No emails

Tested the Santander cycle scheme again a week or so ago, pulling a Bullingdon at Clapham Junction for the purpose. As far as I can make out from the snip above, the new pay-as-you-go scheme has not yet kicked in. On the other hand, the confirmatory emails mentioned at reference 1, seem to have vanished already, after just a brief appearance. I dare say I will manage without.

At Epsom station, I had a go at fig spotting from the train, a good deal nearer the figs than when standing on platform 4, as noticed at reference 2. But it did not seem any easier, not that I had much time before the train got underway. Maybe figs have evolved camouflage to deter predators until they are ripe and ready to go (in the mendacious parlance of the Sainsbury's marketing department).

And then, I had an adolescent couple across the aisle from me, wittering on in the way of people of that age. I wondered how I would get on trying to teach such people, or otherwise interact with them. My starting position being that I would find it rather difficult, but maybe you get used to them. Maybe there are compensations. After all, lots of adults do manage.

Pulled my Bullingdon and headed off for Vauxhall. On the way coming across a very impressive, nearly new, six axle flatbed from Warton Freight Services in Battersea Park Road. With the flatbed having a proper steel frame with wooden flooring. The only change from my youth, when wagons of this sort ruled the road, being the move to articulated. Not fast enough with my telephone these days, but there is plenty more to impress at reference 3.

Parking up at Wyvil Road, I found a shiny new, six bay Gail's Bakery outlet, a chain which has rather disappointed since I first came across in 2015 or so, as noticed at reference 4. The offering is too complicated, too expensive and with too much sour dough. This new outlet was the biggest I have come across and it is already spilling out onto the pavement with chairs and tables. We shall see how it gets on: plenty of new flats in the area, presumably full of bright young things who like such places.

The concrete art, noticed on some previous occasion, visible back right. Finding it is left as an exercise for the reader. Be imaginative with your search keys!

Whereas I went down to the Griffin Belle. It might have been made over a few times, but it is still a public house.

First puzzle, how did this presumably fairly new parquet, certainly not original, get so battered?

Second puzzle, why do bars like this think that I need to be able to see six wall mounted televisions from where I sat, all about the same size as the Samsung we have just bought for home use, last noticed at reference 5. And a much larger one behind me. Mostly all showing the same sporty picture, but, mercifully, the sound had been turned off in favour of something anodyne. What would have been called the Light Radio when I was little.

It turned out later that all was not well, and a small team of maintenance men turned up to fiddle with the master cabinet, high up on the wall above the till. A cabinet not unlike the sort of thing people used to put their hifi in, but not very full, with only a couple of the half dozen or so slots occupied.

From there onto the Estrela, where I had more or less the same meal as last time, as noticed at reference 6. Pork belly much better, milk pudding not as good, the one I had last time still being under construction.

Heading back to Vauxhall Station, I came across this Sainsbury's trolley, but not being very sure how far it was to the new shop down the Wandsworth Road, and not fancying a serious push, I left it for someone else. Instead, entertained by a bearded man with a flute standing on top of one of those green cable boxes. He seemed very grateful for the £3 I put in his cup, the price, perhaps, of half a pint, so scarcely a princely offering.

While more or less at the station we had another outlet for bright young things. Maybe I will investigate on the next occasion.

No aeroplanes at Earlsfield, despite there having been a regular procession of them over the Estrela an hour or so previously. On the other hand, I was reminded of the curious wrinkling you get at the end of the roofs of the carriages of the trains there. Never been able to work out why this unsightly feature has to be there - but it always is. Not an occasional flaw at all.

While back at Epsom, on the way to TB, I was able to admire the subject of another planning-heritage controversy. It seems that a developer wants to replace the two or three newer units at this end of the line by a small block of seven flats. I think there is talk of three stories or more. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. We also get to lose a newsagent, one of the last in Epsom to keep up the tradition of paper boys.

PS: just before I left the train home at Epsom, I managed to snap the offending fig tree, in the hope of capturing something. Complete failure, and I have failed to find a single fig in the snap above.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/st-lukes.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/d956.html.

Reference 3: https://wartonfreight.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/11/piggy-bank-machines.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/communique-from-cyber-front.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/more-park.html.

Trolley 535

Captured across the road from our Costcutter, a Sainsbury's trolley a good way from its assumed home in Kiln Lane.

The front left hand wheel was one of those black plastic affairs, presumed to contain some kind of a locking device. A device which had gone wrong, as the wheel kept noisily jamming as pushed the trolley forward. Jamming which was unjammed by taking the weight off the wheel. With the result that pulling the trolley worked rather better than pushing it, made the journey through the Screwfix underpass and on the Sainsbury's practical - although I might say that pulling was harder work than pushing. Not what the engineers at Wanzl intended. And presumably Sainsbury's, as a bigger customer, have made some deal whereby their warranty is not voided by their tampering with a front wheel.

Deposited in what I take to be the Sainsbury's equivalent of  'behind the shed' in the 'Thomas the Tank Engine' stories. Left on its side in an attempt to alert the trolley jockeys to the problem wheel.

Back to Epsom down East Street, past the creationists where there were no trolleys for once. Although the front entrance is rather spoiled by the permanent presence of a couple of large skips.

The heels on one of my two pairs of trainers have worn down to the point where they are probably bad for my feet, so a new pair is in order, some 15 months since the last purchase noticed at reference 3. Which is not bad, even allowing from the reduced wear arising from having two pairs on the go. Moab 2 Ventilator trainers, branded for if no longer made by Merrell, trainers which I have now been wearing for more than a decade, with just the odd lapse. Finding them is left as an exercise for the reader.

I thought for a change to take a look in Mountain Warehouse, where they carry quite a lot of trainers, all their own brand, some more a less a replica of my Merrells. But they lost the sale as they could not manage size 12. So I shall probably stick with the real thing, which have served me well.

One point of interest. I learned from the young lady at Mountain Warehouse that Merrells do a vegan option, although I believe my own trainers contain a modest amount of animal leather in the uppers. It seems that the main problem with vegan trainers is being sure that the glue doesn't contain anything animal, while still working as glue. Apparently, around five years ago, they (or their Chinese subcontractors) got this wrong and there were lots of returns. A vegan storm that passed me by.

Two or three other errands then back home for a spot of sea bream, which has more or less replaced cod in our diet.

Plus two washers. One smaller than anything else in my collection, one a spacer rather than a washer. But near enough.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-534.html.

Reference 2: https://www.wanzl.com/en_GB.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/trainers.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Trolley 534

These two were captured on the fringes of the Chase Estate, having been there for a couple of days or so. One medium trolley from the M&S food hall, one small trolley from Waitrose. Luckily, the small trolley fitted inside the large trolley and walking the two of them was no worse than expected. Best on the shop floor, OK on the level, but a bit of a pain when the pavement is sloping in a direction orthogonal to the direction of travel.

No small trolleys in the Waitrose stack. Plenty of medium trolleys in the M&S stack. No lemon sherbets in Hatty's. Wholesaler problems. Stuck in some container at Felixstowe (my birth place)? I could have had strawberry sherbets but I didn't fancy them - not that I asked for a sample.

A rather splendid Russian vine in the Screwfix passage. Otherwise, Fallopia baldschuanica, a vine which, for some curious taxonomic reason is also a member of the knotweed family. Years ago, I tried to grow one up a dead plum tree, which I thought entirely suitable, but it failed to thrive and went when the plum tree finally rotted and fell over.

A new to me flowering shrub in the bed outside the Screwfix front door. To be looked up at some point.

First line recovery, otherwise FLR, has been a useful (if rather unsporting) source of registration plates, although they have failed to deliver on No.36 where I have been stuck for well over a year now. This medium recovery vehicle, parked outside the Ford Centre, appeared to have started life with Iveco, but to have been finished off in Poland.

Iveco appearing to be an Italian-French manufacturer, domiciled for some reason in the Netherlands. While Tevor, as far as I can tell, goes in for customising trucks made by other people. See references 3 and 4. It seems that the Poles do more than pork sausages, horse racing, agriculture and coal.

PS: horses because I remember a Polish barman in Vauxhall telling me that the communist regime went to a lot of expense and bother to make sure that the people had access to horse racing. To the extent that his council flat in Warsaw came with a fine view of one of their race tracks.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-533.html.

Reference 2: https://www.theashleycentre.co.uk/shops/hattys-sweet-shop/.

Reference 3: https://www.iveco.com/Pages/Iveco-brands.html.

Reference 4: https://www.tevor.pl/pl/.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Sutton

Last week saw one of what have become very occasional visits to Sutton, that is to say visits which go beyond passing through on the train on the way to Balham or London Bridge. The occasion was having some business with NatWest and arriving at their branch in Epsom to find a notice on the door saying that it was closed for staffing reasons not further specified. Having no idea how much longer it was going to be closed, I thought I might as well pop along to Sutton.

Just missed a train at Epsom Station, but there was another in quarter of an hour or so. And while I was waiting, I was entertained by the advertisement snapped above for the very bank in question.

Out at Epsom to find the house where I had once spent an entertaining afternoon with some Sutton low-life firmly shut. Even then, I thought probably not a place for people in suits to visit after dark. These being the days when people with business still wore business suits: but would 'call me Tony' have been any less conspicuous than I was?

A short while later, I arrived at the bank's Sutton branch to be taken in charge by a helpful older lady who was indeed able to help, even if what she had to tell me was not terribly encouraging.

I could have returned to Epsom at that point, but having got there, I thought I ought to have a bit of a look around. Churches first.

The most conspicuous was Trinity of reference 1. Methodist. Possibly welcoming in theory, but very firmly shut. Then there was an older church, St Nicholas, one of three regular churches under the rather whizzy umbrella of reference 2. But not whizzy enough to actually be open. And not whizzy enough for the church there to look much like the one that I saw. Whatever the case, there were some handsome trees in the churchyard.

Next stop the library, rather larger than the one at Epsom, but somehow not as attractive. Perhaps the problem was that it was different.

Last stop Morrison's, to check up on the Polish sausage department. They had maybe 2m of shelf devoted to the stuff, mostly from the people already noticed at reference 3. That, plus something called Krakus Źywiecka, described by Sainsbury's as a medium coarse, cooked, smoked and dried pork sausage. We rather liked it. So all in all, there is life after kabanos. Rounded out the purchase with some saucisson sec, not from our usual Bastides, yet to be sampled.

Back to the station where they had a very small platform library which, surprisingly, contained quite a lot of musical material, which I declined. But I did get a children's science book about light and sound, updated in 2005 from the Macdonald Young Books edition of 1999, then a division of Wayland Publishers Ltd, then a member of the Hodder Headline family of companies. Printed in China. After which Hodder Headline was swallowed up by Hodder & Stoughton was swallowed up by Hachette. A French outfit if you please, for which see reference 4. At least, as it turned out, a useful complement to the more learned stuff that I have been consuming of late. 

PS: I noticed a day or so later that the Epsom branch of NatWest was open again.

References

Reference 1: https://www.trinitychurchsutton.org.uk/.

Reference 2: https://suttonparish.org/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/new-sausage.html.

Reference 4: https://www.hachette.com/fr/accueil/.

New beef

The fore rib of beef purchased from Upper High Street as noticed at reference 2 was cooked about ten days ago. I remember now that possibly the last time I used this butcher, then under different management, was at the time of the mad cow business and he was selling beef on the bone for one's dog. As I recall, the rules about selling beef were very fierce, perhaps unnecessarily fierce, for a while. Although that said, a vegetarian cook with whom I was acquainted with died of it. I never got to know how she had acquired it.

This rib is snapped above, tied and guyed and ready for the oven. The lightweight string being that put on by the butcher, the heavyweight string being my own. Just like the sirloin, a preparatory cut had been made across the ribs. Not sure whether that was in preparation for taking out all the bone below or to make subsequent carving easier.

The old side, well oiled, to be compared with the face on the previous snap which had only just been cut. The slab of fat was not the original. According to the butcher, the original fat tends to come away as the meat is aged, so it is usual to tie on a fresh piece.

The beef weighed in at 6lbs 12.5oz and went into the oven pre-heated to 165°C at 10:25. At which point I set off the find the day's trolleys, as recorded at reference 1.

Back at 12:35 to take a look. That is to say to poke a skewer in and do some basting. Turned the oven off at 12:50. Took some spiced up olives while the meat was finishing, discarding most of the chillies. Not the same at all as the giant olives we had been given at Battersea, despite their being from the same stable.

The finished joint.

Cutting from the old side. We thought the beef spot on. 

Served with greens, carrots and brownish rice, all boiled. Plus a spot of Fleurie from Waitrose.

Towards the end of the first shift.

Apple pie for dessert. I forget from which neighbour these particular apples came. A shallow pie, made on a white enamel plate, rather than the deep pie in a white enamel pie dish which my father used to make occasionally. He used eating apples rather than the cooking apples we used, his not growing these last, apart, I suppose from the Blenheim Oranges which some people regard as a cooking apple. Eating apples differing from cooking apples in that they cook whole, they do not tend to reduce to a mush.

The end of the second day.

The end of the third day. On this occasion taken with a green salad and a potato salad.

The end of the fourth day. Not enough left for a fifth day, so BH did it when I was out and about somewhere or other.

Getting nine meals out of it made it seem rather more economical than it really was! On the upside, BH thought the beef was great, the best we have had for a while. She also liked not having to think very hard about cooking for a few days.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-532.html. The trolley of the day.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/st-lukes.html. Beef purchase.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/cheese.html. Olives purchase.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/sirloin.html. The last beef.

Security

In the course of yesterday's battery emergency, I learned about a new security feature on our Ford car. It seems that when you change the battery, the car clock, which in this car is mixed up in a confusing way with the car radio, loses its electricity supply for the duration and resets itself when the electricity supply is resumed.

At which point, if you happen to notice that the date and time have been reset to the date and time of manufacture or sale or something and try to correct it, you get a message about codes. I didn't have a clue what this was all about, but the helpful man at the garage did. Between us we recovered the car's user manual from the depths of the glove compartment - not that we keep any gloves there - and typed the code which somebody had written into the box provided at the beginning of the manual into the car radio.

Message about codes disappears and after a bit of fiddling about I was able to reset the time and date.

For a while I puzzled about the point of this particular security feature. If I was a bad person who had stolen this car - a bit unlikely considering the state it is in - and who cared about the date and time shown on the radio - all I would have to do is fish the manual out of the glove compartment and do the business. While if I was a good person who sold the car, as like as not the manual would go missing. So what would the new owner do? While if I was a good person who was changing his battery, why add in this extra step? So, all in all, why bother at all with a security code?

Then it dawned on me that one was not supposed to keep the user manual in the car, where it might, just occasionally, come in handy. You were supposed to keep it in a safe place at home. Then when you wanted it, you had to get home. You had to remember where that safe place was. And so on and so forth.

Maybe when we get around to getting a new car, the engineers will have got around to including a small battery with the clock which keeps it ticking over while the battery is changed. Something that the engineers who built our central heating control unit thought of many years ago.

PS1: BH and I are each responsible for one of the two dents in the back bumper, tributes to the absence of the rear view radar that you get in a proper car. And one is a memento of capturing a Wellingtonia on the outskirts of Ashstead. But at least with one each we can't moan about them. And given that the back bumper is plastic (or perhaps fibre glass), no pressing need to repair it.

PS 2: I might also say that the combination of the Civil Service Insurance Society, Green Flag, the National Rescue Group and Epsom Autos served us well. National Rescue had a man with a van at our door within an hour and a half of our call to Green Flag. The man got the car started in minutes using a hand held contraption about the same size as a packet of Rich Tea biscuits. While Epsom Autos had replaced the worn out battery by the close of play.

Sharp shooting

I read today at reference 1, the NASA have succeeded in sending a small spacecraft around 7 million miles to crash into an asteroid about 150m across. And in filming the impact and transmitting the images back to earth. We will learn in due course whether they have succeeded in deflecting the asteroid, the object of the exercise.

In the meantime, we are not told how much the spacecraft weighed, although to judge from its pictures I should imagine well under a ton, well under say 1,000kg. Not very much compared with 150m sphere of rock, which Bing tells me amounts to 1,767,145.867644 cubic metres. Say 5 million tons in rock, so a lot bigger.

But whatever the case, a feat of engineering.

PS 1: I have also now learned that the gif file format supports moving pictures as well as stills, movement which survives uploading into Blogger. A form of illustration which is rather abused on the Internet, often irritating rather than informing me, but I thought I had to give it a go. I had to know.

PS 2: also, from reference 3, that the spacecraft weighed around half a ton. No idea how big that is in the zoo of satellites and other space objects.

References

Reference 1: Watch the moment NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into an asteroid: The project is the first time humanity has tested a planetary asteroid defense system - Rhiannon Williams, MIT Technology Review - 2022.

Reference 2: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dart/in-depth/.

Reference 3: https://dart.jhuapl.edu/.

Heritage Leatherhead

This year's heritage trail, started the weekend previously and noticed at reference 1, finished up at Leatherhead, with the old building called the Mansion as the focus. The main part of which building now does the registration of births, deaths and marriages, with the library in a wing adjacent.

Parked down by the Mole, in the Pay-and-Display next to the historic public house, now called the Running Horse and not on the heritage day menu. Rather, we headed up the hill, mostly through what had been the back garden of the Mansion, taking in the curious bottlebrush like bush snapped above, to pay a visit to the small Leatherhead Museum, occasionally open and, as it turned out, more interesting than the rather bigger museum in Dorking. Maybe it is all a matter of how one feels on the day.

We started off by chattering to the lady trusty about how much of the stuff now to be found in such places was to be found in our homes when we were small. This chatter being promoted by a pair of wooden laundry tongs, more or less identical to the one's my mother used for fishing stuff out of the washing machine and dumping it in the massive sink adjacent.

From where I moved onto the industrial department to admire this clock from the Magneta Time Co. Ltd, a company that appears to have gone in for master-slave clock systems, time keeping clocks and various sound equipment. See reference 3.

From there to admire the display built around Ronson, once the big employer in the town. Big enough to run to their own chorus line. You can read all about it at reference 4, if you can put up with the deadening infestation of advertising material, some of it paid for by the people from whom we rent cottages from Dartmoor.

Next stop the small display in the Library about the Mansion house, where I turned the pages of the sales particular for its sale in 1903. It seems that one of the things the prospective purchasers would want to know about were sporting facilities of the area, that is to say golf, horse racing and horse hunting. It seems that this last need was met by the Surrey Union and the West Surrey Hounds. I am happy to be able to report that the Surrey Union is still going strong, which is more than can be said for the Ronson factory.

A good chunk of the back garden is now a public park, running down to the Mole, bottom left in the snap above, but enough lawn and such has been left for wedding pictures. A mole which occasionally rises to flood into the houses at the bottom of the hill, top left.

Closed with a quick look inside what had been a theatre when we first came to Epsom, but which now muddles along, mainly on a diet of films. I suppose there must be lots of such places, all over the country, with the appetite for such theatre having been killed off by television. Along with all the repertory companies of luvvies which used to serve them. Being in a prosperous area - refugees from the East end notwithstanding - with plenty of well off - not to say rich - people being no defence.

Once a cinema, now a fine example of the concrete art of the 1960's. Art for which I have always had a soft spot. From where I associated to the concrete art of the rather later National Theatre on the South Bank, a place we have not visited for a long time. But not more than four years ago, as can be seen from reference 6.

Access to the church denied. They clearly missed out on the heritage message. Not in the heritage loop. As far as I can remember, a curious place inside, on more than one level. There are also the unusual dormer windows to the nave roof, presumably a Victorian embellishment.

Running Horse declined, and back home in time for a light lunch.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/heritage-dorking.html.

Reference 2: https://www.running-horse.co.uk/. Public car park cunningly excluded.

Reference 3: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Magneta_Time_Co.

Reference 4: https://www.company-histories.com/Ronson-PLC-Company-History.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorndike_Theatre. A rather slim entry.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/hell.html.

Communiqué from the cyber front

At the beginning of the month we acquired a new cyber device, otherwise a shiny new Samsung television, as reported at reference 1. This to report a setback, what losing belligerents sometimes call a retreat to a prepared position, sometimes a euphemism for having been hammered.

We had been getting on fairly well, despite the continued absence of red button news from BBC, with a diet of terrestrial television during the day and old-fashioned detective dramas during the early evening. Old-fashioned in the sense that on Freeview they would generally have appeared before 21:00 and would not involve too much - if anything - in the way of violence, sex, realism or important social issues and problems.

Then, mysteriously, one of the two services to which we had subscribed, ITV Hub, vanished. That is to say the icon was still present, you could still search for its programs, but when you clicked on anything the screen went blank, apart from the volume control icon. This was a couple of days ago. And half our evening viewing options vanished with it.

We wondered whether the computer driving the hub was going through a sticky patch. A bit improbable, as it was clearly alive and well on the laptop on which I am typing this. We wondered about opening up the fat e-manual, but BH thought that this was a bad idea. We wondered about phoning up Richer Sounds, who would no doubt have tried to be helpful - despite it being very hard to be helpful in such matters over the phone. A last resort.

Then last night, enough was enough, and at around the watershed hour of 21:00, I found my way to support on the screen. Dropped down through various menus until I was offered what appeared to be a revert to factory settings option. An option of last resort on personal computers and mobile phones; an option which is likely to trash all one's possibly extensive personalisation. Notwithstanding, the thought at 21:00 was that there had not been all that much of that, so there was not much to lose.

Except that there was quite a bit of running and up down stairs to key six digit key code numbers into mysterious websites and to look up obscure passwords which I had taken the precaution of storing on the laptop. I had to find pencil and paper. Very old-speak.

And after about half an hour or this, ITV Hub reappeared. To be on the safe side I spent a few seconds with an old-fashioned detective drama.

Some fun and games for BH this morning, while I continued to snooze, but all seems to be well.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/cyber-flatpack.html.

Reference 2: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/UE43BU8500KXXU/.

Reference 3: https://www.richersounds.com/.

A Post Office service

Back in 2018 I reported at reference 1 on my difficulty in getting certified copies of identifying documents that I could send off to a financial services company which wanted them.

Today, I was asked by a legal services company for some more certified copies. So I go to the helpful solicitor up some back stairs, the chap I ended up using last time, to find that he has retired and that his successor has stopped doing copies. Far too much bother with the regulators, far too much risk. But at least one of the clerks volunteered the information that the Post Office do do copies.

Which they do. Visit the library to make the copies - where they are happy to change a £20 note into something that I can feed their photocopier with. Visit the Post Office for the second time to certify the copies. Not such a grand stamp as the solicitor used, but I dare say that it will do.

Pop home to package the copies up and put them in an envelope. Visit the Post Office for the third time to buy tracked delivery. Job hopefully done.

But it remains a mystery why it is OK for the Post Office to take on the risk, but not for banks, building societies or solicitors. Nor am I very sure what the risk is: after all, on the record, all that they are saying is that the piece of paper A is a true copy of the piece of paper B. They are certainly not saying anything about piece of paper B, although, maybe, when I was not looking, they took a quick look at the copy of the very bad photograph on my driving license and decided that it was near enough me.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/legal-and-financial-services.html.

St. Luke's

A week ago, the first St. Luke's of the season, in fact the first since the visit noticed at reference 1, back in March. If one believes the blog that is.

A visit involving two rides, displayed above in a new format: TFL have clearly had a makeover of the customer portal, one result of which is that I now know the numbers of the Bullingdons that I have used. I could become a proper train spotter.

I also got an email for each ride, which confirmed that I had had a ride, without adding any further information. Perhaps the long number at the top would enable me to do some tracing on the bank account on which TFL draw for payment.

The draw was Elizabeth Leonskaja offering Schubert: Kavierstuck No.1 in B flat minor, D.946; and, Piano Sonata No.21 in B flat major, D.960. A lady whom I first heard at this same venue, more than a decade ago, as noticed at reference 2. Beethoven on those occasions. Subsequently heard doing Schubert at the Wigmore Hall.

A cloudy and cool morning. Frame house on the go for once. Travellers on Fair Green gone. Trolley present in a tree on West Hill: no time at that time, but subsequently captured as No.532, as per reference 3 below. Bearded indigent present, fully clothed on this occasion. Plus a strikingly dressed, not so young, slightly foreign lady sporting spotted blue dungarees. In a lather of indecision about whether or not to coffee. And then there was the question of where. She opted for the Costa just outside the station.

On the train we had a large and flashy cycle saying Starsky. But all that Bing can turn up is a cycling club in Dublin, a club with a Facebook page that works (reference 4) and a website that does not. All seems a bit unlikely.

Then on the ramp at Waterloo we had another striking lady, all dressed up as if to go to the races or something like that, with various bags and packages from a morning's shopping somewhere - and hiring a Bullingdon. She seemed quite confident that all would be well, but I did not stay to make sure. She was a big girl and probably did not want my help.

To Clerkenwell Road where there was a young man on a fixed wheel bike with rather a splendid front carrier, made out of some kind of tubing, possibly aluminium, smart and neat enough, but looking as if it had been knocked up by some small engineering shop, rather than mass produced somewhere in the Far East. A good deal smarter and neater than the wooden front carrier I made for my days cycling between Hambledon and Titchfield (in Hampshire). A run with a fairly hefty hill in the middle of it, a hill which I would probably not care to tackle now.

To the Market Restaurant in Whitecross Street where the bacon sandwich on crusty white was even better than I had remembered it. Proprietor still there, staff all new. But very pleased to find it was still up and running. And busy enough, considering that the street food operation outside did not look as busy as of old.

To St. Luke's where access was denied. Some story about the piano tuner not turning up, so I sat on the stairs in the stair well, from where I was able to admire the hinges on the old door, much like the sort of thing you get in stately homes, places like Hampton Court Palace. Perhaps they trusted neither the joinery nor the (animal) glue and so liked a bit of steel to hold the door together.

Then there was the matter of tuning the Steinway. Do the Steinway people - based near the Wigmore Hall - have piano tuners on standby? Is that all part of their service, included in the £50,000 or more which you might pay for one of their concert grands? Is buying such a thing a bit like buying a flat, with an annual service charge on top of the purchase price? Maybe there are leasing deals which are tax-efficient for the globe-trotting pianist.

After which my eye wandered to the stairs, with the supports for the handrail set into holes at the very edge of the stone treads. And if one was worrying about this being a source of weakness, there had clearly been plenty of mending. It all looked a bit shaky to me. Maybe not a handrail to put too much weight on. Something to talk to a mason about should opportunity arise.

We got in about 15 minutes late. Leonskaja appeared in a sleeveless dress, comfortable for arm action, and with low heels. I wondered about that, given the large amount of pedal action for the first piece, very visible to me as very much in my eye line. A piece which I did not know but rather liked. I learned afterwards that it almost counted as an impromptu. 

D.960 as good as I have come to expect. An encore which was the slow movement from something, but going through all three of the late sonata slow movements - that is to say including this one - that evening, played by Kempff, I was unable to say which one it was, my state of knowledge being that they have all got rather fused together. Then again, perhaps it was something else altogether.

Pulled my second Bullingdon for the run back to Waterloo, during which nearly all the bad manners were from cyclists, with the odd delinquent pedestrian. Some frustration at the long waits at big junctions, but reasonably clear runs between them. Making it to fairly near the top of the ramp at Waterloo.

Pulled a French book at the Raynes Park Platform Library (RPPL), reference 5. Written by a lady who was clearly something of an eminence if reference 6 is anything to go by - and from where the snap above is lifted. But so far, all I have found out is that I find her relatively modern French fairly hard going. Need a dictionary to hand. But, hopefully, I shall persevere. And then there will be five more volumes to go.

Out at Epsom to investigate the South American butcher which has turned up at the Rifleman end of our High Street. Not very impressed by their counter display, so I turned my attention to their glass fronted cold cupboard where there were plenty of beef joints on display. But they were all a funny colour and all looked very old. The butcher - whose English was not great - said that it was all at least two months old, which I take to mean two months since slaughter. Chilled rather than frozen, so perhaps the two months was the boat trip from South America. Or do they fly the stuff in, in half empty jumbos, in the way of flowers from Central America? In any event, I was rather put off by both age and colour, so I did not get as far as having a joint taken out of the cupboard for inspection. I thought afterwards that the funny colour might have been funny lighting, chosen so as not to heat up the cold cupboard.

But too late for me, as I headed up Upper High Street to see if there was still a butcher there, which there was, although under new, young management. And he had quite a decent looking bit of fore rib, of which I took two ribs, just over half.

Hung for about 40 days, so rather less than two months rather than rather more. Price a bit up, price rises which the absent butcher in Manor Green Road had been warning me about over a number of visits. But at least I have somewhere else to go now, should he not come back from his holidays.

And so to the Rifleman where I was able to savour my purchase. Trade quite good, better than the Blenheim. Some serious looking people out back, possibly the hard core of our local Labour Party, plotting the campaign to come. Funeral festival on the big television, sound thankfully off. And so there I sat until in came two ladies of middle years, back from queuing for 12 hours or whatever in the vicinity of Green Park, or wherever it was that there was queuing action. Much hugging and kissing all around and we were also treated to quite a respectable curtsey. Apparently the experience had been amazing all around.

I moved onto TB where my presently regular table inside had been taken over for the purposes of a hen party to take place later in the day. But I was able to reminisce about the far-off evening when I had taken a posh cigar in company with a plausible gent and his lady, sat at the very bar snapped above, several refurbishments ago. He was rather fond of substances of all sorts and I believe the lady had been available should I have had needs in that department. He subsequently spent time at HMP in one of the HMP's round about. Perhaps the one at Kingston, according to reference 7 now being redeveloped. So the Tories have flogged off the old prison to developers, but have they put up the money needed for a new one, needed to house all the people banged up by our foolishly punitive laws on matters substance? Maybe Rwandan action is to come, the fact that many of the people concerned can claim distant descent from some quite different part of Africa notwithstanding.

However, on closer inspection, I find that this prison was in the Kingston area of Portsmouth, rather than in Kingston upon Thames. And the only prison that Bing can turn up in the right area was called a House of Correction and was closed in 1852. Yet another puzzle to solve.

In the meantime, I have run down (with the Ordnance Survey) the Kingston area of Portsmouth. I learn that there is also a Somers Town there, otherwise near Kings Cross in London.

Back at TB, we had a very friendly young dog. I wondered about how it was that a lot of dogs had plenty of affection for their owners, possibly for their owner's friends and relations, but plenty of aggression for everyone else. Was this some derivative of the behaviour in the wolf packs of old?

PS: I think that, given the various processes the snap of the meat ticket has gone through, a forensic geek - the sort of person who has just appeared on our new telly in a program called 'Shetland' - would not be able to recover the financial information from under the blue marker. Easy enough to see that the picture had been tampered with after it left my telephone, but not what it was in the original.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/back-to-st-lukes.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/11/double-leonskaja.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-532.html.

Reference 4: https://www.facebook.com/Starskycyclingclub/.

Reference 5: Le bruit do nos pas: I: Apprendre à vivre - Clara Malraux - 1963.

Reference 6: https://malraux.org/clara-malraux-1897-1982/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Kingston.