Out of the white cube to find the buildings snapped above. Right, old; left curious. From reference 2 we have: '... Time & Talents originated in 1887 in the drawing rooms of Victorian society. A group of women – who deplored the narrow, over-protected lives of many young girls expected to be merely decorative and obedient – set about challenging this wasteful status quo. Their ambition was to help girls of leisure and education to use their ‘Time and Talents’ in the service of others...'. Apparently not that different from the Toynbee Hall across the water where Profumo served his time. The chap last noticed at reference 3.
St. Mary Magdalene was firmly shut and we learned that in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Tugwell MA was rector, the church was also mostly firmly shut. Evangelical revival notwithstanding.
A little early for lunch so we stopped off at the Woolpack, which still bore some resemblance to the public house it once was. In our corner, we had naked pipework, fairly new, assorted plaques and fairly old tiles. In style, not that unlike those of our own bathroom which would make them from the 1930's.
And so to Casse Croute, a fairly small establishment, say 20-30 covers, offering old style French cooking. Which, unusually, meant a very limited menu - and today's specials were all that was available. A good way to offer quality in a small place. A formula which works provided the punters prefer quality to choice.
Wine list also fairly short, not too pricey at all. We went for a 2017 Saint-Véran from Domaine Thibert, which did perfectly well. Despite some Internet wine buff telling us after the event that: '... The Mâconnais wine region is the southernmost wine region of Burgundy, centered in the town of Macon. The wine region is best known for its affordable white wines...'. Here in Epson, affordable is a euphemism for rubbish. Then there is the puzzle that Saint-Véran is right on the Italian border, well to the south east of Lyon, while the Mâconnais is to the north of Lyon. Perhaps M. Thibert is playing fast and loose with his appellations. See reference 5 for the full story.
Bread good.
I opted for potato and smoked herring salad. Which was good of its kind, but there was a lot of herring, rather too lightly smoked for my taste; more bloater than kipper. Then selle d'agneau. Lamb stuffed with chopped herbs and sat in rather a lot of a rather rich sauce - having forgotten the magic formula 'with sauce on the side please'. The potatoes with bits that came with the meat were good and the whole was nicely presented - but not really my thing: the lamb was drowned in flavourings - and came with rather a lot of fat.
BH did rather better with cold tomato soup followed by turbot.
I took an apricot clafoutis by way of dessert. Not bad, but not as good as BH might knock out on a good day. Rounded off with a spot of Calvados.
All that aside, service was good, the atmosphere was good and chatting with one's neighbours was very much the form - as I believe it is, or at least used to be, in real French restaurants of this sort. From which I associate to a custom from the south of France reported by Lévi-Strauss, whereby two chaps sat opposite each other, each with their little pitcher of the local wine in front of them, would ceremonially exchange pitchers, or perhaps pour the contents of their pitcher into the other glass. Inter alia, a sort of ice breaker.
All these neighbours had come from the White Cube, so perhaps the restaurant did all right out of their exhibitions. A cheerful, older couple to my left from Deptford who told us that that make art out of shopping trolleys there too - outdoor art in their case - and that they made regular trips to Bermondsey. A couple of young chaps to our right, a talkative one from the Czech Republic and a quiet one from Slovakia. The talkative one seemed a good deal more educated about the recent history of his country than I would expect from someone of his age raised in this country. He responded well to mild provocation, in the course of which I learned that he was born shortly after the Russian invasion of 1968. An invasion supported, he told me, by all the other members of the Warsaw Pact, with the honourable exception of Bulgaria. There would have been no point in the Czech army, as it then was, trying to resist; they would have been smashed in very short order. He also told me that me that Švejk, while still respected as an important part of the Czech revival, was now pretty passé. No longer much read. And I couldn't swap Švejk stories in the way that I could fifty years ago; both memory and zest for it absent.
He was presently living in Sweden, which he said had its points, but seemed a bit provincial and out of the way to him. He was reviewing his options.
An afternoon view of the Shard. The dinky grocer left failed to pull me in, substantial lunch notwithstanding. But an unusual street, with lots of old buildings of all sorts; a relic of the past which somehow did not get completely smashed up along with so much of the east end across the river. Or by the developers that followed. Maybe the heritage people were quicker off the blocks here than they were in Epsom.
A very arty bit of extension behind the main drag.
But estates looking the other way. Slum clearance rather than bomb clearance? Plus more outdoor art.
Some sort of street food zone, aka Vinegar Yard, which looks as if it might be having to give way to some more sober, better paying redevelopment. But what about all the tourists and birds of the night that such places pull in?
To Waterloo East and from there neatly caught a train to Guildford, via Epsom. On which there were a couple of young men, one of whom flaked out onto the floor. Luckily the chap with him had the good sense to get him out of the train at the next stop, get him onto a bench and go for help. BH thought a simple case of low blood sugar, but I thought something more sinister. Something which the chap with him knew how to deal with.
Shortly after that I was offered a seat next to a young man engaged on making a roll-up and I was able to dig into my funds of roll-up nostalgia. Boar's Head for real men, Old Holborn for the regulars and Golden Virginia for the wimps. The merits or otherwise of the tins of tobacco which were also a gadget for making roll-ups, which used to pop out of a slot in the lid when you shut it down. No good at all was my view. The merits or otherwise of using pipe tobacco as cigarette tobacco. I don't think I got as far as Kerbside Virginia - this being a sort of tobacco, not a lady of the night.
PS 1: another loss of Internet connection while this was being composed. No loss of data, but both a soft and a hard restart needed to get things going again. All very tiresome. But I have fallen for an HP Zbook from Tier 1, so hopefully not for long, hopefully a worthy successor to the HP Elitebook which had done me for six years and is presently broken. In the end, a bit like cars: easy to stick with a brand that one knows, warts and all.
PS 2: perhaps HP thought that the Xground was getting a bit crowded so went for the Zground instead?
Reference 2: https://www.timeandtalents.org.uk/.
Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/arm-moving.html. A quick check failed to turn up the owner of the arm in today's NYT. Perhaps she is being rested.
Reference 4: https://cassecroute.co.uk/.
Reference 5: https://www.domaine-thibert.com/accueil/?lang=en.
Reference 6: https://pique-nique.co.uk/. Cassecroute's brother. Gmaps knows all about it, but fails to get me to the spot. Possibly in a pavilion in Tanner Street Park, between Tower Bridge Road and Bermondsey Street.
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