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.