A circuit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Screwfix whitebeam.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Group search key: 20260608.