I noticed in the Lake District – Grasmere and Ambleside in particular – on our trip down there in April that not just boundary walls between fields are built with the dry stone method, the houses are too.

The photo shows a few such houses in Ambleside.

This appeared in Kirkcaldy’s Beveridge Park a year or so ago.
It is a fairly secluded space deep in the Park, well away from the pond and the playing fields.

The symbols and wording on the sign – which is some way away from the seating area and obelisk – relate to different religions.

An inscription appears on all four sides of the obelisk. I assume the meaning is the same in the four different languages.

Last week in the Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy, I noticed this growth on one of the trees. It’s huge.

From the other side of the tree you can see there are two growths.

This is a close up of the first fungus from underneath.

Very textural.

You may have noticed a lack of postings here recently.

The blog has been playing silly beggars again; something to do with hosting. There are plans afoot to move it to another host.

Fingers crossed.

It’s not just Irish and US shelves at my local supermarket. Thay have only added to what has for a while been the obligatory Polish aisle, part of which is shown below, with a close up.

Beside the Irish shelves in my local supermarket there are no less than two others of produce surely intended to be sold in the US.

A few of these things I’ve read about, Hershey bars (chocolate,) Jello (jelly.* – At £1.50 a packet no less. One of the packets was chocolate flavoured; how do you get chocolate flavoured jelly? The picture on the packet showed the stuff was opaque. Weird.) Lifesavers(??) Hominy grits. The rest is more or less a mystery apart from what were obviously cereals.

I suppose this has turned up here because the supermarket concerned has just abandoned its attempts to make inroads into the US market.

Here are two close-ups. Click either side to enlarge.

What on Earth is this stuff?

(*What Usians call jelly we call jam, I think. See my post on Jelly Jungle.)

There is a full set of shelves in my local supermarket selling Irish products.

This includes for some reaon – third shelf up extreme left – Irish shortbread. Irish shortbread? On sale in Scotland? That seems a bit coals to Newcastle.

Anyway here is a close-up on the Cadbury shelf.

Caramello, Tiffin, Mint Crisp, Golden Crisp and Snack Bars. Fair takes you back. The 95p price for a vending machine sized bar might be thought a bit steep.

I bought the Mint Crisp this week, though. As good as I remembered.

I was thinking about Cadbury’s Caramello again today and I suddenly remembered that the bar had another name, Caramilk. It had disappeared once before and was brought back under a new name.

I can’t now remember which name came first – possibly Caramilk was the one which was around in my youth and Caramello came later.

I looked up Caramilk and it seems there is a bar of this name sold by Cadbury’s in Canada, and Caramello is found in the US, Australia and New Zealand. The Wiki article doesn’t mention Ireland though.

Here’s a link to the Irish shop and its picture of a Caramello bar which looks more like the non-vending machine size I remember buying back in the day. When I looked there though it said, “Sold Out!”

Some of the images on this page (I see mine has got on there somehow; it’s about halfway down) are of the old packaging.

I hadn’t seen one of these in years. But on 20/4/13 in my local supermarket I found for sale Cadbury’s Caramello.

Caramello is much better than the more common Cadbury’s Caramel.

I remember there used to be a Caramello bar about 1½ times the size of this though these ones could be found in vending machines back in the day.

Not only was there Caramello on that shelf but also Tiffin* bars, Mint Crisps and Golden Crisps – all of which have been notable by their absence for years from British shops.

These all may be Cadbury’s Ireland products. The Caramello bears the legend, “Official treat provider to the Irish Olympic team.”

Does this mean Caramello has been available in Ireland all this time?

Cadbury’s website has no trace of these products. Lucky Irish right enough.

*I never ever consumed a Tiffin: they have raisins in them. I always feel eating raisins, sultanas or currants must be like biting into a blister. I try to avoid them all.

I watched the end of the League Cup final today and noticed that the person giving out the medals was Joyce Banda, the President of Malawi, according to the Wiki article in the link the most powerful woman in Africa and 71^st in the world.

Her surname made me wonder if she was in any way related to Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first President of Malawi and leader of its colonial predecessor, Nyasaland.

It turns out though that she is a Banda by marriage. Her husband Richard is a prominent judge who doesn’t seem to be related to the former President. Perhaps Banda is a common name in Malawi.

Under Hastings Kamuzu Banda Malawi became a one party state and he was made President for Life in 1971. In 1993 a referendum ended the dictatorship and he lost subsequent elections.

Due to his control of Malawi during his Presidency he was considered in some quarters a tyrant, and irreverently referred to as One Man Banda.