Tuesday, 27 June 2023

To Mayfair

The place on the very dark blue that is - although I can't think when we played the great game. I can't even remember if it works very well two handed - although I suspect not. An expedition notable in that I scored a double fake, as already noticed at references 1 and 2.

Bearded indigent on station at the station - as it were - pulling on a small tin - saying Gordons on the front. Maybe it was one of those made up drinks - all sugar and alcohol - which young ladies are said to like. Onto the train, where I had the bad luck to sit opposite someone who sniffed, maybe once every thirty seconds or so. Surprising how irritating such things are. But not so irritating that I did not snooze, and, waking up a bit abruptly, I almost got off at Vauxhall - which would have been even more irritating.

But off at Waterloo after all, behind a gentleman of middle years getting very cross about the number of unnecessary announcements on the train. Perhaps they need to give the job to a computer which one can manage, rather than to some chap who likes the sound of his own voice, who likes his power over the announcement controls.

Quick spin over the bridge, up Drury Lane and onto the cheese shop. Where I was served by a cheerful lady of middle years who was very pleased with herself for cutting my two pieces of cheese, nominally of equal weight, to within a gram of each other.

Pulled a second Bullingdon, rolled down Shaftesbury Avenue, hung right into what seemed like a near empty Piccadilly and parked up on top of Green Park tube station. From where I was able to admire the results of Westminster's no-mow policy - but was not impressed: one might think that we didn't want to advertise the fact we are broke to the many tourists passing through. I also wondered, not for the first time, why this sort of perforated limestone does not suffer more from the frost. One might think that water would get in and, in reasonably short order, smash the rock up as it froze.

Next stop confectionary from the Royal Arcade and after that to Aquavit in St. James' Market. Passing Davidoff's on the way but managing not to go in.

No need to go into Aquavit, it being quite warm enough to sit outside. Warm enough, indeed, that we were glad enough of the umbrella provided by 14:00.

For me, mixed bread (foreign), Gravlax (nicely done, but not , I think a dish I shall frequent) and cheek of beef, this last being a first. Also nicely turned out.

Washed down with something good from Puglia.

All you need to know about it and more from the people at reference 3. Well not quite, as as far as I can tell, we are not told why the bottle is decorated with a sea urchin, that is to say riccio di mare, that is to say, sea hedgehog, as in the French.

And wound up with a spot of their Calvados. Quite cheap for a restaurant, despite the fancy glass, and a lot cheaper than some of their fancy whisky. They also sold cigars, which I have not seen for a while. A flying pig from Nicaragua? Bing offers me a dozen for getting on for £400, so probably not quite the same model as that offered above.

Next to us we had a small group of businessmen, possibly from the middle east, puffing away on large cigars from some mixture of Davidoff's and Fox's. Smelt well enough at the time, but I was quite surprised to still be smelling the smoke on my pillow some days later. Don't suppose I would have noticed in the days when I used to take a puff myself: a reminder that there is no such thing as secret smoking - not unless, that is, you take care of your own laundry!

On exit to the bus, we passed near an establishment which appearing to be selling large white balls. Perhaps they were the sort of thing that one-time aficionados of the cult series 'The Prisoner', having in the mean time become rich, buy to decorate their Surrey gardens with?

Further inspection with gmaps this afternoon reminded me that what I snapped above was actually a sort of old yellow annex tagged onto the relatively new, white main building - perhaps Edwardian - now housing the Dover Street Market. Which is a bit odd in itself as Dover Street is well behind the camera rather than in front of it. But what was it built for? Why the huge upstairs windows? A testing search for later.

Bus down to Vauxhall, past of people in Parliament Square. There were cameras and it was not clear to us whether it was all a put up job for the cameras, rather than a real demonstration, about something that mattered.

Onto the Raynes Park platform library, where the main dish was a book about something called Hadoop - an example of what Californian marketing types calls an empty vessel - which I now know is a language used to describe very large datasets, datasets which are far too big for the SQL queries that those of us that play with more modestly sized datasets know and love.

Accompanied on the left by a booklet from the Soviet Union of 1976 cataloguing some of the many words which Russian learners of English are apt to muddle up - for example pass and past. The instructions at the front are in Russian - of which I just about remember the alphabet, little more - so I have yet to get to the bottom of group 85 snapped above. Luckily, I have just discovered some exercises, in English, at the back, so maybe I will get there.

And on the right by a book which I now remember about. Soon to be on its way to a better place.

PS 1: I have been having some trouble with the words Davidoff (cigars) and Leonidas (chocolates). The former goes missing a lot, the latter not quite so much. On this occasion I have made a bit of an issue of it with the result that, a week or so later, I have got good recall of Leonidas and fair recall of Davidoff. That is to say the latter pops into mind immediately, the latter after a delay of a few seconds. But for the present, they are both getting there. We shall see how long they last.

PS 2: note for the record: the quarter water melon purchased on Saturday, a purchase noticed at reference 4, is now more or less finished, now being Tuesday lunchtime. Both in the sense that there is not much left and in the sense that it is going over, going mushy around the edges. This despite the cling film, despite the refrigerator. I suppose in seriously hot countries you do not buy more than you are going to eat that day. Maybe that's why you see it being sold by the slice in the street in so many films.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/fake-160.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/fake-161.html.

Reference 3: https://www.produttoridimanduria.it/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/cheam-arena.html.

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