Lowlights

The highlights of this circuit have already made it to references 1 and 2. This by way of mopping up.

The plan had been for a Screwfix circuit, taking in the Screwfix whitebeam, but this trolley, sitting in the middle of the pavement outside Greggs was too much for me. It just had to be returned, which meant that I went back over the hill and down Meadway. A trolley which had been made at the end of 2024, about average for M&S, whose trolleys seem to be much newer than those from Sainsbury's. Presumably, correspondingly more expensive too.

After dropping of the trolley, I was able to take in this fine hole outside M&S. I think a water hole to complement all our gas holes. What looks like a gas main at one end of the hole.

And an old cast iron water main at the other - patched up with what looks like industrial grade sellotape. Perhaps there was a pin-hole leak amenable to patching in that way - at least for now.

I feel sure that such leaks have cropped un quite recently, but Bing offers lots of stuff, for example reference 4. But would such patches do for mains pressure?

Even less sure what the iron bar in the middle of the snap above was about. It looks to have been set a bit low to be a guide for the bricks above.

More low hanging fruit, otherwise damsons on the Meadway roundabout. We already have more damsons than we need from much nearer home, so I don't suppose I will be going for these ones. I am reminded that we once had our own damson tree down the bottom of the garden, but it was getting too big and I cut it down, years and years ago now. But it continues to sucker to this day.

Going down the hill to Manor Green Road, a vintage Audi, sporting Weber stickers. Weber carburetors being the just thing for sporty motorists when I was little: twin Webers was something that you could boast about. Car check tells me that it is a 1981 Audi 80, so more than forty years old in quite good condition considering. Perhaps the same chap who had another white car in the same spot, a little while ago now, this one in two parts, tractor and trailer as it were, with the trailer having been made by chopping the front of something identical to the trailer. I am sure I noticed this car but it is annoying that I cannot just now put my hand on the notice.

I close, nearer home, with a busy bramble pushing its way up, over and through a substantial hedge in a successful bid for some sunlight. Unpicked by us.

PS 1: I see from reference 3 that a US subsidiary of UBS has been rapped over the knuckles for carelessness - or perhaps studied negligence - over money laundering controls. The tension between wanting clients with pots of money and fussing about where their money might have come from. Which is all well and good, but one does suspect the US administration of being much keener on bashing foreign white collar malefactors than their own, homegrown ones. Plays better in the local media. Not for the first time either.

PS 2: got there in the end by searching the archive. Brute force on the search key 'breaker' turned up reference 5. I had originally failed for two main reasons. First, it was much more recent than I had thought, March this year.; psmv6 rather than psmv5. I even had a cursory look in psmv4. Second, the notice failed to include 'meadway', which I had largely assumed it would have.

There was also the sidelight in that I associated to Romahomes, the subject of the occasional post, and I thought that I may have included that in this notice. Which it did, but I didn't bother to check psmv6 on that one. Not systematic enough.

I think I first came across one in the fine municipal campsite at Amboise, on the Loire. Which Bing tells me today is on an island, which I don't remember. Must consult BH on that point. But I do remember that at some other point we had a plague of some kind of flying insects, with the pavements near the river being carpeted with their husks, their dead bodies.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-missing-tree-of-meadway.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/girth-of-oak.html.

Reference 3: UBS fined $125mn over lax money laundering controls: Swiss bank failed to implement adequate curbs despite previous sanction by US regulators - Ortenca Aliaj, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 4: https://www.nuflowmidwest.com/how-to-fix-pinhole-leaks-and-lower-your-water-bills/.

Reference 5: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/no40.html.

Reference 6: https://www.camping-amboise.com/.

Group search key: 20260728.