Cheese

A trip to London to stock up on Lincolnshire Poacher. My everyday cheese, as I explained to the young lady at the shop, which is true enough - but I was reduced to near silence when she asked what sort of cheese I had for special occasions.

Set off mid-morning, by which time there was rain in the air, although as it turned out, I did not get wet. The frame house had music going even if there was no visible action. The travellers were still on Fair Green. There was a slightly damaged Waitrose trolley outside the station, but no time on this occasion, having settled for the London Bridge train which was imminent.

Entertained nearly all the way to London by a loud and completely inconsequential conversation between two young men about football. No takeaways apart from it having been loud.

For the first time in a while I managed to spot the incinerator. Bit of a puzzle how I mostly seem to miss it, given that it is more or less right next to the tracks. See reference 1.

Next up was a rather ornate church tower, on the same side of the tracks as the incinerator. Almost certainly St. James of Bermondsey. And if the name of the website at reference 3 is anything to go by, I imagine the church will be fully electronic. Large screens offering Powerpoints of the sermon and all that sort of thing. Maybe tambourines and drum kits as well. No stuffy old organs for us. Snap courtesy of the firm of cleaners at reference 4. No doubt they can help out all the white collar types now flooding into this once working class area. Thieving dockers and all that sort of thing. In any event, a church to attempt to visit next time I am in the area.

First stop at London Bridge was the Brindisa shop to get a small tin of some of the olives we had tried at Battersea a few days before. I decided that a small tin would do for a start as we not in the habit of eating olives at home, at least not yet. Snapped below.

Second stop was the Neal's Yard Dairy outlet for my Lincolnshire Poacher. For once, in three pieces rather than the traditional two. It seemed a bit mean to get them to open a new piece.

And then onto the Bullingdon stand in Southwark Street. Helmet on, gloves on bicycle clips on. But my key is red-lighted. Access denied. Plans to pootle across to Clapham Junction in disarray. Thinking on my feet, the thought was that I had forgotten to tell TFL about my new credit card. It might have the same number, but it had a new expiry date and a new CSV. Furthermore, I don't think TFL reminded me, in the way of the more go-ahead outfits. Talking to them on the mobile while on the street didn't seem too clever. Maybe if I strolled towards Waterloo, I would come across a library with computer facilities which I could use? Maybe it would be a Lambeth library, for which I already had a ticket.

But then in Stamford Street, I came across the Thirsty Bear which looked quiet enough to try talking to TFL. Not many people inside, quite loud music, which I don't usually like, but on this occasion would make it less likely than anyone would write down the bank details I was about to read over to the helpful TFL call centre operator. All done in around five minutes, which I thought was pretty good.

At this point decided to go for a burger by way of lunch. This turned out to be much better than average. The bun might well have been bread rather than bagel, sour dough or anything else exotic. The filling was not awash with bacon, cheese, goo or anything else, just a spot of salad. Something I might try again should occasion present itself.

Failed to work out how table football worked and too idle to ask. But I was reminded of the passing fashion in Edinburgh bars, many years ago now, for computer games to be built into most of the tables. About the same time as the fashion for exotic dancing on tables at lunchtime. Some of which, as I recall, was pretty rough.

A little tacky, but I thought worth recording. First thought was that recycling barrels in this way would cost a lot more than just going to B&Q, but who knows? A bar which caters for special interests in the evening?

Pulled a Bullingdon from a nearby stand, my key now working, and headed off for Clapham Junction, that is to say Limburg Road, just off the splendidly named Lavendar Sweep, off Battersea Rise.

Thought about stopping at Kennington Park on the chance of a Wellingtonia, but it looked to be all planes and chestnuts, as was Clapham Common following. Didn't stop me incurring a penalty fare though, visible in the snap above.

Somewhere in Limburg Road. There were a lot of bees (or wasps) on this ivy, and, if you work at it, you can pick some of them out on this snap. Lots more of the same to be found at reference 8, although mostly October rather than early September.

What seemed like a very serious lock at the time, but I have seen plenty more like it since, securing motorcycles in central London.

An entertaining mural, just before I turned into Battersea Rise. 

Fairly busy in the Wetherspoon's opposite the Falcon, to the point where some sort of queuing system seemed to be in operation at the bar. Not that it was really necessary, as there were plenty of staff.

Train to Epsom and down the path connecting the station to Manor Green Road. On which two young cyclists passed me at what seemed like considerable speed, but there was nothing to be done. No large lump of wood to stop them with, too fast to take a picture. But no consideration for other users of the path and all rather anti-social.

And so to wind up proceedings in TB, which was quiet, with just three customers in the garden and none inside, so I was able to snap the olives mentioned above in peace and quiet. I also noticed that they carried a much larger range of sherry and port than is usual these days: fair enough fifty years ago when plenty of people drank the stuff - port and lemon, for example, was a common drink for ladies - in public houses, but unusual now. From where I associate to the passing fashion for sherry bars, where you could buy large amounts of cheap sherry for next to nothing. I remember one in particular, in a passage off Exeter High Street which used to specialise in Hooray Henrys, with which the Exeter of that time seemed to be well supplied.

I closed by wondering whether a vision computer would correctly parse the colours of the walls, ceilings and columns in the snap above. Would it be able to sort out where the light was coming from and how the shadows were falling, how they were affecting the appearance/perception of colour?

Would it hinder or help the computer that the image it got from its camera would be more or less raw pixels, with none of the tricky processing that the retina goes in for before it passes the signal from its photoreceptors up the line? 

For an entertaining example of this tricky processing see reference 9, where colour is conjured out of black and white stripes.

PS 1: for the geographically challenged, Limburg is the southernmost of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands, a place with a complicated and illustrious history. Like the Hainau(l)t of the previous post, reference 7. No idea why it was used as the name of a residential street in Clapham. Was the builder foreign?

PS 2: TFL have given the interface to the Bullingdon system a refresh. I now get to know, for example, the serial number of the Bullingdons that I used.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/london-bridge.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James%27s_Church,_Bermondsey.

Reference 3: https://www.godlovesbermondsey.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.cleaningexperts.co.uk/.

Reference 5: http://thethirstybear.com/.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburg_(Netherlands).

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/mons.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=ivy+bees.

Reference 9: https://michaelbach.de/ot/col-Benham/.