Week 263: Look up

Tuesday was damp and it was so cold overnight that on Wednesday morning I struggled to unlock the frozen lock on the back gate. The entire bolt was surrounded with ice that remained after I had succeeded.

The lock on our gate. The bolt of the lock is retracted, but a ghostly
frame of ice still sticks out where it was — Icy ghost lock

I’ve been paying more attention to the buildings above street level lately. In Peckham and Deptford and other parts of London that aren’t considered particularly fancy today, the architecture often turns out to be much grander than you might expect. It was sunny at Wednesday lunchtime, and I took a photo of an ornate Art Deco building lurking largely unnoticed above the Mighty Pound discount shop on Rye Lane.

An Art Deco building with the linear decorative features typical of the
era, framed against a blue sky — Art Deco in Peckham

I cycled over to Deptford Market on Friday morning, where one particular item caught my eye, even though it was written backwards.

A printer's compositing frame containing type that says (in reverse) S. G.
Abel Battley, Alpines & Heathers, Telephone (with no number), The Ericas,
Fishponds, Nr. Charmouth, Dorset. — S. G. Abel Battley Alpines & Heathers

I’ve never met anyone with the same surname who isn’t related. I once received an email in error intended for an actor Philip Battley. He turned out to be a distant cousin whom my aunt already knew, and I met him after a performance at the Globe a little later.

I don’t have any more information about S G Abel Battley. There doesn’t seem to be an Alpines and Heathers nursery at that address any more, and the only similar name I can find on the internet is Paul Stanley Abel Battley, an old boy of St Edward’s School, Oxford who died in 2022 at the age of 90.

In the course of my search, I came across the elaborately named Lieutenant-Colonel D’Oyly Cade Battley, who served as High Sheriff of Wicklow in 1899 and Sheriff of County Dublin in 1911. No relation, though, as far as I know.

I didn’t buy the compositing frame, or the two foot long shofar that was on the same stall. I slightly regret the latter. My neighbours might not.

Just a handful of links this week:

JSONata is an XPath-like language for querying and transforming JSON.
Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List. “Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War.” As you’d expect, it’s not a short list.
AI Completely Failing to Boost Productivity, Says Top Analyst. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t destroying jobs, however, or being used an excuse to cut jobs before offshoring them a short while later.
Irish man risks US retaliation for unmasking thousands of ICE officers online. Hero.