The first short circuit

The worst of the latest heat wave seemingly over, I am attempting to resume circuit training, starting with short circuits, starting on the morning of Saturday. And it is proving a bit harder to get back into the swing of things than I had expected.

At half past seven, it looked as if someone had already been feeding the birds on the grass to the right of Stamford Green Pond in the snap above, with there being a lot more of them there than paddling around on the mud. And a lot of them were pigeons anyway.

The mud itself.

More mud. Carex pendula below left, oak tree above right and the 'Cricketers' public house the other side of the mud. I remember being told in the other public house, the 'Coopers', many years ago now, that the lower of the two rooms visible here, then used for storage, used to flood regularly. The Coopers being a place that had a real fire blasting out the heat in the public bar before the present foodies moved in and moved it on.

I associate this afternoon, to the mud of the pond at Old Malden, snapped in more normal times at reference 1.

I took the southern side of the road up West Hill, for a change, and so picked up this new-to-me plant which looked as if it was thriving in the heat. I want one!

Google Images (GI) says 'a Phormium cookianum 'Tricolor' (commonly known as Mountain Flax), a striking evergreen perennial characterized by its arching, sword-like green and white striped leaves with subtle red margins'. But he changes tack slightly when I complain about the absence of red margins - both on my snap and the ones that he turns up. We now have 'a Phormium 'Duet', which is a dwarf variety of New Zealand Flax. Unlike the 'Tricolor' variety, 'Duet' is strictly bi-colored, featuring clean cream-to-yellow margins against a green center with absolutely no red or pink pigmentation'.

But it is a close relative, so I dare say the gardening tips are sound enough. The one I noticed being that the north facing position is not ideal for this sun loving plant. Even though this one looks a lot healthier than some of its neighbours.

And he assumes that the snap came from my garden, although all I said was a north facing garden on West Hill. The associated flowers reminded me of the strelitzia of the Canary Islands, but he assures me no relation. Rather an example of convergent evolution, to do with needing a sturdy platform for bird pollination.

The Wikipedia story is to be found at reference 2 and I think that the identification is sound enough.

Another niche brand, muscling into the SUV market, this time Lotus. But a corresponend explained that this is all to do with famous brands, such as this one, going through a rocky patch and getting snapped up by foreigners. In this case, the majority shareholder is now a Chinese company, with a Malaysian company in second position, who maybe want to get some of their money back by levering the famous brand name. See reference 3. Previously noticed at reference 4, just about a year ago, in the middle of the dash for the finish of the trolley race.

Still looks pretty smart. Clearly a careful owner.

Next up the alleged cork oak of Clay Hill Green, last noticed at reference 5 - which I was surprised this evening to find that it was more than three months ago. Time continues to fly. 

The tree ought to be doing OK, given that they are more usually grown in much hotter places. Being a touch evergreen probably helps.

A close up of a twig, complete with what look like a small number of immature acorns.

A better shot of the acorns.

And zoom was more helpful than I was expecting. Although confusing in the sense that the immature acorns, maybe just a couple of millimetres in diameter, did not exhibit the distinctive pear shape of the mature acorns, to be seen, for example, at reference 6.

I had a conversation with GI about the second shot, not the zoom, in particular about the acorns. He remains convinced that it is a cork oak and I agree with him - but I shall keep any eye on the acorns - their small number being consistent with the small size of the presumably immature tree.

One wonders how much difference it makes giving GI a zoom makes. In theory, he has the whole image anyway and can do a zoom for himself if he wants one. He does, after all, quite often visibly clip the image to be clear about the object of interest. But then again, maybe once the GI front-end has extracted what it thinks is the relevant bit of image, perhaps converting it to some standard, possibly private format, and passed it to the back-end, that is it. He doesn't take a second bite at that cherry.

And so home to breakfast.

PS 1: I am reminded that I did not get very far with the article about gmaps that I downloaded. Must turn it up again.

From where, I associate to a wise remark from a senior civil servant with whom I used to work. To the effect that the way to deal with the civil service unions - a bit troublesome at the time - was to flood them with information rather than to starve them. Then they got indigestion, rather than one more thing to complain about.

Trouble, which I might say, as a lefty, I always felt a bit ambivalent about. I mostly felt that I was pretty well paid for what I did and did not have much to complain about. But then, what about the younger, more junior grades, not on such a good screw? What about a spot of solidarity?

PS 2: continuing to use the touch pad rather than the mouse, I am much more conscious of the difference between the current position of cursor on the screen (the I-bar) and the last marked position (the flashing vertical bar), with Windows sometimes working off the one, sometimes off the other. I  suppose the difference is that the former seems much more inclined to wander about, without one intending it to. It seems much easier to stroke the touch pad inadvertently than to move the mouse.

In the olden days, when one was using a teletype machine, you only had the position of the print head over the paper to worry about, and that largely looked after itself. And these things did not change that much when one moved up to green on black screens. Maybe I have failed to move on!

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/worcester-park.html.

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

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Cars.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/09/trolleys-968-969-970-and-971.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/cork-oak-acorns.html.

Reference 6: https://www.treeguideuk.co.uk/oaks/. More on acorns - but not as much as Google Images trots out, which I have preserved for posterity.

Reference 7: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/riverford-farm-kitchen.html.

Group search key: 20260815.