Hake cakes

Of late, I have been noticing the manufacture and consumption of fish cakes made from left-overs, most recently at reference 1.

Yesterday they came around again, with the difference that the fish used was hake rather than cod or haddock, the price of hake in Sainsbury's yesterday being around half that of more or less comparable cod. I remember hake as have a rather fishy taste about it - rather an odd way to describe cooked fish, but it is the best I can do - but on this occasion, it was fine, as were the fish cakes that followed this morning. Only varied by the addition of some left-over peas (frozen) and carrots (fresh) after the initial stir of the fish and potato.

White bread from Waitrose, one of their basic small tin loaves, rather than one of their boules, unavailable yesterday, adequate rather than good. Bought due to a gap in the baking timetable.

Over hake cakes, I tried to make sense of reference 2, the starting point of which is the arrangement whereby a lot of wind generated electricity is paid for according to the prevailing price of gas - that is to say when the windmills are not turned off due to a lack of transmission capacity. With the price of gas presently spiking. And while one may be lucky enough to have a fixed price contract for the stuff, as a country we do not have much in the way of storage capacity. Nothing much to soak up the spikes. All a bit of a mess really.

But I failed to get to the bottom of reference 2, even with the help of Wikipedia for things like 'contract for difference' and 'renewables obligation' and abandoned the attempt. I shall have to rest content with the need to make things attractive enough for investors to be attracted to building windmills. With another tricky bit of policy being deciding how to split the costs between the general taxpayer and the consumers of power. Best to leave it to the wonks and hope for the best.

Then, while we are on electricity, we noticed this morning a red flashing light on our smart electricity meter, not something that we had noticed before.

Was this something that we should be worrying about? Should we phone up EDF, long performance on the telephone notwithstanding? In the event, I asked Gemini, the first time that I have asked him something that might be important.

The start of this short interchange is snapped above, and I came away entirely satisfied. He told me what I wanted to hear in a convincing way and, on this occasion, I shall leave it at that.

I dare say, if I had thought of it, I could have read the little leaflet that probably came with the gadget which came with the meter and which lives in some drawer - a meter installed by a lady electrician from Romania as it happens - but this was much quicker. The gadget remains in its drawer, the location of which is probably known to BH.

In fairness, I should add that I was reassured by his saying that: 'On most Aclara meters, you will see text near the light that says 1000 imp/kWh'. It does indeed.

I might also add that Gemini is quite good a dragging the conversation out: one can see how this kind of thing might be addictive and might inhibit healthy growth in a child or young adult. At least I am too old for that to be a serious problem.

PS: in the margins of all this, Microsoft and the Mirror between them, bring me the news that Denby -  the famous pottery people - have gone under and that resurfacing looks unlikely. Energy costs being just one of their problems. Maybe our various bits of their pottery will become collectors' items, apt to fetch useful sums at car boot sales?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/more-fish-cakes.html.

Reference 2: Milliband's 'break the link'' plan is not a magic formula for lowering Britain's energy bills - Nils Pratley, Guardian - 2026.

Spottiswoode

Waking up this morning, I was fussing about the Spottiswoodes, the publisher of the Buxton memoirs of reference 1 being Spottiswoode & Shaw and with my being familiar with Eyre & Spottiswoode, probably owning various books by same.

I now find that Eyre & Spottiswoode were absorbed into Methuen, while Methuen seems to have decomposed with some of it winding up in what is now Penguin Random House. As bad as trying to trace the ancestry of people, but curious readers can go to refrences 2, 3 and 4 - in which last I can find no relevant trace of either Eyre or Spottiswoode.

In any case, a red herring, as along the way I light upon reference 5, available from the Internet Archive, having been digitised from a copy presented to the Library of the University of Toronto. Toronto seems to be big in the world of digitisation as I come across them quite often.

This seems to be the right company, with a Shaw having been a partner in the company - a company with an illustrious history - from 1848 to 1853. With the book of present interest having been published in 1848. The Shaw connection did not, however, survive.

A lot of these partners had their portraits painted by painters of whom I had heard, with the portraits being reproduced in the story. A reminder of the bread and butter work that many painters took on to put the bread and butter on their tables. While others were more ambitious and went in for boiling up stews in pots on the stove.

Then the previous evening (Wednesday), I had been puzzled by the use of the word 'franking' on page 125 of the memoirs themselves. The end of the sentence involved reading '... I should soon be disqualified for franking'. This in connection with Buxton's growing involvement in the slavery question.

Webster's, which lives upstairs, was not much help, but this morning I get to going downstairs for OED. Where I find much longer and more complicated entries for the various uses of 'frank' and its parts. Starting with the ethnic Franks who were free, as opposed to the ethnic Slavs who were not. A bit further on we have the entry about franking letters, the link being that franking secured free passage. In between we have another verb frank, about fattening up animals and by extension to feed greedily. OED only gives a couple of inches to this one, but current thinking is that this is the sense in which Buxton was using the word. Feeding greedily on his country pastimes in Cromer rather than attending to the work of the Lord in London. Maybe with a subconscious connection to the freedom and slavery which were part of that work? 

And that will have to do for now.

PS 1: somewhere along the way, I learned that during the 19th century, sensitive young ladies sometimes made a bit of a parade of not using sugar on account of its then disgraceful provenance. A bit like those late 20th century ladies who made a bit of a parade of not wearing fur. 

PS 2: do the leading Slavs of today, that is to say the Russian ruling classes, harbour some obscure, unconscious chip on their shoulder on account of the servile flavour of their race name?

PS 3: a casual search of the bookcases initially revealed many long gone publishers, but nothing from Eyre & Spottiswoode. I had expected more. But then I lighted upon reference 6, something of a coincidence given that, spinning off from reference 7, I am presently taking another interest in the author. 

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/more-buxton.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_%26_Spottiswoode.

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

Reference 4: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/.

Reference 5: The story of a printing house, being a short account of the Strahans and Spottiswoodes - Spottiswoode & Co. Ltd. - 1912.

Reference 6: The elementary structures of kinship - Lévi-Strauss - 1949. My copy from the 1969 edition from Eyre & Spottiswoode. Translated by J. H. Bell and J. R. von Sturmer. Edited by R. Needham. Signed by the then director of the London School of Economics, one Walter Adams, to be found at reference 8 below.

Reference 7: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/more-clans-and-marriages.html.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Adams_(historian).

More Buxton

Continuing my investigations of Sir Thomas Buxton, eighteenth century brewer, philanthropist and politician, discovered in the course of a recent visit to Wisley, noticed towards the end of reference 2, off to London recently to inspect his memorial, now in Victoria Tower Gardens.

Put off resuming Bullingdons yet again, and settled for the Stockholm folding chair and a lift to the station.

Slightly puzzled by the sight of a large lorry from Warburtons (of reference 4) manoeuvring in the limited space around our local Costcutter. Puzzled, because one would not have thought a neighbourhood shop of that sort would sell enough of the stuff to justify its own lorry. Why not some wholesaling middleman? I think BH takes their bread from time to time, but I cannot remember when I last did. Perhaps in a picnic put together by some third party?

Lower Court Road was blocked and the ticket machine at the station was blocked, but I made my train. To get on to a particularly irritating stream of announcements. How is that no-one has told them to calm them down a bit? Most of them are repeated verbatim on the overhead screens and it is not as if there are that many blind people on the trains. And the ones that I have talked to know where they are anyway - with one chap being a regular enough traveller to know where he was by the quality of the rattle of the wheels.

Lots of security barriers around the Houses of Parliament. I was sure that there were more than when I was last in the vicinity, possibly for the last Dignity in Dying demonstration.

The Tower Gardens were looking well, even if the grass was a little tired. And the memorial was rather impressive; a miniature version of the much grander Albert Memorial outside the Albert Hall, erected at almost the same time and to be found at reference 5.

It started out as a drinking fountain, and I now know that a lot of drinking fountains, horse troughs and cattle troughs were installed across the country in the mid 19th century. We even have a trough in the marketplace at Epsom. Part of this was to do with water hygiene, another part was getting people off alcohol. Rum for a chap who ran a brewery.

I decided in the end that the red was sandstone of some kind, not terracotta. Doubt arising from the very smooth finish.

A bit further on, a rather new but still defunct water fountain. Thames House North behind, part of which was once home to some part of the Department of Employment. Thames House South over the bridge, mostly now home to some part of the Home Office. But also, in my day, home to an outpost of the Northern Ireland Office.

Today, I asked Gemini about when the memorial stopped being a drinking fountain, and he had a long story about vandalism and theft going back a number of decades. The theft including the eight statues which used to decorate the pedestals at the bottom of the spires. Statues which were, apparently, intended to stand for the inexorable march of British progress (and empire) - the eight representatives being listed in the snap above.

There was also the matter of 20th century water hygiene, not very consistent with mid Victorian provision.

The memorial in its heyday was drawn by Gustave Doré, with at least one statue already gone, and the snap above looks to be a copy of that drawing, lifted from reference 6. For those with a taste for a bit of serious monument history there is also reference 7.

We also have a picture of a replica of one of the stolen statues. Once again, Gemini was a little careless with his dates and had to be told that the statues were no longer there - whereupon he embarked on a further story about why this was so.

All in all a fascinating monument with a fascinating story. I dare say one could make quite a decent programme for television about it - not that I ever watch that kind of thing on the box.

Moving on, I was impressed that the public conveniences at the Lambeth Bridge end of the gardens still worked - to the extent of my being let in through the turnstile without producing a 20p coin - which I did not have about my person - by the helpful attendant. Something else that the much-maligned Victorians - and the Edwardians that followed - managed rather better than we do now.

Plus a spot of botanical interest, in the form of ripening seed pods.

Some kind of hellebore, quite possibly Helleborus foetidus (the Stinking Hellebore), but Google Image's AI assistant stayed silent on this occasion. Part of what Gemini had to say about this is snapped above: all very geeky. Maybe it will work better tomorrow.

Next stop, the Tate Britain, still clutching my Stockholm viewing chair. Access to the beach was not denied, but it was not exactly encouraged either. The gate was open but was very stiff and there was no handrail to the steps going down. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour on this occasion. Stockholm visible lower right.

The tide must have been fairly high, as this was the only stretch of beach in sight.

I could get into the Tate by the front entrance and found that entry was still free, so I made a donation instead. To find that the Constables and Turners had been moved from their old home to a special exhibition - which one had to pay for and which was fully booked for the day - and I was not going to renew my membership - which used to include queue jumping - just for Constable. As a consolation prize I went to look for the pre-Raphaelites, still in the free department, at least those of them that were still there, had not had to give up their house room to something more relevant to the young people, the young tourists of today.

On the way, I was able to enjoy the empty sculpture gallery, the two lines of neo-classical draped figures having been removed. The floor being a long way down these days, the Stockholm earned its keep. Perhaps the curator was mindful of the success of the empty turbine hall down river.

Aside: at this angle, the doors in the snap above like rather like fireplaces. I guess it is the high ceiling which does it.

The sheep were at home and on this occasion, unlike on the last, I decided that I liked the cleaned version better than that we had hanging up at home, from where it is noticed in these pages from time to time. More alive somehow. I also liked the frame: I need a frame to do what it says on the tin, to frame the picture and help with focus, with blocking out neighbouring material. Although, that said, the frame on the right is perhaps a bit OTT.

Described in Wikipedia as being 30 inches by 48, which I am sure is quite wrong. And I had thought that the original was rather smaller than our reproduction, which is 19 inches by 25.5. The first time I have caught Wikipedia out for a while.

Our visits to the place in question are noticed at reference 12. Or maybe just one of them.

Next up Rossetti, which grows on me. I didn't used to like him.

A helpful trusty found out that Pegwell Bay, which I had hoped to visit, was missing. But this one, reference 15, caught my eye instead, reminding me very much of the sort of thing that painters and wood engravers did between the wars. I was surprised this morning to find that it was much closer in time to the sheep, despite the very different treatment.

Out to head off to Tooting Broadway, via Pimlico - a station I only very rarely use - and Stockwell. The distinctive platform clocks at Tooting were still there and I leave finding previous notice as an exercise for the reader.

Passed through Wetherspoon's, to find that high chairs had taken over a lot of the space. On to Honest Burger, where I took burger and chips, without salt. Me recollection is that they were a bit free with the stuff.

I puzzled about what the place had been before, with its very large, still working, sash windows.

Burger entirely satisfactory, better than average. And I had remembered to tell them to go easy on the goo.

An exuberant tinnie, from the people at reference 16. Undistinguihsed to my mind, but then, I am not a tinnie person. Bring on the warm beer!

Gmaps knows all about the address given in Brooklyn at the bottom of reference 16, a rather run down district which looks entirely probable although I failed to find the building in question. But I did find that their hire bicycles and stands (the latter of which are visible lower left) look very like our Bullingdons and their stands, so perhaps one borrowed from the other. I had thought London was based on Paris. Yet another thing to check out on a dull afternoon.

Entertainment was provided by an older chap banging on, more or less without paise, to the young lady he was with. Touching on all kinds of subjects along the way. I associated to the custom in the US for all kinds of people - often young men - to talk knowingly about all  kinds of stuff of which they have but little knowledge. I suppose we do it too, but we tend to keep it for the bar room, where it is more easily tolerated.

An establishment that I had once taken a bacon sandwich from. Once favoured by bus crews. And so to the bus for Earlsfield, and so home.

Which took a while, as there had been some incident in the vicinity of Clapham Junction which was disrupting country bound trains. RPPL was locked and I fell asleep outside while waiting for my train, but luckily a helpful lady woke me up in time. She, quite rightly, thought I might be a bit cross to miss it, having waited for a good while.

Miniature pineapples, picked up from a Tooting grocer. Rather good, if rather small and much the same price as their full sized cousins. The shopkeeper said something, or I thought he said something, about their coming from Turkey, which seemed a bit improbable. But I have yet to check that one out.

The memoirs: the story so far

I bought my copy, from the 1848 edition, back in mid March from a bookseller in Dunedin in New Zealand, to be found at reference 18. They are turned up by gmaps fast enough and occupy a building called Milford House in Dowling Street, a rather grand looking place, built in 1882, which would not be out of place in London and which is a listed building.

It is a lot deeper than it is wide and most of the space was factory above and warehouse below - so the prim & proper facade is misleading.

My book arrived, nicely wrapped, five days after it left Dunedin, which I thought was pretty good.

[Harry Soane being, according to the British Museum, a 'London wood-engraver, heraldic draughtsman, stationer; designed numerous heraldic bookplates. An album of his bookplates is in the Viner collection'. Born around 1840 so the book plates must have been added some time after acquisition]

A nicely made book, if a little tired, very much of its time, with marbled boards and end papers and gilding to the top of the page block. A book which had started life in 1848 as a gift to one Thomas Hodgkin of Newcastle upon Tyne from his brother, passing to Andrew John Hodgkin in 1913. Search suggests that Thomas Hodgkin was the historian, biographer, banker - and Quaker minister - to be found at reference 19. Hodgkin's magnum opus, 'Italy and her invaders', was an eight-volume work on the history of the wars in the late Roman empire. One wonders if anyone has read it recently.

After that, a blank. Perhaps Andrew Hodgkin emigrated to New Zealand at some point.

The book was said to be a best seller in its time, and oddly, considering that it is built around the correspondence of a pious Victorian brewer, it is oddly readable. Engaging even. I am not racing through it, but in parallel with various other reads, I am steadily working my way through. Worth the bother and expense.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/pitcher-plant.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/wellingtonia-137.html.

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

Reference 3: Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Baronet, with Selections from his Correspondence - Charles Buxton - 1848.

Reference 4: https://www.warburtons.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Memorial.

Reference 6: https://thetidalthames.com/2026/01/25/the-buxton-memorial-victoria-tower-gardens/. Lots of handsome photographs of the memorial to be found here.

Reference 7: On Stage at the Theatre of State: The Monuments and Memorials in Parliament Square, London - Stuart James Burch - 2003. A lot on the background to and construction of the memorial is to be found here. The Buxton may have been brewers, but the family was also mixed up with the temperance movement.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_English_Coasts.

Reference 11: Our English Coasts, aka Strayed Sheep - William Holman Hunt - 1852. Four years younger than my copy of reference 3.

Reference 12: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=fairlight.

Reference 13: The Beloved, aka The Bride - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1865-6.

Reference 14: Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 - William Dyce - 1860.

Reference 15: Battersea reach - Walter Greaves - 1870.

Reference 16: https://brooklynbrewery.com/brooklyn-beers/year-round/the-stonewall-inn-ipa/.

Reference 17: https://www.honestburgers.co.uk/. 'In March 2026, we were crowned winners of the National Burger Award 2026'.

Reference 18: https://www.hardtofind.co.nz/.

Reference 19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hodgkin_(historian).

Logical nonsense

Yesterday, in the course of reference 1, otherwise about a visit to Battersea Park, I reported briefly on a conversation with Gemini about what appeared to be a Masonic badge or jewel engraved onto the front windows of a public house.

Consulting my copy of the 1947 Constitutions of the United Grand Lodge of England - sourced second-hand, as I recall, from the pannier market at Tavistock - I had thought that the nearest thing was the jewel of the Deputy Grand Master. Not that it was very near: the jewel turned up by Bing on eBay included above is much more the thing.

In the course of this conversation with Gemni, I had finger trouble and submitted an unfinished question, The wrong question and the subsequent right question being snapped above, left and right respectively.

Gemini got a bit carried away on the wrong question and this morning I associated to a theorem from logic according to which if we have it that both P and not-P are true, where P is some proposition, then I can prove anything. Or glossing, the whole system is a nonsense. A relevant snap from page 37 of reference 2, particularly the text after the proof of Corollary 1.15, is snapped above.

I wondered whether there is some analogy here with the way that Gemini, if you feed him duff information is a bit apt to go off the rails, putting, as he does, much weight on user input.

Some details

On the wrong question, Gemini homes in on the phrase 'front V', seeming to get confused between the upside down 'V' formed by the compasses and the right way up one formed by the square.

He talks of a blazing sun, while the DGM jewel in the Constitutions features a pentangle, something that New Age types as well as Masons are keen on. There is something like a blazing sun for the GM jewel, but it is described as an eye within a triangle, both irradiated. I had opted for DGM on the grounds that we had a square (of the DGM jewel) rather than an arc (of the GM jewel); a more dominating feature than the design in the middle.

There was some confusion, certainly in my mind, about quadrants and arcs. A graduated quadrant is the name for an instrument, seemingly now mainly used in the aeronautical world, and the arc part is very like what one gets in place of the DGM square on the GM jewel. More evidence of confusion on Gemini's part between the two; more evidence of his difficulties with images generally, being very reliant on verbal descriptions of same.

His phrase 'the way the engraving meets the "V" of the square depends entirely on whether the jewel...' is a bit confusing. I think what he is talking about is whether the points of the compasses just touch the square, or cross over, as in the jewel snapped above.

There is a switch from 'blazing sun' to 'sun in splendor'. Are these two more or less heraldic terms synonyms?

On the right question he does rather better, although some of the difficulties mentioned above are carried over.

Other matters

Gemini is pretty good at making sense of my sometimes complicated input, so to that extent much more user friendly than a conventional search engine where you sometimes have to work at your search term, maybe taking several bites at it. But he is not so good at detecting when you have made a mistake. He did not appear to notice that something was wrong with my first attempt, choosing instead to make the best of what he had got. As it happened, he could bite on the stray 'V'.

I dare say that in some lodges there is unseemly display, in that some brothers go in for very expensively made jewels., with the GM jewel snapped above looking relatively cheap - unless, of course, it is made of solid gold.

Not very like the image in the Constitutions, but one can see how the confusion with eyes might have arisen, also the confusion of the GM eye with the DGM pentagram.

The interior of the pannier market at Tavistock.

An aerial view of same, with the indoor hall in the middle. The outer ring of regular shops once included at least one proper butcher, a butcher where I once bought a very decent bit of top rib of beef, albeit off the bone, it having been boned, as luck would have it, minutes before I arrived. A butcher which is now a café, probably a touch New Age and orgo.. Maybe complete with pentangles - in any event I would be pretty confident that you could buy such a thing somewhere nearby. Both snaps lifted from Alamy of reference 4.

Conclusions

On reflection, I think my association to the rules of logic is off the point. What we have here is Gemini having trouble with pictures. Getting a bit carried away when answering the wrong question is not particular significant.

Work in progress.

PS 1: I associated later this morning to a phrase which I think came from IT in the early 1980s: 'rubbish in, rubbish out'.

PS 2: and to a story about Bertrand Russell, snapped above. A story which might be called an instance of  'ex falso quodlibet', for which see reference 3. Turned up by Bing without any bother at all.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/battersea.html.

Reference 2: Introduction to mathematical logic - Elliott Mendelson - 1964.

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

Reference 4: https://www.alamy.com/.

Group search key: aisk.

Battersea

A couple of weeks ago, it was a fine morning, so we took ourselves off to Battersea Park. Via a Victoria train, Clapham Junction and the Parker café.

Started off on the wrong bench on Platform 3, not fully in the sun We would have done better nearer the country end, out from under the canopy.

Then on the train, we had one of those rather hopeless mums, who did not know how to keep her young children happy and quiet. Not least because she spent most of the journey with her nose in her telephone, rather than attending to the child.

Off at Clapham Junction, to get a bus which took a new-to-me route to Battersea Bridge Road, but we did manage to get off at more or less the right place, not far from the art college sculpture shed mentioned in the last post.

Into Parker's of Parkgate Steet, a café we have been using occasionally for quite a while now. My impression is that, from being a rather poky little place, they have gradually upped their game, to the rather flashy place it is now, complete with flashy website at reference 1.

We took sausage roll, tea and coffee. The sausage roll was very much the same sort of thing as that sold by Olle & Steen, but this one, for some reason went down rather better. Not like the fat ball wraps sold in National Trust cafeterias and suchlike places at all.

Tea, in one of those superior tetrahedral tea bags - some kind of fine plastic net rather than the usual paper - from the Chiswick Tea Company, was better than average. The rather foodie website at reference 2 reminds me of the Oolong tea from Sea Dyke that I used to buy from Gerrard Street. I remember the packet above, but I also remember a yellow packet - which Bing fails to turn up. Don't drink the stuff now, after I learned from Superintendent Wexford that it can do funny things to your heart - although memory gone slightly astray here in that reference 3 talks of inspector. Maybe it was a long running series and he was allowed to advance in rank.

Out to notice the trolleys outside Bayley & Sage, a place from which we may once have bought something, but not on this occasion.

Gemini agrees that the name is entirely fake, albeit almost a heritage style of faking given that it has been around for so long, with this small chain having been founded in 1997 by one Jennie Allen. Dressed up in cod old clothes; all of a piece with foodie fashion and the gentrification of this part of town. Contrariwise, the cafe was quite modern in style: no fry-ups swimming in a sea of baked beans and tinned tomatoes there. No fags either, at least not inside.

Into the park, to be greeted by a fine bed of sun-lit celandines. We had made the park by just after midday.

A bit further on, our first metropolitan sighting of wild garlic, albeit quite a small patch of same.

And then, rather later and after our first bench session, complete with a large party of what I took to be South Koreans, a family of exotic geese.

I dare say Google Images is right enough about their being Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca), but he appears to think that Battersea Park is one of the royal parks. 

Wikipedia confirms that it is not a goose, rather something of a taxonomic oddity, native more to sub-Saharan Africa than to Egypt, name notwithstanding. While Google Image's gloss 'not actually geese: Despite their name, they are technically members of the shelduck subfamily' is not wrong - but it is a bit economical with a complicated story.

Then the list of royal parks at reference 4, eight plus two hangers on, is rather longer than I was expecting, but does not include Battersea Park.

A bed of daisies, to complement that of celandines. From there to the sub-tropical gardens.

Which included this vigorous specimen. Google Images says 'Fatsia japonica, also known as Japanese Aralia or the False Castor Oil plant', not really tropical, but a hardy plant which looks tropical so it does well here. He adds: 'the Sub-Tropical Garden where this was photographed has a long history, first created in 1863 by the park's first superintendent, John Gibson. It was the first of its kind in the country, designed to showcase exotic and unusual plants. While much of the garden was turned into allotments during World War II, it was restored to its original Victorian-era plans in 2004'. Which is much the same story as that read by BH from an information board on the day.

After the gardens, thoughts turned to lunch. First thought was the cafeteria on the edge of the big pond, but this had been made-over since we were last there and now featured a large and slow moving queue. We decided to try our luck outside and headed east.

And, having declined a sandwich from a forecourt Waitrose, found ourselves in a cluster of high rise flats. They may have been very high rise and there may not have been a lot of open space, but they had thrown some money at the space that there was. I wondered how difficult it was to get a pool of this sort level enough to work properly. Then was it apt to move about after having been installed?

An elaborate staircase, leading to a small upper garden, mainly a play-space for children. And there was a family party putting it to its intended use.

It also overlooked the dogs' home. We wondered, not for the first time, whether they had been tempted to sell up and move out. Or was there some restrictive covenant which stopped them doing that?

Google Maps told us about various eating options nearby and we headed south, vaguely intending to try an Indian. But actually we popped out on the main road and wound up in the Mason's Arms, a place where I had once taken a rather noisy Christmas lunch. It was during my time at the Treasury and it was the year that Gordon Brown thought it would be a good idea to switch from the fussy and pedantic - if grand - official Christmas cards of old to something more child-cuddly. Maybe a competition for children? Which switch the Sun had some sport with on the very day of our lunch. We arranged to get one of these cards, we all signed it and then presented it to the staff of the Masons' Arms, along with the relevant page from the Sun. They were quite busy and we never got to know what they made of it.

Once again, the Internet memory of all this is not quite the same as my memory. Something of the sort happened, but what exactly? The dates don't quite work either, as I finished work around 2006, having done a few years at the Home Office. The snap above being lifted from reference 7.

In the twenty five years or so since then, the house has been taken over by Fullers - the people who have the Wellington Hotel in Waterloo, previously noticed, and has, much more recently, been the subject of a refurbishment: now gastro pub rather than boozer, although there was a steady trickle of the old-style trade. The yellow bench roughly where one of the bars used to be.

With appropriate decoration, possibly original, although it looks rather newer than that to me, to the front windows; plus reflections. According to my copy of their 1947 Constitutions, a pastiche of the jewel of a deputy grand master. But I have no idea how literally the 1947 illustrations are to be taken. Maybe it is all a bit free and easy, maybe not. Would a lodge meet in a public house with such a thing outside?

Gemini is quite fulsome on the whole subject. He was also rather amusing when he built a story on a typo on my part. Plus further evidence of his interest in branding and image.But the bottom line seems to be that the windows are a bit of masonic flavour added during the recent refurbishment. All puff and no substance.

I did not think to ask him about the apostrophe, which seems to me to be in the wrong place.

Back at the bar, we had a very cheerful young waitress - possibly the manageress or the partner of the manager - who, when I was confused by her accent, was happy to explain that she came from California and had spent time in various places before winding up in London. I had thought that she might have been Irish - a confusion I get into from time to time - although not with a correspondent from the far south of Ireland.

An interesting line in humus, with toasted sour dough. Plus some extra bread which arrived a little later. Only very mildly sour I am pleased to be able to report.

Followed for me by fish and chips; not a bad effort for a public house. The peas were not much like the mushy peas of a chipper, but they were, I think, made from processed peas rather than frozen peas, which was a considerable improvement.

Access denied to the two tone brick, Catholic church across the road from the pub. I had thought that it might have been open, Catholic churches generally being much better than Anglican churches in that regard.

Access including a curious pair of arches and a chunk of the site is now something called the 'Cloisters Business Centre'. Were the buildings behind the arches a post-war rebuild after bombing? While gmaps describes the pub as a boutique hotel in Bridport. Perhaps they simply put up whatever people care to tell them. He preserves the position of the apostrophe.

On the way back to Clapham Junction, I noticed that the arty street art underneath the big bridge had been executed on some kind of metal panels and was presumably washable, graffiti proof, unlike the street art here in Epsom. Bing turns up reference 9 where I read that:

'... The newly installed panels come from the Isle of Wight, made by A.J Wells & Sons Ltd, a company that specialises in the manufacture and installation of signage, cladding and products for outdoor use and train stations.

Each panel was meticulously crafted using durable vitreous enamel—a material used widely across Transport for London network, known for its resilience and longevity of up to 25 years...'.

No spiral sausages to be had at the Italian flavoured grocer which has taken part of the ground floor of what was Arding & Hobbs, once visited by our late Queen. Flavour notwithstanding, I thought that the lady who explained that it was all because of needing to restock after the then recent Easter holiday, probably was a real Italian.

On the platform, no aeroplanes to be seen, although I did hear some in the clouds. And there was some confusion about which coach was penultimate, with us actually winding up in coach 6 of 10 rather than than the coach 9 of 10 I had thought we were in. I blame the 'London Pride'.

PS 1: this time around, we did not come across any of the young Wellingtonia, some of which were found on a previous occasion. See, for example, reference 6.

PS 2: I was intrigued by the ladies who had turned out for this parade of the Revolutionary Guard. Maybe in support roles rather than combat roles - or maybe if the latter, they are allowed to wear something more suitable when going into battle. Lifted from a recent number of the Financial Times.

PS 3: Gemini now tells me that the well known Charnwood is an ancient forest in Leicestershire, with the name meaning 'stony wood', which fits. Well known for building stone and fossils in its day. The marketing men probably thought that 'Charnwood' was a good name for a brand of wood burning stoves while the owner of the holiday cottage probably had some connection with the company and borrowed the name for his cottage.

Ex reference 12.

A zoomed and orange spotted version of the relevant bit. One of the smaller streams and creeks feeding this part of the Thames. About the spelling of which BH was complaining only yesterday. Gemini tells me today that the 'h' was the work of overenthusiastic Renaissance scholars. Didn't used to be there - and the pronunciation did not acclimatise, as it did with 'author'. This last theory being confirmed by Bing.

References

Reference 1: https://www.parkerlondon.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.chiswicktea.com/.

Reference 3: https://inspectorwexford.info/.

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

Reference 5: https://www.royalparks.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/wellingtonia-88.html.

Reference 7: https://axelscheffler.com/who-is-he/official-christmas-gordon-browns-treasury.

Reference 8: https://bayley-sage.co.uk/stores/parkgate-road/.

Reference 9: https://www.cjag.org/2025/11/19/falcon-bridge-transformation-takes-shape-as-first-artwork-panels-go-up/. I had never heard of Falconbrook before. See below.

Reference 10: https://ajwells.co.uk/. The Isle of Wight connection. And a Charnwood Cottage connection - a cottage in which we holidayed for many years. I have yet to find out what etymological significance the name has, if any, on the island.

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charnwood_Forest.

Reference 12: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falconbrook.