Cheese

The stock of cheese (Lincolnshire Poacher) running low, off to London again the day after the Vespers of the last post. I decided to have another crack at CS7, that is to say the cycle superhighway which runs from Southwark Bridge down to Colliers Wood. Home, inter alia, to a large Sainsbury's and the once interesting collection of shops at Merton Mills, at one time the factory end of the Liberty's empire. Shops including some fine, old-style second hand book shops. I probably still own books from them. See reference 4.

Sadly, the Bullingdons run out of puff at Clapham, so I am unlikely to get to explore the southern leg of this superhighway. Also known to me as the A24, the other sort of superhighway, the one eventually leading to Epsom.

Back with the cheese, the weather looked a bit mixed, so I elected to switch to the summer jacket, something practical from somewhere like Millets, rather than the winter jacket which is more of a fashion item. In the process, turning up a higher grade face mask in an obscure pocket, unused since last summer.

Train to London Bridge, walk across to Neal's Yard Dairy in Park Street to top up, then onto the Bullingdon stand opposite the still grand building which used to be the Hop Exchange, right in the (west facing) snap above. With the stand middle left lost in the fading light. The Street View camera crew must have been doing a bit of overtime.

I suppose this morning that the Hop Exchange, presumably once a central market for the buying and selling of that essential ingredient of beer, has gone the way of London's other central markets, swept away by the consolidation of thousands of smaller players into a very smaller number of very much larger players.

Pedalled off to Kennington where a group of lads were joy riding on their cycles all over the road. Generally showing off. Not being a nuisance, a danger to themselves or others, but one imagines it would not have taken much for it to have become such.

Picked up signs for the A24 and Dorking (no sign of Epsom yet) at the busy Clapham North, but at Clapham Common hung right onto the A3, more or less directly under the flight path down into Heathrow, which gave one a comforting confirmation about the direction in which one was headed.

Quite a lot of rather muscular looking joggers in and around the Common, rather more ladies than gentlemen.

Parked up in the splendidly named Lavender Sweep and made my way to Soif, a south London outpost of the late lamented Terroirs of William IV Street, that is to say more or less Trafalgar Square. See reference 5. Just about three quarters of an hour from the Hop Exchange, so a £2 penalty. Couldn't be bothered to break the trip for long enough - ten minutes or so - to avoid the penalty. Perhaps next time.

Not busy this Friday lunchtime, but a regular sprinkling of customers, including what looked like a wine tasting session for ladies going on at the back. Format very much a slightly scaled back version of the original Terroirs. And some of the decorative touches, for example the large picture top right in the snap above, might have been recovered from the wreck of same. But the art chunk of tree was a new touch, complete with substantial wire carrying straps.

I took bread and salami. The bread turned out to be home made, unlike the Terroirs bread which I learned had come from Paul's. Perfectly fresh and decent, but for the purpose of the day, I would have preferred white from Paul's. A baker whom I don't usually approve of, partly because he is expensive, partly because his bread is all to apt to smash fillings. But served thin sliced this last objection falls away.

The menu was very much like that of Terroirs, that is to say more wine bar with nibbles than restaurant, but it did include oysters, which I don't remember from William IV street and there was at least one taker. Plenty in Borough Market from earlier in the day.

Not wanting a whole bottle to myself, my choice was a limited, so I settled for a carafe, that is to say 500ml, of 'Bianco IGT Campania, Monte di Grazia, Campania Italy (Bianca Tenera, Ginestra & Pepella)'. Presumably the parenthesis is all about subtle aroma of upland dock, perfect with oysters (with or without Tabasco) and all that sort of thing. A good wine, with the slightly vinegary, cidery taste I have come to associate with the organic wines from the Terroirs/Guildford stable.

However, I now learn from the website (reference 7) that I am quite wrong about the upland dock. The parenthesis is all about the variety of grape.

Sadly, the Berneroy Calvados was off so I had to make do with DuPont hors d'age. The waiter tried to explain what this last meant but I didn't understand. Something else to be looked up. They also had a carboy - that is to say a five gallon glass flask - there is a smaller, empty one top left in the tree art snap above - more or less full of eau de vie. I did understand when the waiter explained that you got the stuff out by siphoning it through a plastic tube, with the result sometimes that one got an accidental mouthful. Most unfortunate.

Out to find a serious delivery operation just down the road. 

While a bit further on, Arding & Hobbs, the once famed store, once visited by the queen, was in the throes of a refurbishment.

Passed on the Falcon. Tried to give some money to Médecins Sans Frontières in the arcade leading into Clapham Junction Station, but found that they were only interested in setting up a direct debit, which I dare say they could have done on the spot. Which avoids the business of having staff on the street handling money, which I dare say can be a problem, but I would have thought would put off other people besides myself: I would have given them £20, perhaps more, but direct debit no.

A proper cycle on a train on the way home. Without gears but with panniers. Maybe thirty five years ago, I abandoned the without gears approach after a few years of it, concerned that my knees would not take the stick indefinitely. But not before I had managed the pull up Snake Pass out of Manchester, far enough to look down on Sheffield, just starting to light up in the early evening. On some important business or whatever, possibly from the days when ICL (now swallowed up by Fujitsu) had a facility that way.

Passed on the Half Way House, but stopped in at Raynes Park, where I picked up the two slim volumes snapped above. The book on the left was noticed at reference 8 and since then we have watched the film, which we found a bit dated - not surprising given that it is more than fifty years old - but quite cleverly done. While I have not got very far with the book on the right, a long poem about St. Paul written in the middle of the nineteenth century, with demand such that it ran to at least two editions. According to Wikipedia at reference 9, the author seems to have been a very odd bird. Furthermore: 'Myers' book [not this one] greatly impressed Aldous Huxley. In 1961, 'Human Personality' was re-published as an abridged version with Huxley's foreword, in which he remarked "an amazingly rich, profound and stimulating book"'. I knew Huxley was into some rather odd things, but I had not realised how odd. Perhaps just as well that what I had of his oeuvre was buried back in January.

PS 1: in the vicinity of the tree art above, my telephone and OneDrive between them, have taken to creating large and useless files with names like 'WP_20220520_14_11_58_Rich.nar', that is to say with a '.nar' tacked on the end. Useless in the sense that the Microsoft Photos application won't display them. And to judge from reference 6, a hangover from the days when Microsoft bought Nokia and rebranded some of their telephones as Lumia's. Maybe also a hangover of some sort of finger trouble on my part. 

PS 2: I learn from reference 10 that 'hors d'age' is just a fancy way of saying very old. Better than, say, ten years old.

PS 3: checking with OS this morning, I find that Snake Pass is indeed where I remembered it, the A57 connecting Manchester and Glossop to Sheffield. But not clear from the map whether one can see Sheffield from the top, down Woodlands Valley, but that is what I remember. I also remember Ladyblower Reservoir, off snap bottom right, but that was probably a quite separate occasion. Maybe I should ask OS to write a widget which shades in the field of view from any nominated point. How much computer power would it take to power such a widget? Thinking with my fingers, I would have thought that there would be quite a lot of work to do.

References

Reference 1: https://lincolnshirepoachercheese.com/. Home to the cheese, which I actually get from Neal's Yard Dairy.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/london-bridge.html. The first visit to CS7.

Reference 3: https://consultations.southwark.gov.uk/environment-leisure/cs7-improvements/. 'Cycle Superhighway 7 (CS7) on Southwark Bridge Road has been identified as a priority as it is a key transport route connecting Colliers Wood in the South West to Central London at Southwark Bridge. Since this route was constructed in 2010, cycleway standards have improved and we need to ensure CS7 meets this standard. To do this, we are working in collaboration with Transport for London, to make improvements along the CS7 route'.

Reference 4: https://www.mertonabbeymills.org.uk/history/.

Reference 5: https://www.soif.co/.

Reference 6: https://file.org/extension/nar.

Reference 7: http://montedigrazia.it/.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/ghostly-affairs.html.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_W._H._Myers.

Reference 10: https://www.cognac-expert.com/hors-d-age-cognac/.