About ten days ago now, an expedition to the Wigmore Hall for a spot of violin and piano. Mozart K301, Poulenc's Violin Sonata and Schubert D934. Given to us by Messrs. Feldman and Kusnezov of references 1 and 2.
The trains to Waterloo and Sutton were absent, so a drive to Sutton was indicated. I remembered using one of those car parking companies there, but did not think to look them up. So got to Sutton to wonder what to do about Apcoa. Tried paying online, but HSBC fraud department were not having that. And anyway, Apcoa seemed to think that I wanted to buy a season ticket. Not helped by confusion with Alcoa. Eventually, BH noticed something on the sign about being able to pay later, so I gave up, but not before having given somebody all my banking details, which I was not best pleased about. And to make things worse, half an hour was not enough time to allow from Epsom and we missed the train we had been aiming for, cutting things a bit fine for our usual pit stop at All Bar One.
Get to Victoria, to find that the bus station outside the railway station was not accessible and/or not working, se we settled for the long walk from the pavement to the tube platform. But we were offered seats on the tube, more or less instantly. Opposite, an older chap who was smartly enough turned out, but who was behaving rather like a bag person. Bit of a pain on a crowded tube train.
Somehow, at Oxford Circus, we managed to miss out on the badly overheated passage which often carries fancy advertising in the round, which was good. Some quirk of the ventilation arrangements. On the other hand, it was coming on to rain when we emerged at street level.
Got to All Bar One and ordered, but had to leave before our order arrived. It happening that their being busy and our being late coincided. The first time we have ever done such a thing.
Some serious temporary works in Wigmore Street. Presumably one of those upgrades where you are allowed to rip out the insides provided you leave the outsides for the heritage people.
And so we made it to Wigmore Hall, pretty busy as these Sunday morning concerts usually are. Mozart as good as we have come to expect, but after that I drifted a bit. I remember liking the Poulenc more than I thought likely, but I think I must have nodded a bit, only coming round properly half way through the Schubert. Clearly exhausted by getting there.
For the first time in a while, to Ponti's of John Prince's Street, just by Oxford Circus. We passed on bread on this occasion, and I took Bruschetta al Pomodoro and pizza Quattro Stagioni. Bruschetta surprisingly good considering it is nothing more than cold chopped tomatoes on toast, plus a bit of seasoning. Don't suppose we could manage it as well at home for all that. And BH was pleased with her Salmone Arrosto.
As far as I can make out, the salmon has not been found anywhere near Italy for some time, with the best Bing can do being Atlantic salmon in the Loire to the west and the freshwater Danube salmon to the east. This last includes part of what is now Croatia, so perhaps this version of salmon sneaked into Italian cuisine when part of what is now Croatia, then Dalmatia, belonged to the Venetian Republic. See references 5 and 6.
The same white wine, named for Mount Etna, which we had got used to, last noticed at reference 6. That is to say just before we took a break from Ponti's of near six months. Part of that will be the summer break at the Wigmore but there must be more to it than that.
Tiramisu for dessert, which had reverted to brick format from glass format, and which tasted a good deal better than the snap above would suggest. A change from the glass format noticed at reference 7. The first tiramisu we ever had, somewhere near the British Museum, was brown, very good and came in a shallow stainless steel dessert bowl. After that, as the dessert became popular, it was usually in brick format, then moving onto to glass format, which seems to be what you mostly get now. Perhaps the pendulum of foodie fashion is coming back across again.
Out to Oxford Circus where there was a Uighur flavoured demonstration. I was reminded how sad it was that the Han majority in China treated its minorities so badly - and how little the Saudis do to help their co-religionists, being presently in hug-a-han mode. Perhaps the Uighurs are the wrong sort of Muslims. Perhaps, despite their huge wealth, the Saudis worry too much about the forthcoming demise of their golden goose to have time for good works.
There was also a small choir at top of the steps down to the tube. Young adults and, I thought, rather good.
Signs of water penetration and flood control - in the form of sandbags of various shapes and sizes - on our way down to the platforms.
Out at Victoria to take a sit in Westminster Cathedral, where we decided not to stay for Vespers, which might have involved a choir, but which would have involved a further half hour wait. Good place for a time-out though: lots of quiet empty space. Much better as far as that goes than either Westminster Abbey or St. Pauls.
The best Christmas tree of the day was somewhere in the vicinity of the cathedral. Pity about the way that they wrapped the base up, slightly spoiling what was otherwise a good effort, much better than those that we had seen in and around Oxford Circus.
And so home to sort out my parking. It turned out that the problem was that our last encounter with Apcoa parking was in the dying days of my Microsoft telephone, which did not do apps - so there was no sign of them on my Samsung telephone. This has now been sorted out, the parking has been paid for and I now have no fewer than four parking apps on my telephone. Four more lots of people that I trust with my bank details.
PS 1: BH was driving, so I had time to notice a large bird flying across our path at Belmont, on the way to Sutton. Possibly a raptor, possibly a sparrow hawk. We also passed several Wellingtonia, few if any of which had been scored. Not possible to take them in on this occasion as I was not in the driving seat. Plus, by the time we were going home and had the time, it was nearly dark and I could not remember exactly where they were: perhaps to be sorted out when we sort out the one at Carshalton.
PS 2: later: a red letter day! For some reason this evening, I was moved to try YouTube on our smart, fairly new Samsung television. And after a certain amount of flapdoodle, including telling it that we were not into voice control quite yet, up came reference 8. So given that YouTube probably includes a lot more chamber music than we are ever likely to listen to, we now have somewhere to go when we tire of ITVX - despite having dumped our DVD player and most of our DVDs.
References
Reference 1: https://www.tobias-feldmann.com/.
Reference 2: https://www.boriskusnezow.com/en/. Pianist and collaborative artist, whatever one of those might be.
Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/more-privatisation.html.
Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huchen.
Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-marmens.html.
Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/sebastiani.html.
Reference 8: https://youtu.be/Y9Nyv51RSt8. A version of the Schubert involving a Fazioli piano. Pity I was not firing on all cylinders on the day.
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