Cheese on foot

About a week ago, cheese time came around again and on this occasion we decided to make it a joint outing, hoofing it from Waterloo, rather than me taking a Bullingdon.

BH's preference was for the river walk, but somehow we drifted into the heritage walk, taking in a good variety of built heritage on the way. Surprising how much heritage survives in the area, not all tower blocks.

So in the snap above, we have a very low door - BH being on the short side - in the substantial garden wall running along the north side of Brad Street. Arches, with curious structures on top, running along the other side. Investigation this afternoon reveals them to be the outer reaches of Waterloo East railway station. And perhaps at one time the pavement and roadway were a little lower than they are now.

What I thought was a very typical bit of arty detailing from the second quarter of the last century. In Maymott Street. Street View does not tell me anything and the building might be unoccupied. Maybe originally built for some sort of light industry?

Next stop was Christ Church, Blackfriars, a church we have visited before, but which I can find no notice of this afternoon. Maybe the right search key will come to mind.

Rebuilt in 1957 after being destroyed by a bomb during the second world war. We didn't go inside on this occasion, but we did admire the fine display of acanthus, just one part of an attractive garden. A haven in busy Blackfriars.

We also came across another of the plants which had puzzled us at Athelhampton House and noticed at reference 2. No further progress on identification. But I think we can say it likes the shade of trees.

The front door. From there, back onto the main drag, that is to say Southwark Street. 

To be reminded about the Kirkaldy Testing Museum, a peep through the window of which looked interesting and which reference 4 tells me is alive and well. Sadly, BH has plans for tomorrow week, but maybe we will be able to manage something.

Onto cakes and beverages at Paul's, where I made use of a new-to-me style of tea bag, made of some kind of plastic and containing tea leaves rather than tea powder. Cakes and beverages fine.

Onto the Neal's Yard Dairy outlet behind Borough Market, where I bought my usual two 500g pieces of Lincolnshire Poacher. The remnant from which was quickly snapped up by the chap behind me, otherwise more into fancier cheese. While I might say that while Lincolnshire Poacher has been very reliable, it seems to have more voids in it these days, more likely to crack when cut. Perhaps I will be moved to try something else: their web site offers half a dozen or more and I think they usually have the one from Montgomery in.

Remembered on this occasion about Iberico Presa from Terroirs and Brindisi of Borough Market, maybe 18 months since I first noticed the stuff at reference 6. The people at Brindisi were very helpful, but they did not have that particular cut of the Iberico pig that day and I settled for a couple of packets of something else, on which more in due course.

Outside there was a small lorry from which they we unloading half pigs, or perhaps even whole pigs, almost certainly for Ginger Pig, the butcher. Not something we have seen in Manor Green Road for some years now. 

At which point BH spotted an overhead restaurant, a place called Roast. Reasonably lively this Thursday lunchtime, if not exactly busy. While BH really liked the view, looking down onto all the goings on in Borough Market, without having to get up close and personal with it.

I was confused by a starter called 'Roast signature Scotch egg', which had me wondering why one would roast a Scotch egg, but I got there in the end. In any event, we both started with a sort of ladies' pea soup. The sort of thing that you can buy in cartons flying veggie and organic colours. Not bad, but not really my thing.

But the cutlery was much better, this being another restaurant which saw fit to fake up my fancy pen knife from Laguiole, the one with the best edge of any knife I have ever bought. French. Quite possibly the knife top left at reference 8 described as 'Forge de Laguiole Tradition'. One of the faking restaurants was  Le Café du Commerce, 51 rue du commerce, Paris 15e.

Still visible in Street View, but their website gives a server error. Maybe they too have been struck down by the plague. Rather good on the occasion that we were there, maybe fifteen years ago.

Got on much better with the beef than with the soup, described as 'Slow Braised Feather Blade Beef, Root Vegetable Puree, Tender Stem Broccoli'. Quite a decent portion of meat, tender enough that the fancy knife was quite unnecessary and I did call for extra bread - probably light brown sour dough, good of its kind - and which turned up fast enough to be relevant.

Quite a decent wine list, with a much better selection of white than we usually get, and we settled for a 2015 Riesling, Beblenheim Trapet from the Alsace. Very nice it was too - although perhaps it was just as well that we did not know at the time that we were being charged more than four times what was being quoted for the 2018 version at reference 9. Anyway, perhaps you pay more as it gets older. Not like cars at all.

And they could do Calvados, although the waiter did have to go and check.

The waitress was speaking some language I did not recognise at all with her colleagues, so I asked one of them. He said that it was the Neapolitan dialect, very different from the Italian of the north, the Italian of Dante. Mutually unintelligible. Good at their work wherever they came from. All in all a good meal.

Out to pass a street vendor selling coffee from a repurposed phone box.

Out to inspect the bottom of the Shard, where I am still impressed by the slender white columns which seem to be holding it up. Maybe there is a core of proper concrete running up the middle, out of sight.

BH decided that she would pass on the river, so through an underpass to London Bridge Station. I had forgotten how smart it looks from the outside, after its refurbishment. And as luck would have it, a train was just getting ready to depart for Epsom.

Lots of Russian vine on the embankments on the way there. Greats mounds and blankets of the stuff. Nothing like my puny effort up a dead plum tree, probably twenty years ago now, which never took off. Maybe our dry clay was too much for it.

Rather than pay for a taxi, we hopped on a bus which took us on a circular route through various estates I had never seen before.  On which there was an older gentleman whom I recognised from the warfarin clinic. I greeted him as a warfarin man, and the lady with him, quite possibly a daughter, looked a bit askance at this breach of patient confidentiality, but was more or less mollified when I explained that I was a warfarin man too. Hopefully, I will remember not to do this on the next occasion.

Home to find two books by A. C. Hamilton about Spenser on the mat, an interesting literary gentleman from Canada. More about him in due course. One of the books must have come from an old style bookseller as it was neatly wrapped in brown paper, inside its thick brown envelope, Amazon style if not Amazon. But not so old style that he used string rather than sticky brown paper tape.

PS 1: the file from which the image of Le Café du Commerce is taken has got into a muddle about which way up it is, seemingly the result of rotating it from time to time. On this occasion, when the image first arrived in its slot it was the right way up. A few seconds later, Microsoft got around to rotating it so that it was the wrong way up.

PS 2: later that evening: asked BH about Christ Church. She said maybe four years ago, probably in the margins of a visit to Tate Modern. A couple of hours later the search key 'tate church' turns it up at reference 10. A post I had looked at earlier, it having met an earlier search key, but I missed the Christ Church bit because I was expecting a picture. As it turns out, I was not as much of a snapper then as I am now. Interesting how the solution turns up after taking a break from the problem.

PS 3: while looking further down the Laguiole webpage, I find that my knife is probably a Laguiole knife Amourette Inox 4.72inches. So possibly not legal to have one in one's pocket, say during a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. But I can say it did a good job on my daily bread and cheese at a place of work where these days it might get caught up in entry level security and that the current price makes me feel better about what I paid for it in some huntin' & fishin' shop somewhere in or around Pall Mall.

PS 4: the next day: Bing did quite well with the search key 'compound white flower lobed leaves low shrub shade' and I think the answer may be that the white flower under trees in the church yard was a sort of hydrangea. In fact, the Hydrangea quercifolia of reference 11. Brought to this country from the woods of the southern states of the US.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/fake-128.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/heading-west-again-part-2.html.

Reference 3: https://www.christchurchsouthwark.org.uk/.

Reference 4: http://www.testingmuseum.org.uk/.

Reference 5: https://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/collections/cheddar.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/no-spatburgunder.html.

Reference 7: https://www.roast-restaurant.com/.

Reference 8: https://www.laguiole.com/forge-laguiole-c-46.html.

Reference 9: http://www.domaine-trapet.fr/.

Reference 10: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/03/trainspotting.html.

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