Shopping

We recently made our first visit to Kingston for the purposes of shopping, the first such visit for around six months, this despite Kingston being the big shopping centre for our part of south west London, not being far away and having a convenient car park. Shopping being the business, BH undertook to drive both ways.

Lots of traffic both coming and going, although it was not clear why. Traffic all the way, for example, from Ruxley Lane to Chessington North.

There had been a lot of heavy rain and the Hogsmill was far to busy to be able to see whether there were any fish below. But two lads had scrambled down the bank, for what we took to be a spot of unlicensed fishing, despite being more or less beneath the police station. No sign of their having caught anything.

The market seemed to be dominated by bric-a-brac, which one might have thought was more appropriate to a Sunday. But the Olivier bakery had their stall, manned by four young ladies plus a supervisor. Great piles of bread and bready snacks, so one supposes that he does all right. 

The idea of the expedition was to get me a new jacket, something between summer and winter. So puffy but not extravagantly so. So into the large barn of a place at the top of the market presently called GO Outdoors. Lots of stuff, lots of puffing, a lot of it brands that I had never heard of, with prices ranging up to £300 or so. Tempted, but in the end hoped that we could do better elsewhere.

With the rather grand looking building having started life as Nuthall's Restaurant and Banqueting Rooms, as explained at reference 5.

After this first round of shopping, a first pit-stop was indicated, so we settled for the nearby patisserie.

I went for power tea and a apple tart, which turned out to involve almond. A sort of superior Bakewell tart.

Thus powered up, to TK Maxx where I did my business in no time at all, leaving with a semi-puff jacket from Tommy Hilfiger; perfectly sound, probably a discontinued line. There was some confusion over price and I ended up paying a good deal less than I thought I was going to pay. Had the shop been a market stall, no doubt the shall holder would have clocked my confusion and done rather well out of me. Not so much point in a shop with proper checkouts. 

And it remains a puzzle that while I have made three or four successful purchases from TK Maxx over the years, BH's score remains zero, despite there being a substantial branch in Epsom. Not a shop that she finds very attractive for some reason, although she does know people who do.

Primary objective met, it was time to call in Waitrose for a spot of their Gruyère. To be amused by the quick change routine between counters from the cheerful young man who was manning both cheese and meat counters. Changing his plastic apron, washing his hands, the lot. The Gruyère has done well, and we are only just coming to the end of it: not as good as Lincolnshire Poacher for everyday use, but it does last better. But I declined the cheesy kabanosi from Austria which was all that was on offer in that department.

Outside, we wondered why Barclay's Bank had gone to all the bother of this wrap-around extension on the first floor. It was buying them a good chunk space but what about the expense? The speckles are presumably rain..

We took our second pit-stop in the café which has been put together in what was the east end, the altar end, of Kingston's main church - where, I am pleased to say, there were no lurking befrienders waiting to pounce - although, to be fair, the Armenian chap we once got was rather interesting. Complete, as I recall, with a morsel of the true cross, or at least something of that sort. I took a baked potato which was well enough, but it did prompt a bit of nostalgia about real baked potatoes, baked in an oven or in the embers of a fire, rather than the things you get now which have been steamed in a microwave. Given their lack of flavour, perhaps it is just as well that they come heaped up with all sorts of goo. In this case the white goo involved chicken, while I left the yellow goo. But the salad was fresh enough.

While as an atheist I should believe that it does not matter, I still find it odd that people elect to be buried under stones where people might be expected to walk. Or the church fathers might decide to install a café. Perhaps the idea is to prolong the memory of your name at least by exposure of this sort? And then there is the very much grander memorial behind the coffee machine, noticed on a previous occasion. But then, if they do it at Westminster Abbey, why not in lowly Kingston?

On the other hand, I think I read in the 'Golden Lotus' of robbers and worse who would be buried at cross roads, so that people might trample over them for ever more. Perhaps that was the fate of the Golden Lotus herself. I think I bought my copy from the large but long-gone second hand bookshop in Ashburton, the same edition as that above. I only paid a tenner - but then I did not get the dust jackets. A book that started out with Steedman, bookseller of Newcastle upon Tyne, not that long gone to judge by reference 8. Perhaps the owner of the book retired to Devon. The sort of book where the dodgy bits are in Latin so that only posh people get to read them. For example, on page 384 of Volume I, we have: 'Tum ex illa indicia voluptatis exierunt, ut sucus e cohlea quae viam candidam et sinuosam facit...'. I still possess an entirely adequate, if modest, Latin dictionary, but I don't still possess the patience to work my way through this sort of thing!

Last call was one of the two vegetable stalls surviving in the market: walnuts, spinach and giant red tomatoes. The walnuts were a bit scruffy looking - not the red diamond jobs from California - and they turned out to be wet walnuts, which I take to mean that they had not been dried in a kiln. With the result that there was more waste, the texture was slightly rubbery and that the bitter after taste I associated with dry walnuts was missing. Not bad, but they were let down by their appearance. Some of the tomatoes - which turned out to be as red inside as they were outside - went in the stew noticed at reference 7, while the spinach went with it.

BH ruled that the M&S trolley snapped at the head of this post was not to be collected and scored.

A close call in that serious rain started just as we reached the car park.

New jacket put away for when it gets a bit colder. Having already moved up to serious woollies, I need to keep some of my powder dry.

PS 1: 14:58: the problem with 'Insert image' noticed at reference 4 and elsewhere has reappeared - with the same error as before.

PS 2: 16:13: the new 'Insert image' works on the Windows 10 PC.

PS 3: for the record. In the course of our game of Scrabble yesterday, BH claimed a big score involving the word 'tod', which she claimed we had looked up before. I have just checked again, and it is indeed a word, with one cluster of meanings involving foxes from the 11th century and another involving the wool trade from the 15th. About two columns worth. I forgot about 'on my tod', but then I did not spot it either. Perhaps from somewhere else altogether.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/shopping.html. The last shop.

Reference 2: https://www.oliviersbakery.com/. The baker (foreign).

Reference 3: https://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/. The shop that failed to land us.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/testing.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/kingston-one.html.

Reference 6: https://uk.tommy.com/. The brand.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/trolley-594.html.

Reference 8: https://ashrarebooks.com/2012/10/11/blog-on-the-tyne/.

Group search key: gge.