Say cheese

Towards the end of May, back to St. Luke's for what I think will be the last concert of this season: violin sonatas from Christian Tetzlaff (violin) and Kiveli Dörken (piano). Beethoven No.4 in A minor followed by the one and only such sonata Franck in A major.

I have heard Tetzlaff several times before, most recently at Wigmore Hall in 2018, noticed at reference 1. But Dörken does not appear in the archive at all, with or without the umlaut - never having quite got it clear in my mind when this matters. Nor does Franck, a French composer of the 19th century, originally from what became Belgium, more precisely from the same city as Simenon. Nor does he have a place with my vinyl. So all new.

As it turned out, a bright, clear day with a cooling easterly breeze. The bearded indigent was in declamatory mode.

Girlie chatter was non-stop to Waterloo, where I was greeted by a north-east breeze, which slowed me down a fair bit, particularly on the uphill stretch across Blackfriars Bridge and up to Clerkenwell Road. But I find that just over ten years ago, I logged 20 minutes at reference 2, so 25 minutes on this occasion not too bad.

Market Restaurant quiet. Some staff whom I recognised. One old lady reading away over her late breakfast whom I recognised. Bacon sandwich as good as ever.

St. Luke's pretty full. Perhaps it being the last proper concert of the season made a difference. The lady next to me, I thought probably a flat dweller, possibly in the Barbican, could trump my warfarin waffle with her steroid book, a smaller version of my warfarin book. Apparently steroid users, at least sometimes, carry warning cards in the way of warfarin users. She was also familiar with London's chamber music venues - with tastes a lot broader than mine, so she knew all about Franck.

Perhaps her encouragement was why I liked the Franck as much as the Beethoven, which I did know, with at least one prior outing, for example that noticed near ten years ago at reference 3. A plus was the restrained introduction from the BBC 3 lady; not as gushing as it sometimes is. Set off by the bright red trouser suit worn by the pianist: arms free which must have made for more comfortable playing than a penguin suit - a point made by Rosen in one of his books, probably that at reference 6. With a slow movement from Brahms by way of an encore. All very good.

Then down to Borough, which was busy. Lots of people eating oysters, which I still don't like the look of. Cheese shop busy too. I stayed with Poacher on this occasion, and being slightly overweight on that front, I thought better of getting a piece of the Doddington (of reference 4), which I had rather liked, as well.

And round the corner, the natty little extension noticed at reference 5 was coming on well. If the sign is anything to go by, someone must be spending a lot of money: we don't that sort of sign on our extensions here at Epsom; usually something far more suburban, not to say provincial.

By way of lunch, a cheese and tomato baguette from Upper Crust. Bread better than average, cheese worse than average. But it did the job. For some reason, not in the mood for something flashier.

Stopped off at Raynes Park where all the platform library had on offer was a Tom Clancy novel and a whole lot of rugby magazines. No good at all. But at least they had a Metro at Epsom Station, so I did get my fix of junk news. A reminder of how the rest of the world lives.

A spot of refreshment at home, and then some quality time with the Android manual. Where I learned how to put accents on letters on my Samsung phone, something I had never managed with my Microsoft phone. I failed with something called glide, but I did manage some elementary dictation - which I found more bother than it was worth. I used variations on the sentence 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog' - and I am pleased to be able to say this evening that Bard knows all about this sentence. As does both Bing and Google. But Google also corrected the sentence, and so I have to mark Bard down for missing that bit. It should have read: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'. Which I now know is just one example of something called a pangram.

From the new possibilities, beyond the keyboard and the mouse, offered by the touch screen of a telephone, I associated to the new possibilities for expression offered by sign, say BSL or ASL, the languages of a lot of the deaf. While sign may not be great at the nuances of the conjugations of verbs - perhaps of older languages like Basque with lots of possibilities - it can do some things with great ease. For example, suggesting repetition or talking to someone on the other side of a room.

The day closed with my worrying about the lack of an email receipt for my second ride of the day, marked in the snap above as 'ended at invalid date'. Possibly something to do with the stand being rebooted when I turned up there for my third ride. I couldn't find the contact number on the TFL website, so I sent them a message instead - having declined the offer of expert chat about it all for a fee - an offer which I found a little irritating. However, the receipt turned up fairly soon after that and I got a courteous and helpful reply to my message not long after that. Including the contact number for next time. The system does work!

PS 1: 'Rosen' turns out to be one of the search keys which causes the search feature of File Explorer to hiccup. One has to close it down and reopen to get the results from the archive, in this case about a dozen of them, the first being reference 7 from 2007.

PS 2: on my second attempt, Bard admits to knowing about Doddington the cheese, as opposed to Doddington the garden centre. It also claims to turn up three blogs about cheese, with rather curious results when you click on the images provided. For a previous outing for Bard, see reference 8.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/helmchen-two.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/03/st-lukes.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/07/eberle-wosner-kreutzer.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/let-them-eat-cake.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/tate-trimmed-cheese.html.

Reference 6: Piano Notes: the hidden world of the pianist - Charles Rosen - 2002.

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2007/02/pc-or-not.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/bard-one.html.