.html. Previous notice of the need for ivy action.

Reference 3: ‘Bonkers’: the audacious plan for a 1mn-person city near Cambridge: Shiv Malik, a former journalist, conceived his vision of timber skyscrapers after chronicling how young people were struggling - Chris Smyth, Financial Times - 2026.

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

Group search key: 20260527, 20260529.

Chicken dinners

Chicken dinner came around again a few days ago, attended with reasonably elaborate preparations, starting with a large chicken from Sainsbury's.

This was supplemented with a couple of chicken legs for the gravy, probably from Waitrose, at what seemed the improbably low price of £2. How on earth do they do it?

The chicken legs were boiled up for two or three hours along with various vegetables. Step one: drain off the liquor. Step two: separate out the meat and the soft vegetable from the mush, that is to say discarding the bones, gristle, onion skins, potato skins and suchlike. Pass the balance through the blender, along with some more water. This resulted in something like a breakfast porridge, except that it was more white than grey.

The next day, I lifted the fat off the liquor and roux'd it up with some flour. Foamed it for a few  minutes, then started adding in some of the liquor. When that had come hot and smooth, I started adding in some of the porridge, ending up with quite a thick gravy. But there was some liquor left, should thinning be appropriate in due course.

We took the remainder of the porridge as soup, fortified with a little saucisson sec, later the same day, having, in the interval, inspected the Screwfix whitebeam.

Next up the stuffing, pie dished rather than stuffed, as is our long established custom. I also reverted to adding a little oil to the stuffing mix, perhaps a tablespoon, as the stuffing, certainly when fresh out of the oven, can be a little dry otherwise. And thin cut streaky from M&S rather than thick cut back from Sainsbury's.

BH attended to the chicken, the attendant rice and crinkly cabbage.

In the event, we went for the Argentinian Malbec and it all went down very well. Rounded out with one of BH's apple pies, the flat sort made on the the Golden Harvest enamel plate.

The place from where the wine came: at least that was the address on the bottle, that is to say: 'San Martín 2044, Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina'. Zoom not strong enough to resolve the brown lines in the yard, above and to the left of the red spot. Barrels?

I had thought that we had had the wine before, but inspection of the archive suggests I may have conflated with that at reference 2: another 'B' word from the same town in Argentina, but not Bosca.

Cold chicken the day following. 

Carcase soup, fortified with lentils, mushrooms and bacon the day - or possibly even some days - after that. In any event, it did for two days, standing quite well.

At some point, the remains of the gravy was taken on bread. After reheating, naturally.

PS 1: maybe this afternoon I will remember to take my clasp knife out and cut away the new ivy growth from the whitebeam.

PS 2: on checking, I find another memory error. Not 'Golden Harvest' plate, rather 'Bumper Harvest'. See reference 4.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/busy.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/sheep-from-sainsburys.html.

Reference 3: https://luigibosca.com/en/. I couldn't find out wine; maybe it was a special for the UK supermarket trade.

Reference 4: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/three-trolleys.html.

Galsworthy

I have now brought to a conclusion a first pass of 'Caravan', the collected short stories of John Galsworthy, first noticed in the margins of reading one of Freud's books - ‘Civilization and its discontents’ - something over a year ago, as noticed at reference 1. It picked up steam at the beginning of this year with a new copy, as noticed at reference 2. I have now finished a first pass of the last story, 'Had a horse'. A horse with the odd name of 'Calliope' of reference 4, from where the snap above is lifted. Google Images adds the information that 'The work is attributed to the Italian painter Cesare Dandini (1596–1657) ... She is shown with books labeled "Odyssea," "Iliade," and "Eneide," representing the epic poems The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid...'.

Gemini offers me a nice essay on the prompt 'What do you know about horses called 'Calliope'? Why might a horse be named for such a person?' and it seems that upper class owners were quite fond of names of this sort. Furthermore, Galsworthy may have known of the famous Queensland stud called 'Calliope Station'. He does not mention Galsworthy, but when I feed that in, he is off again, telling a good story, but getting the name of the bookmaker hero, James Shrewin, wrong.

When pulled up, he recovers well. All quite impressive. He has come on a bit since his early days as Bard, first noticed just about three years ago at reference 5. And I was impressed even back then.

The bad news is that while I got the gist of the story, now tidied up by Gemini, I did not understand the intricacies of shady characters manipulating the odds of horses and so arranging things to make lots of money our of getting the jockey to pull their horse. My excuse is that it was just too hot and too much of the brain was offline, taking a time out. I shall have another go when it cools down a bit.

On the other hand, while it might have taken me more than a year to get through the 950 odd pages of these stories, more than fifty of them, I have enjoyed them. Enjoyment which was greatly facilitated by having a proper reading copy, printed on good quality, thin paper and properly bound. A modern version would have taken a lot more cubic inches to do a comparatively poor job.

A first thought was that while I had enjoyed them, some of them had not sunk in very far, as revealed by glancing down the contents page this (Friday) morning.

A second thought was that I do not read short stories much. But then I remembered that Tolstoy, Chekov, D.H.Lawrence and Simenon all wrote short stories. A lot of which I own and some of which I have read. So this morning I got down my collected stories of Lawrence, a contemporary of Galsworthy and producer of some 1,150 rather longer pages of short stories, another decently made book from 1934. A book into which I had dipped, rather than reading it from end to end, as here. It is probably relevant that one needs to be sitting at a table, or at least upright in an easy chair, for it to be an easy read. A bit heavy otherwise.

Maybe I will now go back over some of these other stories? Maybe 'Tickets, please', the subject of someone's enthusiastic puff at some point, some years ago?

PS 1: it must have been a while ago, as I had already forgotten who the puffer was back in 2018, at reference 6.

PS 2: I do not seem to have made much progress with Freud since reading at Galsworthy's 'The apple tree'. However, a quick look at my notes from that time this morning, suggests that it would be worth going back to them. We shall see.

'...The Australian "Waler" Heritage: In equestrian history, Calliope Station in Queensland, Australia, was a massive, historic 19th- and 20th-century stud station famous for breeding exceptionally hardy, high-quality stock horses and "Walers" (the iconic Australian military horses used in WWI)....'

PS 3: after a break, I have now taken a look at Gemini's Calliope Station, snapped above.

Not a very promising start at reference 6, where there were no horses and no studs, although there were a few students.

Gmaps turns up a Calliope Station Road, a little to the west of Calliope proper, itself quite near the sea to the east. So Calliope Station was attached to Calliope, itself named for a visiting sixth rater.

[Garden Reach, Calcutta, HMS Calliope saluting 1841, by Francis Meynell R.N. Calliope is being towed by a naval paddle wheel tugboat. Meynell entered the navy as midshipman during the campaign in China, on board the Calliope. He was mentioned for the assistance rendered at the capture on 13 March 1841 of the last fort protecting the approaches of the city of Canton (Guangzhou)]

I leave finding out about the rating of 19th century warships as an exercise for the reader. Clue: I imagine that H.M.S.Victory was a first rater.

I do rather better at reference 7, where I learn that while the station started out with raising cattle for beef, they did use horses and they did move into raising horses. Walers certainly exist, but I did not find out much about Walers at Calliope. In any event, hard to know whether Gemini's gloss is overdoing it or not. The connection is real enough, but is he making too much of it? 

And then, is Galsworthy likely to have heard of the place? Wikipedia mentions a visit to Australia, but did he spend much time there? He did ride and he did take a serious interest in horse welfare - a big issue in his day - but was he that interested in horse breeding?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-apple-tree.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/01/galsworthy.html.

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

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

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/bard-one.html. There is lots more 'Bard' scattered around these pages.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/11/song-without-dance.html.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliope,_Queensland.

Reference 8: https://walerdatabase.online/calliope-station/.

Reference 9: https://walerdatabase.online/old-fashioned-horse/.

Group search key: aisk.

Allotments past

Ten days ago, the allotments at Stamford Green where I laboured for some years had a plant sale, coupled with tea and cakes. An opportunity for BH to investigate plants and neighbours and for me to take a look at what had been my allotments, at the top corner of the field, next to the school, just about where the orange spot is in the snap from gmaps above.

I am sure the club hut had moved from my day, getting on for twenty years ago now; not that I could say where it was. I do0n't think that it was very lively at that time. And we certainly did not hold trolleys from places like Wickes, or, indeed, anywhere else. This being the path running along the edge of the field to the northwest, from the bottom corner.

Just past the turning to the north. With the fence line left looking a lot more grown over than in my day. I used to know the couple who had the shed right, or perhaps the one before the present one.

Looking down the path between what was my two allotments. Deer fenced fruit enclosure left. Nothing left of what I had been doing on the right that I could see. No pampas grass, no compost heap, no anything else.

The deer fence survived, although the fruit trees had not been looked after and it all looked a bit overgrown. Some sturdy suckers or seedlings along the fence line. Where I had planted green willow posts, just sprouting at the time I left - the idea being that intermediate live posts, if kept under control, would do better than dead ones.

Walking back, a dog rose looking well.

A lot of raised beds and netting. But I did not see anything in the way of compost heaps: people seemed to prefer to get the council to dispose of green waste for them.

The only broad beans that I came across. A poor show compared with what I used to do!

Out to climb over West Hill, where the tulip tree was going well, now blasted by the sun,

Easy meat for Google Images.

PS: the (default) results at reference 1 are incomplete and are not in chronological order. I used the power of Gemini to tweak the URL provided by the blog search function to try to do better, but this ran into a few problems to do with the number of results and time zones. The close of our conversation is snapped above. Breaking open somebody else's black box can be tricky!

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=allotment. Some of the archive.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=allotment&updated-max=2008-01-01T00:00:00Z. Trying to be clever.

Group search key: 20260516

McDonald's

Another early start on Tuesday morning to escape the heat. Rather more activity on the roads at 05:00 than the day before, a bank holiday, so presumably a consequence of it being a regular working day.

Opened proceedings by collecting a Waitrose trolley from underneath the scaffolding by the West Street bus stop, not far from Enterprise and Amber, these last being the people at reference 1.

I then thought that, since McDonald's had gone to the bother of opening at 05:00 in the morning, before anyone else was on parade, I should give them a go, for once in a while.

All very clean and efficient looking inside, and I managed to work the ordering machine, not strictly necessary, as the counter hand did appear to be taking another order in person.

I had intended to go for a basic burger, something I think I last tried one evening in Cardiff, perhaps twenty year ago, when a colleague had claimed that McDonald's was a good bet for a good value evening snack if you did not want to bother with a restaurant. But I did not seem to be able to find any burgers, being reduced to something called a sausage sandwich with ketchup. I thought - perhaps hoped - that the ketchup would come on the side in its own little packet, which could be discarded.

Looking slightly less grim in the snap above than it appeared in real life. Nicely presented - order of the day No.0003 - but grim inside. The large portion of ketchup turned out to have been built in, completely masking any taste the curiously coloured cheese slice might have had. Bun dreadful, while the sausage flavoured burger was fine. Had it been served in proper bread, without the extras, in the way of the 'Los Amigos' up the road (firmly shut at this hour), all would have been well. But it wasn't. At least I had the apple drink to wash away the taste of the thing.

BH explained afterwards that I may have got myself stuck in the breakfast menu, possibly something to do with the time of day. Reference 2 is clear that McDonald's do still sell burgers - although it might be a while before I give it another go.

In their favour, I should add that there were toilets - and probably additional seating - upstairs. The only ones in town at this time of day - although maybe the railway station and their toilets would have been open, bearing in mind the notional requirement for a ticket.

Next stop, the East Street hollyhock, last noticed at reference 3, easily the largest one that I know in the area, now coming into bud.

The creeper, lower left in the first snap, was in flower, so time to give Google Images another go. Last time his not altogether convincing story was that 'the plant is likely Asiatic Jasmine (Trachelospermum asiaticum) or the closely related Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides)'.

Today he goes off on a different track with Nepal Knotweed (Persicaria nepalensis, formerly Polygonum nepalense).

Wikipedia has a very short entry, but Kew offers the image above, with the habit not quite right and the flowers quite wrong.

So still not very happy, but Google Images had also turned up Fallopia convolvulus, the black bindweed or wild buckwheat, which was at first promising; but, on closer inspection, the leaves of this last were all wrong, smooth and shiny, rather than veined and rough, with hair visible under.

However, when I feed Google Images the snap above, that is what he goes for.

Gemini has now gone into deep dive, so I am going to have to park this one for now.

Managed to walk down the whole length of Middle Lane without having to give way for a car. Deciding that it was getting hot and that I would not capture the large trolley from Sainsbury's at the Victoria Place end of the Lane.

The Screwfix whitebeam.

I think the Blenheim Road camp is getting bigger.

While a carex pendula was having a go just above the Longmead stream, behind the camera position of the previous snap. There was water in the stream.

And so home to a second breakfast, a proper one this time.

PS 1: a rather simpler story from Gemini about the London bus on the front of my newly arrived (if elderly) Insight Guide to Calcutta, as previously advertised at reference 5. Almost certainly a regular bus rather than the long-range one. A quirky complement to my excursion with reference 6 last year. But I never did get to the transport museum in Covent Garden.

PS 2: I have now found buses in the Insight Guide by the simple expedient of using the index. They get a couple of square inches on page 251. Including: 'Calcutta has the largest concentration of buses in the world ... Government buses are red, battered double deckers...'. This from 1991.

Reference 1: https://theamber-group.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/trolley-fest.html.

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

Reference 5: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/cheesecutter.html.

Reference 6: Ian Allen Transport Library: British Buses since 1900 - John Aldridge, Stephen Morris - 2000.

Reference 7: https://transport.wb.gov.in/about-us/department-at-a-glance/corporation/wbtc/cstc/. Not too exciting, at least not at first glance.

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