Another brasserie

A couple of weeks ago was my last visit to London. I must be slowing down as, even allowing for the plague, such visits are becoming rarer, with just the one Bullingdon hired during January. A hiring which came close to incurring an excess for running over 30 minutes, but I can blame that on my first choice for dropping-off stand being full up. Something which seems to be happening more often, so perhaps the vans that busy themselves keeping the stands at half-full have been thinned out a bit.

The builders' huts outside Epsom Station, first noticed in early December at reference 2, were still there on this occasion, firmly shut up and with no-one in sight. So I still don't know what is going on there.

Southern trains visible again. As was a goods locomotive at Raynes Park. Pulled a Bullingdon from the ramp at Waterloo and made my way via Drury Lane and Portland Place to New Cavendish Street, where the target stand was full. Luckily, there were a couple of spots left on the stand at nearby Hinde Street. 

I did not attempt the rather grand Methodist church at the corner, which I had penetrated in 2016 and noticed at reference 3 and instead, my first stop was an interesting house called the 'Angel in the Fields'. Quiet at around 12:30, with just a few customers, but a large open bar space, with a few chairs around the edges and a genuine coal fire making the place pleasantly warm. Lots of brown wood and stained glass. One of the customers was a twenty year resident, probably an Italian in the catering business, complaining to the landlady about all the bother he was having with the Home Office about residence. He was confident that it would all get sorted out, but was annoyed at the bother. He was also rather cross with Google for charging him for some hosting service or other. Not to deflected by my soothing remarks about the wonders of Street View - wonders which had to be paid for somehow. Altogether, a splendid place. To be visited at the next opportunity - although it might well get uncomfortably busy early evening.

Making my rendezvous, we found ourselves a bit spoiled for choice, but eventually settled for one of Côte's brasseries, where what they are pleased to call 'beef cheek bourguignon' went down well enough, although I did not think to ask for the gravy in a jug to the side, which would have been even better. A variation on the pork belly, now widely served in places that fancy themselves, but well known to the impoverished as a usefully cheap cut of pork when we were young. A bonus was that their bread was very good and their Chardonnay entirely satisfactory.

As it happens, there is talk that Côte are coming to Epsom, taking the premises once occupied by a fancy gents outfitter, one Lester Bowden, more recently by Lakeland. Lester Bowden was the sort of shop which once carried a fine selection of rather expensive jackets and suits, these last mainly from Germany, this in the days when some people still spent serious money on their work clothes. I think I still own a couple of their jackets, one of them actually rather cheap, say around £100, made of a rather flashily striped crimplene, which I wear when attending races and other events of that sort. And after you made your purchase it was logged in one of those little steel bound notebooks, complete with carbon paper. Notebooks which were pervasive, normal even, in the clothes shops of yesteryear.

Suitably freighted, I passed on both the Wallace Collection and the handsome Catholic Church of Spanish Place. Very properly, decided against another Bullingdon. Waterloo was a little too far away for that to be a good idea. But I did take a comfort break at the Langham Hotel, the bar appearing to be shut. Where in the lounge area provided with the cloakrooms and so forth, there was a large format book of arty black and white photographs, pages possibly A2 in size. Placed on its own little table and opened at a page of porn; gent to the left, lady to the right. While most of the photographs were rather good portrait heads.

If it was the book offered above, quite an expensive item to leave lying around a hotel, even a good class hotel. I wonder when we will get back there for lunch? Our last having been in the autumnal plague interval, noticed at reference 5.

Eventually got back to Vauxhall where I entrained, passing on the Half Way House at Earlsfield, but pausing at Raynes Park for long enough to pick something up for BH from the platform library. Something which she was, as it turned out, well pleased with. Now read. 

I noticed that the Guildford Diocesan Office seems to have shut down, visible in the past as the country bound train pulls into the Epsom branch line. Perhaps the office has been mothballed for the duration of the plague.

A fine selection of on-train announcements, despite a recent story in one of the free newspapers that a massive cull was in progress. About time too: I don't really need to be told that I can change at Clapham Junction for Willesden Junction - not least because in the unlikely event of my ever wanting to go to such a place, I would check with Cortana before setting off.

Closed the day by collecting the post already noticed at reference 6. At least I remembered.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/to-palace.html. The last outing featured a visit to a brasserie too. I remember than in the late 1970's, a brasserie in Luxembourg was still, sometimes, attached to a brewery, this being the literal meaning of the word. Properly speaking, brasseries are about beer, not wine.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/art-from-more-than-one-country.html.

Reference 3a: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-interior-of-church-at-hinde-street.html. The picture. A post named for its first sentence, as I had initially failed to supply a title. And once named, one is stuck with the name, not an amendable property in the way of a file name under Windows.

Reference 3b: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/06/vivaldi.html. The visit.

Reference 4: https://www.cote.co.uk/. The brasseries.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/wigging.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/beam-one.html.