psmv5: Kingston one

The week before last we visited Kingston, in an attempt to wind up our insurance business there.

A bright cool day when we set off to a possible Wellingtonia sighting at Hook, confirmed later in the day and noticed at reference 1.

From there to the more or less empty top floor of the Rose car park at Kingston to admire the views. Which were good, even though no more Wellingtonia were forthcoming. Down to the Hogsmill to tweet a gray wagtail and to find the fish in their usual position by the bridge by the Police Station. Fish, on this occasion, in various sizes and various places. More various than usual, with the usual form being for them to be all much of a size and all in much the same place, by the north eastern corner of the bridge.

From there to what used to be Millets, then Blacks and today Ultimate Outdoors and slated to be Go Outdoors tomorrow. On the ground floor of a rather grand building built in 1902 as Nuthall's Restaurant and Banqueting Rooms, one supposes at a time when Kingston was a big weekend destination for the workers of London.

Bing doesn't know much about the place, but it does offer this picture of the river side. With an inscription suggesting special rates for Masonic dinners. A time when Masons had a public presence which they have since lost. I recall a correspondent explaining that this was a consequence of Hitler putting the Masons on the list of people he was going to get rid of, should he ever get the opportunity, and they have not lost the habit of secrecy they acquired at that time.

While in the present we had a new-to-me style of trolley. Non scoring as they were in their home store.

Between there and the big street dominated by John Lewis and Bentall's there were plenty of empty units. Times are clearly hard for shopping towns. Against which background, we wondered how many of the watches snapped above get sold - a snip at £20,000 - with some part of that sum accounted for the chunky red gold case. Nowhere near rich enough to contemplate such a thing, which I suspect would look pretty silly on my thin, white wrist. Furthermore, by way of comparison, about the same price as my 2,000 books, at maybe £10 a pop. For which I imagine I would be lucky to get £1,000 from a dealer. But much more important to me than any watch could be.

At first I thought that the name might just be a brand name dreamed up by the retailer, but further investigation revealed Panerai of references 2 and 3. Who look entirely respectable, if previously unheard of by me. Furthermore, I can spend a good deal more than £20,000 for one of their watches. A firm which started out in Florence, and which still has a shop there, but one which we clearly missed when we were there back in '08. See, for example, reference 4.

Having failed to wind up our insurance business at Bentall's, we picnic'd on some steps down to the river, to be amused by swans, ducks, coots, seagulls and a solitary, rather stand-offish grebe. I fed them bits of excess bread, with the seagulls winning hands down. Far more aggressive, far quicker than the other birds, which seemed to lose out even when you dropped the bread right in front of them.

And I might say in passing that what is left of the Bentall's shop is still a big and well stocked place. Spacious and quiet - this last perhaps not good for them but it did suit us.

Just the one complaint. There seemed to be no pigs in the farm animal department - strongly colonised, I might say, by exotics. So failed to stock up pigs for deployment in Duplo pig houses.