Fake 204

Not long ago, I had occasion to notice the fine white bloomers to be had at the large Tesco's, south of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

We also bought cheese there, which was not so successful: Tesco's finest vintage cheddar. The Tesco response to the 'Taste the difference' come-on from Sainsbury's.

This particular cheese came fairly loosely wrapped in a version of the paper used by the likes of Neal's Yard Dairy, a sort of cross between the greaseproof and waxed kitchen papers of old. All very artisanal and cheesemonger. But inside this first wrapping was a second, clear plastic, shrink wrapping, the sort that needed a sharp pointed pair of scissors to remove.

A perfectly ordinary shrink wrapped piece of perfectly ordinary cheese.

Curiously, when I thought to save myself the bother of snapping the wrapper by going to the Tesco's website, I find that there, they don't bother with this fancy wrapping and just shrink wrap.

Moving on, the other day, in connection with the deer of the islands of Wight and Eire, I had occasion to notice the book at reference 2.

I was pleased, yesterday evening (Wednesday), taking a look at the history of roe deer in Ireland, to find that the Lissadell estate was prominent in that history, a place which had cropped up only a few months ago and noticed at reference 3. The one-time name of our very own house.

I am getting the idea that the history of deer in this part of the world - Great Britain and Ireland that is - is very much tied up with the hunting of the gentry and their deer parks. Parks which sometimes served to ornament, sometimes to provide  a pool of deer for the hunters. Lissadell was a big house in County Sligo which ran to a park for roe deer, a  park which had been stocked from Scotland.

I have not yet sorted out the bigger picture, with there being some debate about whether there were roe deer in Ireland before the Normans turned up, early in the second millennium. But it seems that there were few if any left by the start of the nineteenth century. Driven to extinction by hunters who killed them and farmers who took their land.

PS 1: BH has finally tired of the rather 'Professor Branestawm' contrivances of her rotary washing line, as noticed near fifteen years ago at references 4 and 5. And possibly more recently. A new project has been kicked off and there will be further report in due course. Will there be a role for the people at reference 6, not previously heard of?

PS 2: later: search of the archive has now turned up references 8 and 9. The first is a curiosity from the Isle of Wight, but the second reveals another washing line campaign just three years ago. Not too clever in that the line from Wilko turned out to stretch badly, and it has been sagging in a tiresome way for most of the time since.

Seems odd now that the wire cored line should have snapped, but that is what the record says.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/fake-203.html.

Reference 2: The Deer of Great Britain and Ireland: An Account of Their History, Status and Distribution - Whitehead GK - 1964.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/title.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/01/hampton-court.html.

Reference 5: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/02/horticultural-day.html.

Reference 6: https://www.leifheit.com/en-en/.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/more-cello.html. The last mention of Branestawm.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-familiar-object.html. 

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/washing-line-day-three.html.

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