More cello

Back to St. Luke's at the end of last month for another bacon sandwich and another dose of cello. What will probably turn out to be my last visit to the area for a while.

A cool and cloudy morning at Epsom. With a M&S food hall trolley behind the tree on Station Approach, marked down for action later, action which, in the event, never materialised. A quick search failed to reveal the occasion when I did take a trolley from behind the very same tree - nor was a trolley there on the day that Google visited. Perhaps it will turn up later.

Opted for the soft route via Balham and Old Street Tube, a soft route which included a lot of talkative children and a lot of foreign tongues. I guessed as many as a dozen but perhaps half a dozen would be nearer the mark. Where by foreign, I mean no more than not speaking the King's English. The speakers may well have been born here, or at last been here for some years. Lots of telephones on the go - not intrusive on your space in the way of the broadsheet newspapers of old, but intrusive on your space just the same.

While waiting for the train, I had wondered about how often the Network Rail structural engineers assessed this column holding up the roof, the base of which looked decidedly ragged. Do they have a full-on database about such things, including maintenance and inspection records?

A short hop from Old Street Tube (under reconstruction) to the Golden Lane stand, and from there just a short walk to Whitecross Street, where the street food scene was alive this Friday lunchtime, but not what it had been in the past. Shrunken.

On the way to Whitecross Street, I came across this viburnum, at the time under consideration for the gap which was, in the event, filled with the bamboo noticed at reference 1. The viburnums had attracted because there are quite a few of them on our estate, seeming to do well enough there, and because we had one in the front garden of my childhood home in Cambridge. And this one in Clerkenwell seemed to be doing well enough too - albeit in a south facing, sun spacing spot - which was not on offer at Epsom. See reference 2.

But the Market Restaurant was still up and running and I recognised some of the staff, even if there had been a furniture upgrade, with new chairs, tables and floor. Busy enough, with quite a mixture of customers: locals, blue collars, white collars and pensioners such as myself. Bacon sandwich pretty good, only marred by excessive butter.

A little early at St. Luke's, where I was entertained by an older gent. explaining to another older gent. that his GP really didn't seem to understand that when one had a busy social life, getting one's alcohol consumption down to 14 units a week - a small glass of wine a day - was not really practical. All very topical as my own GP is on the same warpath; a path which includes lurid pictures about same on the large computer screen which has been installed in the waiting room.

A reasonably full house for a new-to-me programme of music from Beethoven and Schumann for piano and cello. Neither of which seemed to run to a website, but they both managed a page in Wikipedia, to be found at references 3 and 4.

I enjoyed the music - and the encore - although the chap next to me found the encore tiresome after the Beethoven which had gone before. A problem which I very much understand - with musicians often selecting encores for their efforts which I find inappropriate - often thinking that having an encore at all was inappropriate - but which I did not experience on this particular occasion.

Bullingdon situation behind St. Luke's not great, with not many Bullingdons but lots of interlopers littering the place. Luckily, there was a Bullingdon for me. A Bullingdon which was not battery assisted - assistance which I do not yet feel that I need.

I suppose it is true that the Bullingdons, perhaps 20 years on now, are a bit dated, but having stands does keep things neat and tidy and it is unusual to get one out which does not work properly. The system works. So why the Mayor of London lets all these other people litter the street and drain revenue out of the Bullingdon operation with their offerings is beyond me. A Labour man too: hasn't even got the excuse that he is a Tory, for whom all public works are bad if not worse, that is to say commy.

Rolled down through a very quiet City to London Bridge, parking up in Southwark Street to pay a call at the Neal's Yard Dairy outlet on the edge of Borough Market. While I was getting my regular ration of Lincolnshire Poacher, the other counter hand was explaining to some tourists that they only sold cheese from the British Isles and Ireland. But when I asked my counter hand about the Channel Islands, she did not seem to have a clue what I was on about. Maybe I should have concentrated on the Scilly Isles and the Isle of Man - the second of which is big enough to export cheese, but I don't think I have ever come across any.

Thought about a snack for lunch - something which public houses are not much good at these days - but decided that the baguettes on offer at Waterloo Station were too much for my modest needs and I abstained. Otherwise, at 15:00 the concourse seemed pretty busy with what appeared to be mainly young people and tourists. Not many workers to be seen at all, let alone a bowler hat or a properly furled umbrella.

I was then confused by an advertisement which proclaimed Vauxhall to be the home of the Beefeater operation, which to me meant the chain of public houses which, thirty years ago, made a point of selling their steaks from a cold cabinet rather than from a freezer. A quick peek at reference 5 tells me that they do still exist, even if their menu looks much like that from any other pub grub operation, but it eventually dawned on me that the advertisement was about gin, not about beef at all. Clearly a place to be visited when I am next in the area. See reference 6.

Stopped at Raynes Park to pick up a copy of 'Urgum the Axeman' from the platform library, weighing in at just over 400 pages including a fair number of line drawings by one Philip Reeve, one time student of what was called the Tech in my day, now part of Anglia Ruskin University. A place where people who had had enough of school sometimes escaped to for their sixth form years. With Reeve also being a writer of children's books in his own right. With this book, by Kjartan Poskitt, being a sort of Viking take on Roald Dahl. Perhaps the sort of thing to amuse pre-teen boys. I turned the pages on the final leg of the journey home, but I don't think I want to do more. Maybe I can interest the Oxfam shop in Epsom? But I was reminded about Professor Branestawm (and his housekeeper whom I think was called Mrs. Flittersnoop) who amused me at about that age. Maybe Epsom Library still do him? Answer: yes! At least two real books and two eBooks. Maybe I will indulge one day. Perhaps BH will, having been amused by my version of the tale of the machine for making pancakes which, after having rolled down the road for a bit, turned out to be better for making garden paths than anything else. 

PS: mystified by the news that our government has walked away from negotiations to reopen the Rough gas storage facility - a facility which might have done something to protect us from the vagaries of the LNG market next winter. Have they forgotten already that it was the failure of the short term money market which brought down Northern Rock? Don't they think that all those foreigners over the water might have a point with their much larger gas storage facilities? Do they think that they can make bets on critical national infrastructure in the same way as an oligarch might make a bet on the future of the music streaming industry or on the future of the fine dining industry? See reference 7.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/fargesia-rufa.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viburnum. A large family, now expelled from its earlier home among the honeysuckles.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luka_Okros.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Ioni%C8%9B%C4%83.

Reference 5: https://www.beefeater.co.uk/en-gb.

Reference 6: https://www.beefeaterdistillery.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility).