Mainly hollyhocks

It being a day of heat to come, an early morning circuit, starting something before 07:00, with the East Street hollyhocks looking well. Which I now know from the rather thin reference 1, to be ancient immigrants from China, so ancient that they might almost count as native.

Wanting to know more about the flower, I give Bing the clue 'structure hollyock flower', which does not give me what I want, while Google turns up the tricky photographs of reference 2. But which for me, could usefully have been supplemented by a diagram.

Neither Bing nor Google seem to have be disturbed by the missing 'h'.

I try Google with 'diagram hollyhock flower', and the best he can do is included above, lifted from reference 3.

So plenty of words, plenty of photographs, but people out there do not seem to be so keen on the careful botanical drawings of the 19th century.

At which point, I try getting up from the laptop and getting out Zomlefer, whom, as I had expected and hoped, did my business. With more botany than I could readily digest.

Back at East Street, a close-up. 

But the Zomlefer structure not visible and not brought out by zoom: clearly need to go back to take a closer look, perhaps over several days to catch the development. Maybe even pick one, if I remember to take a suitable padded box to put it in.

Pushed onto Sainsbury's with a trolley, to find that at Wickes they are happy to leave piles of stuff outside, overnight. Can't see all this having been put out before I got there at around 07:30. It must work for them.

While in the path down to the footbridge over the railway, some nuts were coming on. Nuts in June, rather than the May of the jingle. Must be time for the squirrels to come and strip our nut tree of all its immature nuts. We rarely get any and I wonder this morning what happens in orchards.

Gemini seems to know all about it. Maybe there is something in the theory that he does well on questions that lots of people ask. And coping well with all the different ways in which we put the question. The start of his story is snapped above.

Further on there is talk of shooting and I associate this morning to the small strawberry farm we used to know in Hambledon, in Hampshire, occupying a walled a garden. The gardener and his sons used to lie in wait at night with torches and catch the squirrels, a major pest for them, coming over the wall at night with shotguns. An army family, so they would have known all about guns.

But I also wonder how reliable this memory is. Have I tidied things up, organised it, rather in the way that Gemini sometimes does?

Nearer home, more hollyhocks. Not as flashy individually, but a lot of them. You get them there every year, which makes me think perennial, while Wikipedia says not really. One more puzzle!

PS 1: I have now consulted Bentham & Hooker about hollyhocks, which I found rather confusing. But I have learned that the marshmallows that I used to toast over a fire as a child are descended from a confection made by the ancient Egyptians from the root of the marshmallow, a close relative of the hollyhock, a connection now broken by replacing the active ingredient from the root with gelatin. This from Gemini, the end of whose story is:

'... The plant finally got pushed out of the recipe because it was too labor-intensive to harvest and process. As demand skyrocketed, candy makers looked for a mass-production shortcut.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, manufacturers figured out they could replicate that signature "squishy, bouncy" texture much faster and cheaper by using gelatin (derived from animal collagen) or starches instead of the plant's root sap.

The Verdict: Today's grocery store marshmallows contain absolutely zero marsh-mallow plant. They are essentially just corn syrup, sugar, water, and gelatin whipped with air. But without that gooey marsh weed, we wouldn't have the name, the texture, or the excuse to put them on a stick over a fire'.

I then wondered, having a Canadian mother, whether toasting marshmallows on a camp-fire was a north American thing. Gemini agrees with me, coming up with another splendid story, including:

'... Around the 1890s, "marshmallow roasts" became the ultimate summer trend at fashionable beach resorts in places like New Jersey. It wasn't a rugged wilderness activity back then; it was an upscale, bohemian social mixer for young people. Newspapers at the time described it as an "excellent medium for flirtation," where young men and women would gather around a beach bonfire, nibble gooey sweets off the ends of each other's sharpened sticks, and socialize. ..'.

So the confusion at Bentham & Hooker did have its upside. And the story went on for quite a while. Gemini strong on camp-fire nostalgia - even on the differences between the North America, British and Australian traditions...

But I don't remember about pouring jam down the middle.

PS 2: I now remember that marshmallows was a Bonfire Night thing, while twists and dampers were a Boy Scout thing. As a child, we were lucky enough to have vacant lot next door which did very well as a Bonfire venue. Complete with a handy chunk of tree trunk.

PS 3: no marshmallows in the archive. But at least 14 hollyhocks, going back to 2014, with a London rather than an Epsom specimen. See reference 5 - from I also learn that I have been taking bacon sandwiches from Duncannon Street for more than a decade.

PS 4: Wednesday afternoon. Had a second go at the clump of hollyhocks above, earlier today. I think I am now clear that the long white threads in the middles are the female parts, ready to take pollen, with some grains visible, while the yellow thread behind are the male parts, presumably ripe and finished, thus avoiding incest (generally thought to be a bad thing, inbreeding in domestic, traction and farmed animals notwithstanding). All this being explained rather better at reference 2. But I have now seen it for myself.

References

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

Reference 2: https://naturesdepths.com/the-intimate-life-of-a-hollyhock-flower/.

Reference 3: https://wildflowers-and-weeds.com/Plant_Families/Malvaceae.htm.

Reference 4: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/02/bury-lodge.html. The home of the strawberry farm.

Reference 5: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/06/colour.html.

Group search key: 20260621.

AVT

A correspondent in the financial services industry told me recently that while he found AI tools a bit unreliable on tricky questions - and he was paid to be right every time - he also found that they were very good at taking the minutes of meetings. Saved lots of time - and presumably the people at the meetings were happy with the results.  In my days in the world of work at least, meetings always started with minutes of the last meeting, a good opportunity for people to chip in if they did not agree with what they said had been said. Checking built in.

So this afternoon, I was interested when my telephone told me that my GP was starting to use something called Surgery Intellect, to be found at reference 1. From which I learn that it is a health care application of something called Ambient Voice Technology, to be found at reference 2, from which the snap above it taken.

All looks quire helpful to me, quite possibly a cheap way to take some of the heat out of primary care, with primary carers no longer having to write things up as they go, being able to let the computer take the strain. I dare say the computer will make mistakes from time to time - but quite probably fewer than an overworked primary carer.

Some corroboration of the allegation by a former correspondent that the former Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, thought that technology was going to be the magic bullet that was going to save the health service. I might say that this particular correspondent was not at all convinced, so maybe the NHS needs to have a care for public relations here. With this advertisement from my surgery, to my mind, being a good start on that front.

One small fly in the ointment. From reference 3 we have:

'... Clinicians described the AI-scribing tool as “transformative” with particular benefits for neurodivergent staff and those working in high-pressure environments. There was a 35% reduction in clinicians feeling overwhelmed by notetaking and qualitative feedback focused on improved satisfaction with time, attention, and documentation accuracy. The technology was widely viewed as enabling better patient care...'.

I wondered what neurodivergent staff means in this context.

Gemini tells me that there is plenty of it in the NHS workforce, more or less in line with prevalence in the wider population and massively underreported to HR - which last is entirely understandable. What a can of worms, part of which is snapped above. Hoist with their own petard!

For the avoidance of doubt, I record here that I am entirely happy for the NHS to use these tools during or as part of my interactions with them.

References

Reference 1: https://www.x-on.co.uk/surgery-intellect/.

Reference 2: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/ambient-scribing.

Reference 3: https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/news/researchgosh-led-trial-of-ai-scribe-technology-shows-transformative-benefits-for-patients-and-clinicians-across-london/. GOSH is Great Ormond Street Hospital, not to be confused with GESH which is St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Hospital Group, with which acronym I am more familiar.

An early circuit

At the end of reference 1, I mentioned a Scots Pine towards the bottom of the Epsom side of West Hill. A tree which a correspondent claimed was planted to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. Gemini at first told me that the upper age limit for a Scot Pine in the south of England is around 200 years and wove quite a nice story around that possibility.

The next day I took another look and guessed the trunk diameter to be around 2 feet at head height. I thought that the top of the tree looked healthy enough.

It being one of the days forecast to be hot, this being about 06:30 in the morning.

On the basis of the first snap and the estimate of 2 feet, Google Images goes for something much closer to 100 years. A 200 year old tree would normally be much fatter. I had better take my tape with me on my next circuit.

Early enough, that this snap of the forthcoming Big Yellow Box facility came out very dim.

The hoarding came down around two months ago, since when there has been little if any activity, beyond the concrete blocks noticed at reference 2 having gone. BH says that the Civic Society was worried about the ground around the scrawny tree getting compressed. But there was a waiting van and a waiting car: maybe action was imminent? Action which is still not visible a week later.

A bit further along East Street, something else which seems to thrive in cracks in the pavement with a sunny aspect.

Google Images reminds me that it is Verbascum Thapsus or common mullein, which takes me to the days of the plague, restrictions and Jubilee Way. And to references 3 and 4.

Bentham & Hooker more or less agrees, but I would be even happier if I had some detailed snaps. He talks about decurrent leaves, on which Wikipedia is not very helpful, although he does mention this particular plant in that connection. B&H also offer five other species, and some of them go in for hybrids. So identification can be tricky.

While the Scrophularia family make the cut at Zomlefer, which talks of 220 genera (Verbascum gets a mention) and 3,000 species. All a bit botanical. Her glossary is slightly better than Wikipedia on decurrent.

Nothing for the family in the archive, but still something else which needs a closer look.

Home via Sainsbury's, probably via the footbridge after that. Plenty of trolleys in their stack, ready for the rush to come. Only just opened.

PS 1: I thought later that decurrent had cropped up before, which search of the archive reveals is indeed the case. Reference 7 helps a bit, but I clearly need to look again at the mullein.

PS 2: in the event, I took a piece of string, having decided that measuring girth single handed was going to be more reliable than measuring the diameter. This gave 2.7m, so rather more than the estimate I gave Google Images this morning. He revises his estimate to 100-150 years, taking into account that the tree has probably grown faster than it would have up in Scotland. The end of this contribution is snapped above.

And that is probably the best we are going to do, short of tracking the tree down in Bourne Hall Museum, which seems a bit unlikely.

The correlation between girth and age is just not good enough. And, I dare say, if you tried to throw height into the mix, the data would not be there. Even less there than it is for girth!

References

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

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/trees-and-so-forth.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/giant-weed.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/series-2-episode-xii.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decurrent.

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

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=decurrent.

Group search key: 20260622.

Hot news

Yesterday we ate the first blackberries of the season, mostly harvested by the overgrown bank below the stalled building site at the corner of West Hill and Station Approach, supplemented by a few from the entrance to, inter alia, Epsom Autos - people who have been attending to our cars for many years. Pretty good they were too. Sadly, I think that the brambles there have been hacked back a bit since last year, so there are not going to be very many.

I got the impression that these early berries were in the lead on their clusters. That is to say, just the one ripe berry to the cluster. First off the blocks in some botanical sense or other.

Inspection of the archive - with the help of  right click on reference 1 to take me to 'View page source' - tells me that the first blackberries last year were picked somewhere in the back of Ryde on the 16th of July. Just about a month later than this year. 

Last year we did not pick any blackberries in the proper way, with the result that we are now taking our stewed apples with cloves, rather than with frozen blackberries. We shall see what happens this year: far too expensive in the shops to actually buy them.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/ryde.html.

On the City Wall

Attentive readers will know that I have been reading the Chaudhuri autobiography (so called) at reference 1, from where I branched to reference 2 and from there to reference 3, ‘On the City Wall’, the short story by Rudyard Kipling which is the subject of this post. I have read Kipling before, but not very much and not at all recently. A writer about whom I knew almost nothing – but I now know that while he might have been brought up in India, he spent most of his later life in the UK. You can read all about him at reference 18.

The bit of reference 3, near the beginning, which caught my eye, concerning a famous Bengali novelist, ran as follows:

He retorted angrily: ‘Profession! Am I a prostitute or a lawyer that I should have a profession?’

He was an authentic traditionalist in his brusqueness. As Kipling wrote in his story ‘On the City Wall’: ‘Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith was her very great-grandmama, and that was before the days of Eve’.

I thought on this occasion that it would suit better to read a print copy, rather than on the screen, which I dare say would have been possible. So off to Abebooks and eBay where there were a range of offers, and I settled for the curiously titled ‘Little Blue Book No.914’ from eBay – not a title that I had ever come across before.

I should add at this point that a lot of what follows has been generated by Gemini: an AI generated post plus a certain amount of reading, checking and moderation. An exercise in how today’s student might go about an assignment. More or less the accidental result of reading this short story, printed in small on cheap paper, in bad light – and not making much sense of it. What on earth was it all about? So I asked Gemini, from which what follows, followed.

The book itself

The book was indeed little, a single signature of exactly 64 pages, plus a soft (now faded) blue cover of three and a half by five inches. As per the snap above it was slipped inside a folded piece of yellow paper, that inside a regular white, partially addressed envelope – and that inside some kind of plastic wrapping for final delivery.

The book came from the US, and, having come across something of the sort before, I imagine that it was logged online with some aggregator, sent through the regular post to that aggregator, then aggregated into some larger parcel – or perhaps pallet – before being sent across the Atlantic. The parcel was then unpacked and the individual items fed into the regular postal system over here. Curious that this works out cheaper than just sticking the thing in the post in the ordinary way: but I did not bother Gemini with that particular point.

Bought from someone living in a Chicago neighbourhood which might be quite like our own here in Epsom, after dues allowances are made. Like their not going in for front gardens in the way that we do.

I don’t get very far with either Bing or Google on the subject of little blue books, but Gemini comes to my rescue. Perhaps he draws on a lot more individual searches than I can be bothered with.

It turns out that these books were invented at the start of the twentieth century, Aldi to the Waitrose of Everyman (roughly ten years earlier) and Penguin (roughly ten years later). The idea was to make cheap, convenient and disposable copies of serious books for ordinary people. Books that would cost a few cents, fit in an overall pocket and which might be discarded after a single reading – or perhaps passed around the mess-room. I associate also to Gollanz over here, a man with a mission of something of the same sort.

The founder, one Haldeman-Julius, had a relentless focus on costs and eventually got the cost of his books down to 5 cents, not much, even in 1920, and a lot less than either Everyman or Penguin books. He did very well until the 1940s, when things started to change and he was declared by Hoover to be a public enemy. His headquarters were in Girard, now a small town (city in the local dialect) in Kansas. A small town with big history, as can be seen from reference 9.

Getting on for 2,000 titles altogether. Now, no doubt, eminently collectible.

Part of the success of these books was the very aggressive promotion which went with them.

As well as being small, all these books were made out of a whole number of signatures, possibly just one signature, which meant 16, 32, 64 or 128 pages. The present one being 64 pages, of which just one is blank. Cheap paper, held together with a couple of staples. Considerable effort was put into putting books of various lengths into this format, effort which included fiddling with font size and page layout, use of short stories and essays and, if necessary, advertising padding. One result of all of which was that I found that I needed to be in good light, and even then it was not a very comfortable read.

It seems also, that certainly in his early days, Kipling himself used these budget publishers himself, more or less founding the one at reference 10. I wonder if he did newspapers too, perhaps serialisation, in the way of Hardy, to name just one?

The story

[A country which might be dominated by Hindus, but which has very substantial minorities. Not to mention Pakistan and Bangladesh (a variant form of Bengal), now missing]

Moving onto the story itself, it occupies 32 of the small pages, exactly half the total. A story which has a number of elements:

• A courtesan, living in a small house on the city wall. Her salon. She serves to add a bit of spice, to liven things up
• A young Muslim, Wali Dad, with an English flavoured education and not enough to do
• The city, which is not named but which appears to be loosely based on Lahore, with a Fort Amara added outside
• A riot between the two communities, Muslim and Hindu. The forces of law and order
• An escaped prisoner from the fort, an eminent and once successful rebel, a Sikh. Now quite old, fond of a drop. Aka freedom fighter, bandit or terrorist
• A narrator, involved in the action, pretty much Kipling himself.

It took me a while to work out that the rope (see Lalun below) and the affairs of the prisoner were what held the whole thing together. Were the foundation on which the story was built.

Lahore

Lahore is said to be the inspiration for the city of the title of the story. An ancient city, now a very large city on the Pakistan side of the border with India. Once the capital of the Punjab, which last is now split into two, unequal halves.

Once a very mixed city with large Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities. Indeed, it was, between the times of the Mughals and the British, the capital of the Sikh empire. It was and remains an important cultural centre, although more or less all the Sikhs and Hindus left at the time of the 1947 Partition – amid very unpleasant inter-community rioting – which might have been described at reference 4 had I been able to get hold of more than the introduction. This a reference from reference 12. Another visit to the SOAS library?

As with Christianity, there are plenty of different strands of Islam, sometimes in violent contention. Two which are relevant here, are the Shi’ites and the Sufis. All mixed in with the Taliban Sunnis of Afghanistan to the north and the revolutionary Shi’ites of Iran to the west. Around 15-20% of the population of present day Lahore are Shi’ites, this from reference 5. Provocative disruption of each other’s rituals and processions – of the sort described in this story – seems to be very much part of this contention.

Lahore did not have a city wall in the sense of the story, but it did have an ancient walled city, complete with a large fort, in the middle. So Kipling has made some adjustments.

The story also talks of instructions coming in from Simla, now Shimla. Once the summer capital of British India, away from the heat of the plains. East of Lahore and north of Delhi. On the watershed between west and east. To be found at reference 19.

Lalun

We start with a quote from Joshua 2:15, concerning a lady of the night of Jericho who facilitated the escape of two Israeli spies, this at a time when the Israelis, as they subsequently became, were busily plotting to take Jericho from whoever was living there at the time. God had given them the whole lot, that is to say everything worth having in the Jordan valley. The lady had bought exemption for herself and hers from the slaughter to follow by her treachery. Things do not seem to have moved on much in two and a half thousand years.

We have a reference to Lilith, a sexually charged lady demon from Jewish mythology who only appears in our version of the Bible as a screech owl in Isaiah 34:14.

There followed an amusing account of how in the Hindu world of the time, it did not do to be an unmarried lady, so the custom evolved of courtesans marrying trees. Which gave them the status of being married without the bother of a husband. Amusing, but untrue: while tree marriage did go on, it did not go on in the way suggested here. I might also say that Gemini got a bit carried away by this Kipling yarn and had to be led back to the straight and narrow.

There was, however, a strong and very real tradition of talented, powerful and rich courtesans. Something in the way of the courtesans of 19th century Europe, but perhaps more in the way of the ladies running what were called ‘salons’. The haunt of talented, powerful or rich men. Refreshments were provided.

Persian seemed to be the language of polite conversation, rather as French was in much of the Europe of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

The riot and its aftermath

Lalun’s guests are enjoying themselves upstairs, while down in the city we have the processions, drumming and riots associated with Muharram (reference 15), a day of mourning for Shi’ites but of celebration for Sunnis. We also have elaborate floats, from which I associated to the gaudy floats which feature in the processions of Holy Week in parts of Spain. Kipling boils all this down to fighting between Muslims and Hindus – I dare say a reasonable summary of what went on in the cities of the north Indian plains more generally – although I also dare say that both he – and at least some of his Indian readers – brown and white – knew that things were more complicated than that.

A relatively small army contingent – with elements manned from India, Nepal and Britain – contains the riots – with some violence, but without gunfire, and certainly without artillery, although this last was available.

In the margins, the rebel escapes from the fort, is hauled up into Lalun’s salon and carried off to safety by the narrator, who, distracted by Lalun' arms, does not realise what he has done until afterwards and whose white face gets him safely through the city, riots notwithstanding.

The rebel then finds that his time has passed, and no-one much wants him back. He turns himself back in at the fort. Where, in exchange for a soft billet, he had previously given his word not to attempt to escape.

Other matters

Quite a lot of references to the martial past of at least some of the communities involved. The inference being that old habits die hard. Kipling also suggests – in various places – that the British only managed by making a very visible show of force. When we drew back from that, we were finished. A bit old-fashioned.

On the other hand, on the evidence of this story, Kipling has a well developed sense of humour. And he does not draw back from poking gentle fun – and sometimes not so gentle fun – at his fellow Britons.

But just four Kiplings in the archive, all insubstantial. Reflecting my sustained failure to read him.

Conclusions

Something in the way of the thrillers or detective stories which came half a century later with the likes of Simenon. Lots of local colour, spiced up with a bit of sex and mystery.

But in this case, local colour which evolved into the horrors of the Partition, the aftershocks of which rumble on to this day. Not least in the form of the present government of India, far from the secular ideals of the founding fathers.

A reminder of the forces within swirling around religious belief, custom and ritual touched on at reference 8. On Freud’s (out of fashion) hydraulic theory, forces which, in most of us, now have to find other outlets? But which neatly accounts for the reversion of Wali Dad to type at the end of the story?

On this account anyway, Kipling was no common racist despite his occasional lapses; rather a shrewd observer of a tricky scene. Noting that some of his Indian stories had an Indian rather than a British narrator.

Gemini was certainly very helpful, but one did have to have a care with his material. And Wikipedia provided more solid fare. Not really possible at all back in the days of public libraries and encyclopaedias – with my Chambers not having been consulted at all on this occasion – although I dare say it had articles on most of the topics which appear below. Articles by people with names too.

PS 1: the Little Blue Book turned out to be an interesting publishing phenomenon during the first half of the twentieth century in the US – and one not without parallels over here. I was pleased to have stumbled upon it.

PS 2: I am a very passive member of LinkedIn, I think because I once used it to find someone. But they now think I need to pep my profile up a bit, with the prompt snapped above arriving this morning. Suggestion declined.

References

Reference 1: The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian – Nirad C. Chaudhuri – 1951. 

Reference 2: My hundredth year – Nirad C. Chaudhuri – 1997. In ‘India: The Golden Jubilee – Granta 57 – 1997’.

Reference 3: On the city wall – Rudyard Kipling – 1888. Published in Allahabad; one of the stories in No.3 of A. H. Wheeler & Co.'s Indian Railway Library. 

Reference 4: The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia - Kudaisya, Gyanesh; Yong, Tan Tai - 2004. I can get a 35 page freebie, but not the book itself. See maps at BP534-g1 & g2. The first of which appears to contain some serious errors.

Reference 5: Shias in Pakistan: a view from Lahore – Dr. Paul Rollier – 2014.

Reference 6: Rival sectarian groups agree to seven-day ceasefire in Pakistan: Local Sunni and Shia armed groups have clashed for decades, but the most recent fighting has killed more than 30 people – Al Jazeera – 2024. See also https://www.aljazeera.com/.

Reference 7: https://www.littlebluebooksbibliography.com/. Includes a substantial history.

Reference 8: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/a-hair.html.  

Alphabetical Wikipedia

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girard,_Kansas. 

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railway_Library. 

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Black_and_White_(short_story_collection). Includes a rather inaccurate, seven line summary of the present story. No. 3 of said Indian Railway Library. 

Reference 12: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore. 

Reference 13: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith. 

Reference 14: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Blue_Book. 

Reference 15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muharram. 

Reference 16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjab. 

Reference 17: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Lahore. 

Reference 18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling.  ‘… Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular writers…’.

Reference 19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla. 

Reference 20: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhs. 

Reference 21: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_City_of_Lahore. 

Group search key: aisk.

Is it a fake?

For a chunk of last year, I was taking an interest in the construction of the bodies of buses, in particular the extent that they blended metal and wooden components, with reference 1 proving an excellent source of information - although I did not, in the event, make it to the London Transport Museum in what was Covent Garden.

Then this afternoon, turning the pages of reference 1 again, I came across the snap included above. It all looked terribly idyllic and I wondered whether it had been posed for some publicity stunt - or perhaps for an Agatha Christie adaptation for big or small screen.

I asked Google Images, and while he was able to tell me quite a lot about the bus, agreeing, as far as I could see, with the caption to the picture in the book - off snap to the right - he was not able to turn up this particular image. So I suppose that I shall never know.

But when I added the clue 'Lifted from 'Ian Allen Transport Library: British Buses since 1900 - John Aldridge, Stephen Morris - 2000' he clammed up altogether and declined to play. I thought he might have done better, or at least explained why images from books don't always make it to the Internet where he can see them.

Gemini did rather better, even though he did not have access to the image in question, making various suggestions as to why his colleague had given up and suggesting various ways in which I might attack the problem - particularly enthusiast websites where, it seems, they often have long discussions about whether such an image has been faked up or not. He also suggests that the bus company in question was known for elaborate posing of its publicity shots. But maybe he was just stroking me there!

A matter which may be pursued if the heat continues to block regular activity.

References

Reference 1: Ian Allen Transport Library: British Buses since 1900 - John Aldridge, Stephen Morris - 2000.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/09/jenson.html.

Blue Maid

About a year ago, I paid a visit to a house in Borough called the Blue Maid. About ten days ago, I managed to get back there. It was also an opportunity to build on my return to the world of Bullingdons after a rather long gap.

Started off by managing to buy the wrong sort of  'London terminals' ticket, an error which meant that I paid pretty much for this ticket as I would have paid for my more usual Travelcard. The clerk explained a few days later that, given the way the screens were laid out, it was an easy enough mistake to make.

Onto my Aterio train, on which the announcements were in full and fully-irritating working order, but the litter bin was full to overflowing. Will I ever get around to finding out to whom I should be complaining about the announcements?

We also had an older man, sitting in a block of seats by himself, enthusiastically watching his very noisy telephone. When I suggested to him that it was rather loud, he just shrugged and carried on grinning inanely at his telephone. I decided that it was not worth a row and moved instead - there were, as it happens, some free seats at a safe distance. What a prat.

I then tried to load up the TFL map of Bullingdon stands, which I have used on my telephone before, but failed on this occasion. I eventually got to the map but it was far too unreliable to be usable. Maybe the on-train wifi is a bit unreliable - not something that I make much use of.

Pulled a Bullingdon off the ramp without trouble and pedalled down the ramp, over the roundabout and off to London Bridge. Passing a lot of noise by something which might have been the Flat Iron Market and which might have been to do with football.

Managed to remember to post the important letter with which I had been entrusted by BH, in Southwark Street.

Cycling in Borough at this time of day proved a bit hairy, with all kinds of cycles whizzing past me on both sides. All a bit unnerving, but I survived unscathed.

Rather to my surprise, not only was P&V at Borough (reference 2) open, it was open until 21:00 or something. So I was able to stock up on the sausage, previously noticed at reference 3.

Onto the Blue Maid, which seemed to cater to a modest, but regular trade at this time of day. And they had caved in on the food front to the extent of making delivery arrangements with neighbouring fast food outlets.

A couple of pints there and then back to P&V where we thought we might take a sandwich. There were chairs outside. No sandwiches left, but they could sell us a small baguette with pointed ends and make it up into a couple of salami sandwiches. Which were truly very good: excellent bread and excellent salami. Large format stuff, maybe four inches in diameter which I had not come across before. No need for butter.

One of the two sandwiches, opened up, snapped above. I thought about buying a bottle of wine to go with them, there being a good supply of same, but didn't. But I did associate to a long ago visit to France on a coach, where we stopped at a service station for a pit-stop. They explained to me that they did not sell opened bottles to people on coaches, but I think I managed somehow.

From thence to a very old-style boozer tucked in somewhere behind Guy's Hospital, complete with what looked like a scatter of older buildings owned by Guy's and waiting on redevelopment. But for all its old-style appearance, it still runs to the website at reference 4. The Old King's Head.

Presumably, in the old days, a haunt of medicos from the hospital, boozers and smokers all. Times have changed! But still a very decent place and odd that I don't remember using it before.

In the margins, I learned that there is an images angle to Gemini now, which I have yet to give a try. It will attempt things like estimating the height of trees from shadows, people and buildings. One more thing to be looked into someday.

There was also the suggestion that Gemini is good on stuff that lots of people ask about, which seems obvious enough, now that it has been pointed out. Perhaps I will ask him about the sort of things that other people talk to him about.

And another, originating from a chap from Singapore, that one should be careful with one's heritage. There are lots of places in the world without anything much in the way of heritage at all, and they are the poorer for it. All a question of striking the right balance, I suppose.

A bit later on, I thought about catching a train from London Bridge, but settled for a second Bullingdon. Out of practise, and I did notice that cycling up-river was uphill, a first, and I did not make all the way up the ramp at Waterloo. But all things considered, I thought I managed pretty well.

Fair bit of fancy dress to be seen on the mid-evening streets, Monday notwithstanding.

Just the two vacant slots on the ramp. I suppose that they had already stocked up for the morning rush hour to come. The stand in nearby Stamford Street had been very near full too.

References.

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/on-bike.html.

Reference 2: https://www.prezzemoloevitale.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/two-tier-serration.html.

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

Too hot

Yesterday (Friday) was too hot at 35°C and the house had got too hot, the heat having now soaked in, ancient cavity walls notwithstanding. Hot enough that it was already too hot by the time I got back from my walk at around 07:00. Didn't venture out much for the rest of the day. Not sure how I am going to manage should it get to 40°C: build a wooden contraption which BH covers with wet sheets while I lie inside? Must check in the garage to see if we have something which would do.

The Ashley Centre being closed, I had returned a Waitrose trolley to their back door, where a big artic was putting in the day's supplies. And I noticed the bit of patch work, the strange bolt, on the box above. I think I have noticed such a bolt before, but without the power of Gemini to search the archive - I only get the relatively primitive Windows search feature - I don't suppose I will be able to find it.

And thinking with my fingers, a plus point for primitive is predictability. There are rules and with a bit of effort you can find out what they are. The black box is not completely black.

The trolley in question visible bottom right.

Another big artic (I think) from Tradeteam, a DHL subsidiary, was putting the day's supplies into Wetherspoon's adjacent.

McDonald's up and running at 06:30, as it should be. A sprinkling of customers.

Delivery waiting outside Costcutter, where the shutters were starting to come up. But it did not look as if the driver had been able to make contact with anyone inside.

It was also a day for baking, batch No.781. Amazon had stopped supplying the yeast I have been using for a while now, Mauripan from Italy, and I had been pushed onto Fermipan from Portugal. Same 500g vacuum packing, looking the same, but with different, more complicated instructions which were in very small and with which I could not be bothered. So how would it all turn out? Another confusion was the high temperature, with yeast working faster as things warm up. At least, up to a point.

In the event, the first rise was very fast, and almost took me unawares. The resulting dough was very sticky and I thought that the second rise would be very long as a result. Something to do with the life cycle of the yeast. In the event, it was very fast too, and did take me unawares, with a partial collapse. The resultant bread, in the words of the chief gravy taster, was good but not great.

Next time, I think I shall use less yeast. This stuff is too strong for five teaspoons to 5lbs of dough - although that may wear off as I work my way through the 500g.

It being a hot day, I thought lentil soup for lunch was the thing - with BH sticking to left-over gala pie and salad. But then, I had done rather well on pie the two days previous. Last knockings of batch No.780 middle left.

8oz of lentils, washed three times. Made up with water to something between 1.5l and 2.0l. Brought to the boil, boiled for bit, then simmering by 11:30. When I added some celery.

Butter, garlic, onion and bacon (some fancy stuff from M&S which happened to be in the freezer) in parallel. Added to the lentils around 12:55. 

Sweetheart cabbage (rather good, from Costcutter) added just before the off at 13:00. One wants a bit of crunch: crunch which fades away overnight in the refrigerator. Topping up will be required.

It all did me very well, brought on a good sweat. And I remember this morning about reading once that one needs something to make one sweat when it is hot and humid, something about needing to give the kidneys a break. Perhaps in Proust, in connection with his grandmother. Perhaps in connection with the spicy food of most hot countries - although that may be more to do, thinking with my fingers, with needing to spice up a diet including a lot of bland carbohydrate of one sort or another.

PS 1: I remember first coming across gala pie when I had been told off, this as a twelve year old or so, to escort my Canadian grandmother to lunch at the Blue Boar Hotel, then in Trinity Street in Cambridge. Quite a fancy place with silver service and middle aged waiters, rather than young chits from the country. I had a slice of their gala pie two days running, without sauce, not something that featured in meals at home at all. But I fail to remember how the bill was settled. Had I been supplied with a blank cheque - something which would probably have worked in those far-off days? Maybe it will come back to me.

I dare say they had a dessert trolley too.

I have made pork pies once or twice, but never gala pies. I suspect it would be too much bother now: much easier and more reliable just to go to the shop.

PS 2: the small dead flies which used to be a feature of our lentil soups reappeared for the second serving on Saturday. I never did find out what exactly they were, although I had a theory that washing the lentils got rid of a lot of them. See, for example, reference 2.

PS 3: on our first visit to Ottawa, back in 2014 or so, I had hoped to visit the agricultural research station there and ask them about lentils, a lot of which are grown in Ontario, or perhaps further west. Sadly, I never made it.

PS 4: I have now had a conversation with Gemini about dead flies and lentils, and the middle of this conversation is snapped above. I am convinced by his story that the 'dead flies' are actually the remnants of the attachment of the (unsplit) lentil to its containing seed pod, lentils being organised like peas. Most of this is caught by processing before packing - aka threshing - but some gets left behind. Some more of which will be caught by customer washing.

So not flies at all, despite appearances, and nothing like the bugs which can infest stuff like pearl barley - another of our staples - if you keep it too long.

So Gemini did well, but once again it took an educated second prompt - the one snapped above - to get him onto the right track.

References

Reference 1: https://lesaffre-meea.com/. Fermipan seems to be a brand of a baking supplies conglomerate called Lesaffre. French flavoured rather than Portuguese, and strong in north Africa and the Gulf states.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-load-of-old-lentils.html.

Group search key: aigoodsk, 20260626.

Mutant turkey

The scene in the top compost heap, late morning. The occasion being emptying the compost dustbin for the protection of the patio from afternoon stinks.

This because, following the turkey leg noticed at reference 1, we thought we would go the whole hog with four of them. Massively cheaper than the once cheap cut called shoulder of lamb. 

Proceedings had started the day before with going to town to source the accompanying gravy. Did the shopping, including some very cheap, out of date chicken wings from M&S, from their long life chicken range for extra flavour, and then carried on around the Screwfix circuit.

Taking in some fine convolvulus on the way.

And the Screwfix whitebeam.

Home to present BH with her own copy of Simenon's 'The Cat'. I had bought my copy from France, in January, prompted, I think, by a glowing review of a new translation, and got around to reading it eventually. Not sure if that is what this tasteful copy from Penguin is, but BH got through it fast enough. We have yet to compare notes, but I have got my copy out so that I can give it another go.

I thought it pretty good the first time around, if a bit depressing. What a way to end up! Much too close for comfort!

After lunch, I put half the chicken wings into the stock pot, along with the vegetables to hand, to boil up for a bit and then off on the second circuit to inspect the Thames Water traffic test on West Hill. All test and no hole in the road. I don't think there ever was a hole in the road.

Home to take the rest of the chicken wings tray roasted as a snack; not something I think we have done before. They did rather well.

And then onto the gravy. More or less the same drill as that noticed at reference 2. Stock left, porridge right, debris front. Much easier to separate the meat from the bones than it had been with the legs, rather to my surprise.

Four legs given a good turn in the oven, covered by foil most of the time. One does not want them underdone and tough.

In parallel, the full gravy performance, using a good part of the porridge. White bread - an expensive boule from Waitrose - did very well for the dipping. I thought that the gravy was really good, but my chief taster was not prepared to go that far: good but not great was her best offer.

On the plate. Taken with a couple of Argentine reds from Waitrose. Very good they were too, even though I had chickened out of carrying them home and summoned BH to fetch me: the first time I recall doing such a thing. Maybe it was a warm afternoon.

Baby maize from Kenya. Jersey Royals from somewhere, a lot better than the ones that we had had a few days previous: sometimes they earn their premium price, even if they are not much like the ones one pulls out of one's own ground.

All very satisfactory, but somehow fell short of a proper roast. I wonder if what was missing was the sense of conspicuous consumption, perhaps as necessary an ingredient as the food and drink itself on an occasion of this sort. I had spent a bit on the wine, but that was inconspicuous.

I associate this morning to the new-money people in Trollope stories who always managed to tell their guests, in the course of an evening, how much they had spent on the wine and how much of it they had stashed away in their cellar. Much talk about 'my wine merchant'. A fine line, if you are into foodie talk, between telling you guests about what they are getting and boasting about it.

And then there are the people who manage to drag 'my broker' into the conversation. Their money is sufficiently new that they are still in make mode, rather than spend mode. Not so many of them about these days, with computers having in some large part squeezed out these expensive middle men.

For dessert a steamed jam sponge - to which end the jam spread noticed at reference 3 served very well. A dish I am rather fond of. Strawberries with the usual trimmings for those who liked that sort of thing with sponge cake - and for those who didn't like sponge cake.

Not sure myself about the clash of raspberry with strawberry flavour. Maybe if covered by sugar and cream?

Dinner bell visible top left. The dinner trumpet with which it is paired for greater effect seems to have gone missing; but it was present.

I think we did the sponge in the one shift.

After a suitable interval we moved onto dancing water outside (remember the dustbin).

I had not done very well in my warm-up session in the morning, and we took a while to get going in the afternoon. But we got there, and by close of play we had had some good dancing, 66% if not 100%. The bowl had not been used for a while, and even though we were using tepid water, I wonder if the bowl needed a while in the sun to warm up.

It was also a good time to give my own trolley an outing. Just as well to take it out from time to time, one never knows when I might need it again. Bought just about two years ago, as can be seen from reference 6.

Something in the way of cold turkey sandwiches on white that evening, and very good they were too. Cold turkey with all the trimmings the following day. Gravy and porridge morphed into soup the day after that. All good. Plus a bit of grazing on the side.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/fake-200.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/chicken-dinners.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-third-day.html.

Reference 4: Le chat - Georges Simenon - 1967. Presses de la Cité. Have I got a first edition? How does one tell? From the outside, mine looks just like the one turned up by Google above.

Reference 5: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/11/pending.html. A previous outing for the dancing water bowl. Been at it now, off and on, for some years.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/trolleys.html. Seems a long time ago now that I was taking the thing to the Wigmore Hall.

Group search keys: 20260612, 20260613.

Another hot morning

The format during this hot spell has become doing nothing much during the day, certainly nothing much outside the house, which does cause some inconvenience, but to take a walk early in the morning, when it is still pleasantly cool, and another late in the evening (say after 21:00) when it is at least cooling after the heat of the day. We also have a waxing moon, visible quite hight to the south at that time, maybe 66%.

This morning the task was to return the trolley I had collected from the hill end of Parklawn Avenue the evening before to M&S. At least to return it to its front entrance, the shop itself being firmly shut at 06:00.

Shopping trolleys, with their small hard wheels, are designed for the smooth and level floors of the big stores. Pushing them elsewhere, even in the car parks of said stores, can be challenging. Out on the Chase Estate, a lot of the pavements slope, which makes pushing difficult, and there are lots of patches, ditto. The crest of the road, snapped above at the top of Meadway, looking roughly southeast, are level, but can be bumpy, depending on the nature of the surface dressing. One just has to do the best one can. 

That said, I still get a childish pleasure from using the middle of the road, whether I am just walking, pushing or cycling. A pleasure that I was able to indulge on the present occasion.

As I approached the passage under the railway at the bottom of West Hill, a young lady popped out of a side road in M&S livery, presumably heading for the start of her shift at 06:00. And I think I saw a couple of her colleagues headed the same way as I got nearer town. Too far away to even think of trying to hand my trolley over.

A trolley which was followed by another, gathered up from the passage by Viceroy Cars, the freehold of which appears to be for sale. Have they finally succumbed to the arrival of Clocktower Cars?

The only sign of the market to come was the fruit and veg stall. Fully erect, but more or less free of both produce and staff. Maybe these last were visiting McDonald's (of reference 1) for a spot of breakfast. Nothing much else open, although there were signs of life in most of the many cafes.

Through town, up to Kiln Lane, back down Middle Lane and round to Stones Road, where I snagged this fine lily.

Six petals, one whorl of three above the other. Maybe the upper whorl is petals, the lower, subtly different whorl is sepals. Six stamens. Which makes a change from the fives which seem much commoner at the moment. There is talk of sixes for the lily family as a whole in Bentham & Hooker, although I have been a bit baffled by his botanical jargon, glossary at the front notwithstanding.

Zoom also suggested something in three parts at the very centre of the flower, but whether that is something to do with the female part of the flower,a bit of debris or an image processing artefact, I would not like to say.

The Screwfix whitebeam - looking very white indeed in the bright, morning sunlight.

Something going on at Sandie's Flowers, opposite the undertaker in Pound Lane, with scaffolding and skip. A lady whom we use from time to time and does us very well. I remember one occasion when I bought some very showy flowers from her, flowers which I started off by not liking, then flipping over to liking. Has she retired?

Back home I consulted the BH memory bank. She knew what I was talking about, thought it came from South Africa, but could not put a name to it. Turned the pages of the trusty Hessayon to no avail. So tried Gemini with the clue:

A few years ago I went through a phase of buying some showy flowers from our local florist. Bright, deep, topical colours, a single flower a bit like a daisy on the top of a long stem. They came carefully packed in rows, in flat cardboard boxes. Some people floated the decapitated flowers in big flat bowls. A quick look a Hessayon suggests Actotis, Aster and Dimorphotheca: all warm but not quite right. Any ideas?

Which, typos notwithstanding, he converted to a convincing story about gerberas in short order. Fairly sure that that is the right answer. He also turns up a snap of a floating gerbera, but a snap which I am unable to trace to Getty Images. Perhaps he has better access than I do.

Winding up with a reminder of the racing solecism which is the pub sign at TB. 'Blenheim' is the name of a horse which won the Derby in 1930 before going on to a successful career at stud. The problem being that the Derby is a flat race, not over the sticks.

Our fine Costcutter, an hour off opening, behind.

Home to study my fine, single sheet map of India, recently resurfaced. A map from Cartographia, seemingly from Hungary, but more or less invisible on the Internet. Just the odd map from the same series to be had from Amazon or eBay. I thought I had bought my copy from Stanford's, late of Long Acre.

Gemini was able to tell me a long story about Cartographia, at one time, effectively the Hungarian state mapping agency. Heavily subsidised to produce all kinds of splendid maps - and mapping resources - which could be sold to the west for hard currency.

Study of the names of the big cities, most of which have been renamed over the years, put this map to the late 1990s.

I associated to my fine atlas from the Polish army mapping agency, via Permagon and Maxwell.

Whereupon Gemini told me all about all the resources poured into mapping foreign countries in the Soviet era. Part of this was about identifying targets, but I think another part was just eminent cartographers hitching a ride on the defence budget. 

Another part was the Cartographia mapping resource called Cartactual and its companion textual review, Cartinform. For which see reference 4.

Noting that plenty of military mapping must go on over here too, in the UK, the US and no doubt elsewhere. Not to mention the very military name of our state mapping agency, not yet privatised. But Gemini did not respond to hints about all this: had I bumped into one of his guard rails?

It struck me that it was a good example of poor allocation of capital under the Soviet system. Musk does things so much better with his rockets and his ambitions to live on Mars. Also that the Soviets were exporting cheap mapping products in much the same way as the Chinese are now exporting cheap manufactures. As we did before them, a long time ago now.

I associate to a story about the naval mapping people in the west country selling all kinds of fine charts about the South Atlantic, to a chap from the Argentine Embassy, just before the Falklands War.

Sadly, Gemini lost his log of the first part of our chat, but I have now learned that there are at least two parts to this. First, one has the more or less raw transcripts of the chats. Each chat is given a title which reflects, pretty well, where the chat started, but not necessarily where it ended. These chats are listed n a left hand side bar and they can be searched. Second, there is some kind of fact base, your 'Saved Information Profile', which is updated as each chat proceeds. Not the raw transcript, rather a precis of the thing as a whole, presumably linked in some way with his wider knowledge base.

Maybe it is all a bit ad-hoc, with engineers bolting new stuff into to the existing Google user-facing infrastructure as best they can. Which can all get a bit messy over time.

One effect of which is that you can start over and cover the same ground, rather more quickly than you did first time around.

Which is good because the raw transcripts do indeed sometimes goes missing, for very geeky sounding reasons. Best to copy and paste the chat into Notepad if you care. Which I have now learned how to do without fuss.

Things are coming on.

After all of which, it being Thursday, it was time for left-overs fish cakes again. As noticed only yesterday. Didn't manage to turn them very successfully on this occasion, but they ate OK.

Lukewarm oranges not as good as cold ones, but we do not have a very big refrigerator. And anyway, who knows what the right temperature at which to store oranges is?

PS: the snap above is lifted from reference 5, part of the part of the Eastern front held by the Hungarian army in 1942. On the Don River, maybe 100km to the east of where the Russians are fighting today. The same scale and remarkably similar in general appearance to one of our Landranger maps from Ordnance Survey.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/mcdonalds.html. 

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

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blenheim_(horse).

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

Reference 5: Hungarian Military Mapping Abroad 1919–1990 - László Zentai , László Buga, Gábor Gercsák - 2018. 

Group search key: aisk, 20260625.