Alder?

After the morning trip to the pond noticed at reference 1, back again in the afternoon, to find that the algae, after a day in the sun, had put out its bright green sheen again.

While the water was creeping up to the top of the spillway.

And then there was the matter of the small tree, growing out of the bank, sporting lots of small fruits. Was it an alder - a tree I associate with bogs and fens, this without being at all familiar with it.

Google Images is happy to agree with me. Common alder (Alnus glutinosa), to be found at reference 2.

The distinctive fruits - a sort of cross between a pine cone and an acorn - turn out to be the female fruits, while I had not noticed the cylindrical male catkins, waiting for next spring. The leaves, some with serrated edges, look about right.

A solitary bullrush on the exit channel.

PS 1: the FT is clearly on a roll with this chicken business. Having noticed one piece at reference 1, there is another one today at reference 3 - and I think that there are more.

I learn that most of the chickens we eat are between 30 and 40 days old, so not much of a life. And that a small number of breeds - say three or four - account for an awful lot of them.

The piece also talks of broiler chickens in broiler houses, which prompted BH to wonder where the word came from. The lazy way forward was to ask Gemini, who, for once, got into a bit of a muddle with layout and input-output, but who did give me the answer.

It seems that one use of the word 'broiler' started with chicken farmers, to whom it means young chickens suitable for fast cooking by direct heat, what we would call frying or grilling. Roasters are slightly older birds, and boilers even older, usually retired egg layers. Presumably the cock of 'coq-au-vin' was originally a retired farm yard cockerel. The term then generalised to chickens mass produced in big sheds generally.

Then in the US, cooks distinguish grilling, with heat below, as in most barbecues, from broiling, with heat above, as in most indoor cookers. Next stop Websters and OED.

PS 2: I have now consulted both OED - where broil gets near a page - and Websters. And had a further interchange with Gemini.

Broiling was indeed hot cooking of any sort. Roasting was a bit cooler and more controlled, in an oven. Boiling was cooler still, in boiling water, in a pot. But in current US usage, grilling is usually outdoors and broiling indoors.

OED goes into the other meanings of broil - as in brawl, embroil and imbroglio. Which, as Gemini explains in the snap above, arises from the conflation of two quite different French words brûler and brouiller.

He even closes with a joke. A bit Pooterish, but a joke nonetheless.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/more-water.html.

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

Reference 3: Norway vs the world’s favourite chicken: Billions of meals each year are made from the fast-growing Ross 308 genetic strain of birds. But a backlash is gathering pace - Richard Milne, Susannah Savage, Ian Bott, Financial Times - 2026. 

Group search key: 20260826.

Cheese

This to notice another foray into town to replenish cheese stocks, the heat wave having broken, so making travel possible again.

We parked at the Eclipse as there was a slot there, this being mid-morning on a Tuesday. And £8.40 for the day seemed very reasonable. Of which, I think the 40p was a surcharge for RingGo, which seems fair enough for the convenience.

To pick up the striking, ripening pods on what I remember as one of the Indian bean trees on Station Approach. Quite wrongly according to Google Images, who says honey locust tree (Gleditsia triacanthos), from North America, where, according to Wikipedia, it can grow to 20-30m in height. I wonder if that is the idea here?

I had confused it with another tree, on the other side of town, noticed, for example, at reference 2. Not good, in that I pass all these trees quite often. I ought to know the difference by now.

Out at London Bridge to come across this building, which looked as if it had a bit of history. Had it once said the something hotel across the white panel at the top?

A little time with Bing and gmaps, tells me that it is the Tooley Street front of the London Bridge Hospital, part of the HCA family. Once a warehouse, tidied up a bit for present purposes. See references 3 and 4.

A conversation with Gemini established that this was very much a commercial area once, most recently part of the Hays empire. After the river traffic moved downstream, it was more or less derelict for a bit, then the hospital people moved in and bought up great chunks of it to make what it now the London Bridge Hospital. Maybe they pinch (aka swap, aka share) staff with the nearby Guy's.

In any event another bit of London with plenty of history; good grub for a history walk.

A bit further on, we came across this tablet memorialising Oddbins, an off-license I rather liked, with the staff generally taking a bit of trouble. Quite a few of them seemed to be going in for fancy wine qualifications. I associate to the fleeting mention at reference 5, probably having conflated the two chains in the memory.

The building off snap to the left having last been noticed at reference 6, getting on for two years ago now. Quite the heritage building, so something else the leader of a history walk could make something of.

Bought my ration of Lincolnshire Poacher. and the market area being rather crowded, we decided to pass on a visit to Southwark Cathedral and opted to walk at least part of the way to Waterloo.

With the first item of interest being this fairly new and expensive looking conversion in Redcross Way, noticed in the these pages from time to time and very much the arty job you might come across in the back streets of Cambridge. But we failed to find a front door and decided that the grey panels were actually an arty version of the hoarding used to protect unoccupied buildings. First noticed four years ago at reference 7. Has it been unoccupied ever since? What is going on?

Spot of street art opposite.

I took a seat in a pleasant open space outside M&S while BH got herself a spot of coffee flavoured with oats. I wondered why the provision of litter bins was so poor, for an area clearly much used for taking snacks. I may have even taken a pre-Globe snack there myself. After a while I found a large bin hiding in plain sight.

On the lookout for lunch, we landed on the gaudily decorated Refinery, a branch of the Drake & Morgan chain, itself mainly owned by Bowmark. The first time we had come across this particular crowd, but by the time we left, we decided an upscale version of the All Bar One formula (the people who do the excellent toast in Regent Street), but very much at the same price point.

BH eying my glass of wine rather suspiciously. One of the cute little clothes pegs they use can be seen to the right.

The quite decent bread - even if it was sour dough - perhaps the toasting took the sourness off - came with a huge supply of fats. But they did have the wit not to top it up when I called for some more bread.

I thought I was getting smoked haddock with rice on the side, but it turned out to be rice with haddock on the side, or rather on top. BH explained that this had been clear to her all along; she had gone for a veggie bowl with chicken on top. But it was all fine - and got me going again on rice dishes of this sort again - either of the Spanish (paella) or the Italian (risotto) variety. Maybe even the Indian (biryani) variety, at which I have failed miserably in the past, only managing a sort of savoury rice pudding. Of which more in due course.

And it was a lot more filling than it might look.

A novelty was that, instead of the traditional bill fold, the bill can inside an elderly book, the sort of thing used for décor in places like the late-lamented Bugle in Brading on the Isle of Wight. Or Wetherspoons.

It seems, some sort of cookery book for housewives, not a steamy yarn about housewives. Bing knows all about it and you can pay quite a bit if you are so minded.

There was a ready basket of such books in a basket outside, including the County book for Essex, a brand we had first come across in the aforementioned Bugle in Brading.

A large modern space, with pleasant service and enough custom to bring the place to life. We shall no doubt visit again should we be in the area at the right time.

A bonus was a very large young man sitting outside with absolutely enormous muscles to the lower part of his upper arms, whatever they might be called. He spent the entire time we were there gazing intently at his telephone, propped up in front of him, with some kind of gizmo fixed to the top of it. Looked a bit like some kind of camera - but don't most telephones have them built in? Maybe the fact that a gym called Muscleworks was just across the way was a clue.

The website at reference 11 today certainly fits with the young man we saw. Very go ahead place with lots of machines, a shop and they do do franchise. No mention of a cafeteria but no doubt there is something. Are they going to push CrossFit off their perch here in Epsom? We certainly have plenty of very muscly looking young men and women wandering about the Marquis end of town.

The florid display outside. One assumes fake these days and I am sure we would have looked on the day, but I can't remember the answer now.

On our way west. The red brick building might be the testing musey=um, finding which is left as an exercise for the reader.

We got as far as the rail bridge at Blackfriars where we opted for a No.381 bus. While we were waiting, I wondered who, apart from heritage operators, would bother with cutting bricks in in this way, these days.

All that was left of the footbridge over York Road at Waterloo. A bridge I used to use every day for some years when I was in the world of work, before I transferred from Waterloo to Vauxhall to give me a slightly longer walk from the station. Very convenient it was too. I suppose it was overwhelmed by the wave of high rise development along the Battersea-Vauxhall-Waterloo stretch of river.

Inside the station, I was pleased to find that there was a water point where I could refill my water bottle. On the other hand, the bar above platform 1, which used, I think, to be called 'Le Cabin' and which once sold excellent bacon and egg rolls, and which has newly reopened after being shut for quite a while, looked very quiet. Will they make a go of it?

It turned out that memory was defective to the extent that it was bacon and egg sandwich, not bacon and egg roll. BH took something rather healthier sounding. See the ten year old reference 17.

A stopover at Raynes Park, where the platform library was very nearly empty, apart from magazines - which still failed to include any numbers of the once entertaining 'Drinks Business'. I suppose the chap who deposited them must have moved on. But I did pick up a nearly new copy of reference 12. Not from the Bash-the-Brits school of history from across the pond, rather a home grown variety: nonetheless, an interesting read about the rather chaotic - and sometimes catastrophic - business that was British India. Presently about a third of the way through. It would probably have been improved for me by being a little shorter than its 550 pages of rather small print.

The day closed with a small blue car in Waterloo Road sporting a No.42 registration plate. Not paying enough attention to know now whether it was the same car previously noticed at reference 13. It might have been.

PS 1: I have now consulted with BH about the floral display. She pointed out that there were at least some real flowers in pots inside. Regarding outside, she thought perhaps an artful composition mixing both real and fake. It would have been interesting to have been able to take the view of a former correspondent who was also a fine arranger of flowers. I don't remember her as having had anything to say about fake and I don't remember her as every having used fake herself: bits of interesting dead wood yes, fake plants and flowers, no.

PS 2: home, I also thought to snap (rather badly) the plant last noticed at reference 14. Not a great deal of progress since then, but perhaps now we have had a little rain there will be some progress.

The image zoomed much better than I expected, bringing out well the branching structure of the stem.

And Google Images sticks to his guns. Watch this space!

PS 3: the Navy thought that the Marines might suit this morning. Lots of glossy images. A correspondent did explain to me a few years back that the RAF at least was getting much more relaxed about seniors - but surely not the Senior Service...

[There is even a Wallbridge River - or at least a 'ruisseau']

PS 4: I exit this post to look over the Sunday Magazine piece at reference 15. An interesting take on the sort of US that I have never got to see at first hand: I think that the nearest I got was visiting Mystic in Quebec as a child - with the connection being that my mother had met some Wallbridges in her time at McGill. For whom, see reference 16. Far too young to take in the politics of the place, but I do remember that my skill with outdoor fires and fireplaces (mud made) stood me in good stead with the corn on the cob.

References

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

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/chops.html.

Reference 3: https://www.hcahealthcare.co.uk/locations/hospitals/london-bridge-hospital.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1861_Tooley_Street_fire.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/hafod.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-bent-crane.html.

Reference 7: Dear Housewives - Doris Grant - 1956. Faber & Faber

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/tate-trimmed-cheese.html.

Reference 8: https://www.drakeandmorgan.co.uk/the-refinery-bankside/.

Reference 9: https://www.drakeandmorgan.co.uk/.

Reference 10: https://www.bowmark.com/. Now holds a controlling interest, although the founder of the chain retains an interest.

Reference 11: https://muscleworksgym.co.uk/. Appears to be a home-grown outfit, rather than an import from across the pond.

Reference 12: India conquered: Britain’s Raj and the chaos of empire – Jon Wilson – 2016.

Reference 13: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/no42.html.

Reference 14: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/identification.html.

Reference 15: What the Indiana state fair reveals about Trump’s America: Will the most ornery state in the conservative Midwest finally reject his politics - Rana Foroohar, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 16: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_(Qu%C3%A9bec).

Reference 17: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/02/master-builder.html.

The gas man is coming

All the JDT activity on our estate has now resulted in a postcard through the door, to the effect that the gas man is coming soon.

The information on the postcard did not cut it, so I tried asking Bing about these matters. This turned up some useful pictures of what was likely to be involved and reference 1. But these were still not enough.

So I had a conversation with Gemini, starting with the question: 'The gas riser to our gas meter is inside our house, in a cupboard underneath the stairs. What might JDT (acting for SGN) need to do to connect our existing meter to a new supply in the road outside' - which quickly gave me what I needed to know. Hopefully they can shove a new yellow plastic pipe through the old iron pipe, with minimal disturbance, but maybe not. It all depends.

I learn along the way that building regulations now require meters to be outside dwellings, not deep inside them, as was the custom when our estate was built, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s. In the case of 'maybe not', the best solution might turn out to be to move the meter.

Once again, Gemini was probably not word perfect, but he met the current need without fuss - and with a good deal less bother than seemed to be involved without him.

PS 1: plenty of JDT on file, as it were. See, for example, reference 2.

PS 2: it is a good job that they are doing this work in the summer and that we do not have a gas cooker. Much more of a pain otherwise.

References

Reference 1: https://www.sgn.co.uk/riser.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/gas-works.html.

Group search key: aigoodsk.

A curiosity of intelligence

[An Election Entertainment (c. 1755), a painting by William Hogarth, set during the election controversy which followed the change. See reference 5]

That is to say, the intelligence of the artificial variety.

For reasons which I shall go into fully in due course, I was wondering how much it would take to disturb the orderly procession of days, with Monday following Sunday, and so on, ad infinitum. I then remembered that there had been a lot of fuss about losing some days in the middle of the eighteenth century, an early example of our falling in with European practise, our fat leader and our thin wannabee leader not having been invented. Did that involve messing around with the days of the week?

To save time, I asked Gemini and the answer, snapped above, was a clear no. But what was odd was the two sources he gave, references 1 and 2.

Reference 1 appears to be from a Newcastle University website and is primarily about an old burial ground in Newcastle. The connection being possible confusion arising from the dates on memorials from 1750 and 1751. It looks to be perfectly respectable, if an odd place to be digging up general knowledge.

Reference 2 appears to be a hotel booking site masquerading as a history website. Very badly infested with rather intrusive and ugly advertisements.

What was wrong with Wikipedia at reference 5, or the legislative archive - for the truly nosey - at reference 6? 

My first thought that this was a weakness, that Gemini should not be relying on such odd sources, unknown to the average punter. But now I am not so sure. The fact that, with his help, I was easily able to turn up more regular sources which agreed with his two sources, made the edifice as a whole pretty solid. Reference 1 had got it right: 'People famously went to bed Wednesday, 2 September, and awoke the following morning on Thursday, 14 September.'. The procession of days was undisturbed.

But, as Wikipedia explains, plenty of other things were disturbed. The lawyers, as ever, did well out of it.

PS 1: one of the things that was disturbed was Michaelmas Day, an important day in the agricultural year, aka my birthday. The cheek of it.

PS 2: in the margins, MSN and the Independent between them tell me that our new leader has moved to a neutral stance for the purposes of the renewed debate on assisted dying. 

Which is something. But it continues to amaze me that, as a country, we have so much difficulty with what to me is an elementary bit of social and welfare reform. Whatever is the matter with us? But for a more careful view, see reference 7.

PS 3: a little later I had a supplementary for Gemini about the days of the week in China - which is a big place and not very Christian at all. It seems that in the olden days, their lunar months were divided into three ten day periods, corresponding functionally more or less to our weeks. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, they switched over to our solar calendar with its seven day weeks. Perhaps being the same as the Christian world had its points, was convenient. But it is all dressed up a bit in Chinese clothes, for which see reference 8.

From a further supplementary, I learned that what I had thought was our Biblical week was just a gloss on a pre-existing Middle Eastern astrological week built around the solar system. The key term being 'Babylonian/Hellenistic planetary week'.

Maybe Reaktion books of reference 9 do, or should do, one about all this sort of thing. We shall see if they respond to my suggestion.

References

Reference 1: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/ballast-hills/2025/07/15/why-the-calendar-changed-in-1752-and-why-it-matters.

Reference 2: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Give-us-our-eleven-days/.

Reference 3: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/ballast-hills/.

Reference 4: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750.

Reference 6: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo2/24/23/introduction.

Reference 7: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/. I now have a nice little lapel badge with which I can advertise my newly minted life membership.

Reference 8: https://www.cjvlang.com/Dow/official.html.

Reference 9: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/.

Reference 10: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-disappointment.html. The first notice for Reaktion Books in these pages.

Group search key: aisk.

Irritation

I was rather irritated this morning by a piece in yesterday's Guardian - page 15 of the print edition about children in care, in which there was a rather loud box saying that there were 400,000 children in social care in England, of which 84,000 were being looked after by local authorities.

400,000 seemed rather a lot given that I thought that the population of the UK was of the order of 70m people, quite a lot more than when I had to do with such things back in the early 1970s. But I thought I had better check, to get the unsolicited offering from Copilot snapped above. This was rather alarming, so I thought I had better check properly, and got myself to reference 2, from which I learn that my original thought was about right. But 400,000 is still a lot of children.

Digging into that took me to reference 1, where it turned out that the 400,000 figure was right enough, but that the gloss was misleading, to say the least of it.

Roughly speaking, a child is anyone up to the age of 18 - but may include the unborn and may include young people older than 18. Again, roughly speaking, you score if you are in need of support of some kind from your local authority - and around 3% of our children do so score.

There is some confusion at the edges between children in need at any point in time, episodes of need during some period and referrals during some period.

But having some need for support is rather badly glossed by being 'in social care'.

Fortunately, there is plenty of rather better information at reference 1, from which the snap above is taken.

None of this should be taken as disturbing the truth that the system for looking after very needy children looks to be in need of repair. And it is not at all clear that contracting out large chunks of it to the private sector has been very successful - and it is certainly very expensive.

References

Reference 1: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-in-need/2025.

Reference 2: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/provisionalpopulationestimatefortheuk/mid2025.

Group search key: aibadsk.

The pond before

A snap of Stamford Green Pond, after the most recent heat wave broke, but before the last puddles dried up. Say ten days ago. Looks quite watery from this angle.

But a bit more mud showing in this one. The white to the left of the bin being the front wall of the 'Cricketers'.

On into town to gather up a stray trolley from M&S. No.1242, from July 2025.

Scaffolding up the fairly new build block which has wrapped up Epsom Station. Something that seems to happen fairly often, which makes one wonder about the quality of the new build's builder.

And under the arches to catch some big arches. Notice the pink goo oozing out top and bottom. I might say that the bun looks a lot more attractive on this poster than the one at reference 1 did in real life - but then, it was rather early in the morning. 

I was rather surprised to find that my visit was three months ago. I would have guessed one; yet another example of how my sense of time is deteriorating.

I might also say that it is a long time since I have been hungry enough to want to eat such a large burger - although I was quite fond of the bacon and egg rolls supplied by the Laing's cafeteria on their Westway project, back in the late 1960s. Without, I should say, any kind of goo, pink or otherwise.

The line at the very bottom of the poster smelt of franchise to me, on which Copilot offered the snap above. A business which requires a good wad of cash for buying in. Which also reminded me of reading somewhere that McDonald's is more a real estate company these days than a fast food operation. And I read in the chicken article noticed at the end of reference 2, that chicken is now bigger for McDonald's than beef, poster notwithstanding.

Home via Court Recreation Ground, where the black smudge in the middle caught my eye.

I zoomed in on the smudge and offered the result to Google Images, who I thought did rather well. Good enough for me, anyway! Maybe he gets lots of questions about this sort of thing.

A rather different sort of park life. The stuff that goes on when all us pensioners are tucked up indoors.

PS 1: the upstairs and downstairs thermometers recorded 79°F and 73°F this morning. Which seems rather a lot, but, to be fair, it did seem pretty warm in town this afternoon.

PS 2: the pond this morning. Some fresh water this time, not just water seeping through from some leak. Not far off the level when it will start washing over the little wall, off snap below, and into the stream running down Manor Green Road to Longmead.

Later on, into town for some white rolls to go with some left over mushrooms, left over, in fact, from the soup noticed at the end of reference 2. Mushrooms not the same on brown, be it ever so home made.

The café at the western entrance to the Ashley Centre used to be in two parts, but the inside part has now been closed by the new owners, who are concentrating on the outside part. I was rather struck by the amount of catering equipment left behind, with lots of stainless steel. Presumably it will go to auction and fetch a fraction of what it cost to put in.

While on the subject of mushrooms, Gemini offered the snap above. I rather liked the line that it might not be soap left over from the washing up, rather alkali which reacts with the fats in the butter to make fresh soap!

As it happens, we don't have a dishwasher, but I had used a wooden spatula. 

PS 3: I am starting to feel a bit uneasy about my share of all the global warming being generated by all the data centres fuelling all this AI - although I dare say businesses with more serious requirements than mine are much more serious offenders. I shall ponder - but whether I do anything about it is another matter.

References

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

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/more-water.html.

Group search key: 20260817, 20260827.

More water

I thought that, Thames Water's report notwithstanding, that there was more water in Stamford Green Pond this morning than there had been yesterday, not that the water looked very inviting at all.

And the plug, sluice or whatever, noticed a fortnight ago at reference 2, was no longer visible.

And a passer-by was in no doubt at all. I was all those burst mains in and around Stamford Green Road and Parklawn Avenue. Leaks all over the place. Which is all very well, but it does not fully explain why the water only appeared yesterday.

Furthermore, there was a fine leak, bubbling up through the brick paving outside the Marquis, on the High Street. And a bit later on, two more leaks in Manor Green Road, one attended by a van, if not by action.

And in between, the parching of Court Recreation Ground continues. The tall lime tree, noticed at reference 3, is visible left. But I was rather taken aback at reference 3 by how green the Recreation Ground looked just a couple of months back.

It being a Wednesday, a day for DIY or lunch out. I opted for DIY, using up some stock from a chicken to be reported on in due course. The stock having been made previously, about half an hour's preparation.

Stock slightly more gelatinous than usual, possibly because the mix included a dried out, discarded head of maize, which might have contributed some starch. Cook a few potatoes in the stock.

Cook a large onion and a few rashers in a little butter, until the onions were starting to go brown.

Add onion, bacon and an elderly leek to the mix. Add some mushrooms.

It all did very well.

Maybe I will take in the summer padding piece at reference 4, before I return to the chicken proper. A piece which comes with a good sprinkling of the fancy graphics that the FT is keen on; sometimes too fancy for their own good.

To think that chicken was an occasional luxury when I was a child, and what my mother disparagingly called 'broiler chickens' were only just being invented. I also remember that when I came to buying such chickens on my own account, they had a pronounced tendency to taste of fish, a problem which they seem to have overcome.

On the other hand, the (cheap) boiling chickens that we used to buy in Harringay Green Lanes seem to have vanished. And I dare say that the egg shop there went long ago; a regular sized shop selling nothing but eggs, from custom built, tiered, brown wood display shelving.

PS: a 'Beryl' bowl from the Woods Ware range is visible above. Once the staple of all kinds of institutions, it has done us very well - rather better than our various forays into fancier brands. Car boot sales forever!

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/there-be-water-in-pond.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/two-short-circuits.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/tall-tree.html.

Reference 4: How chicken conquered the world: A global surge in poultry numbers is transforming high streets, diets and landscapes. Is the chicken takeover unstoppable? - Susannah Savage, Amy Borrett, Janina Conboye, Financial Times - 2026.

Group search key: 20260826.