Valentine's

This year it was convenient to celebrate St. Valentine's Day early, on the Saturday before, the 10th February. We decided that a higher grade kedgeree should be the core of the celebration, backed up by the purchase already noticed at reference 1. A purchase of smoked haddock and fresh cod which, combined, weighed in at 2lbs 3oz.

The business of the day started with the completion of the antique love scene, a very appropriate subject as it turned out. At first call, two pieces appeared to be missing, clearly visible in the snap above, the right hand one of which was turned up by searching the carpet below. A jigsaw last noticed at reference 2. The black hole there, top right, was the last to go. A jigsaw seemingly last completed as long ago as 2014, as noticed at reference 3. There is talk there of having another go, but I can't presently trace any such thing. It is however clear that all pieces were present then, and given that the pieces were put in a sealed freezer bag, the bag in the box, I guess the missing piece never made it to the bag.

Then off to Kingston for a spot of business there. First stop the café at the Rose, busy with children and their parents, cranking up for some special event especially for them. Fell for tickets for Tennessee William's  'Glass Menagerie'. We were assured that it was the real thing, not some sparkly new adaptation for today by some celebrity or other. We shall see.

The Hogsmill was running fast and turbid. No fish to be seen, although they might well have been there.

What would have been a fine display of daffodils shortly after our visit. Perhaps they have already been and gone.

Failed on three counts at John Lewis. No food mixer that suited, no socks (for BH) that suited, no chocolates (for later) that suited. The chocolate department appeared to have been taken over by Hotel Chocolat, which was all very well but did not give us much choice. And my recollection was that we are not that keen on their chocolates: nothing wrong with them, just not for us. But nothing in the archive, so who knows. As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. At least not very good evidence.

Not for the first time, we did rather better at Fenwick's - their finally having got around to rebranding Bentall's - where we did buy a food mixer and we did buy some chocolates, despite the slightly forlorn appearance of the sub-ground where they were kept. A new-to-us brand called Neuhaus, to be found at reference 4: dear but soberly and attractively presented. A box which has already found its way to the hall of fame at reference 5. And you can read some Bentall's history at reference 6: yet another provincial chain of department stores bites the dust. A near extinct breed - not that the big stores in the West End seem to be doing that much better.

But we drew the line at this cooker. We agreed that we would rather spend the money on the fish. Or perhaps the Calva.

The surrounding shopping centre was enlivened by a Palestinian demonstration. Peaceful but noisy, and if I was a shopkeeper there, I would probably have been annoyed by my customers being put off. But they had moved, or been moved, outside by the time that we had finished in Fenwick's.

We took a snack in what was left of the market. Some kind of rolled up crêpe (aka pancake) for her, some focaccia (from Olivier) for him. Entirely satisfactory, but I did wonder about the hygiene of all the sheds around us serving meaty food. And the picnic benches provided could have done with a bit of TLC. Like being scrubbed down at the beginning of each day.

Clouds of midges over the Hogsmill after we passed the trolley snapped above. No question of capturing it: partly because of the amount of litter, partly because I was out shopping with BH.

The Rose car park still uses machines from which you buy tickets on exit. Surely it would not be that complicated to enable a parking app? Quite keen on them now - now that I have gone to the bother of getting signed up for four of them: PayByPhone, NCP, RingGo and Apcoa Connect.

Home to study the article from the NYRB snapped above. The story of one Reality Winner, a rather rum bird whom some secret branch of the US government saw fit to employ, snapped below. The main lesson for me being that I expect these secret outfits employ all kinds of odd people. Hopefully only modest numbers of the sort of people who provide what one might euphemistically describe as muscle. I also learned that if you were low on the ladder and leaked a whole lot of secret documents, you were apt to wind up in jail. If you were high up, perhaps at the top, you got the slap with a wet lettuce leaf (a bit of official jargon from our own HM Treasury).

Slightly puzzled by the matches, the sort of thing you might be given with your cigar. No idea where they turned up from. The Mill Street address is now the Windmill public house, the sort of rather pseud place which runs to the subtitle 'ale and pie rooms'. Perhaps I am being unfair. Flanked by some fancy looking clothes shops. But it used to be what sounds like a rather good - if expensive - restaurant called Patterson's, a restaurant which has left plenty of post-mortem traces in its wake on the Internet. I cannot recall ever visiting either place, although I do take a stroll through the area from time to time, for one reason or another. Perhaps braces.

Then a hors d'oeuvre consisting of the last of the Christmas Tio Pepe taken with a brown medicinal banana - which tasted a lot better than it looked. Medicinal for its potassium, an essential ingredient of sentient life. Meanwhile, BH was doing her stuff with a bit more than half the fish.

The kedgeree turned out very well: much improved to my mind by using fish that did not come from the freezer or from the River Mekong (from where Sainsbury's seems to source some of its more obscure frozen white fish) and by using rather more of it. Served with greens, as can be seen above.

Followed by orange jelly, something of a favourite of mine, peanuts and the aforementioned chocolates. One got 24 chocolates in 24 flavours - and most of them were pretty good. A brand I would buy again.

Washed down with some 2019 Gevrey-Chambertin from Majestic, quite expensive by our standards. Pretty good, but would have been better served in clear rather than cut glass. I thought the latter rather detracted from the colour and clarity of the this particular wine, which I think rather good. Wound down with a spot of Calva from Waitrose.

Wine originally from the people at reference 7, from one of their village appellations, that is to say from the middle tier of the appellation system; say lower middle class. One can spend a lot more with them. And one can spend even more with others: J&B, for example, do a nice little Gevrey-Chambertin for a touch over £600. Well outside my comfort zone.

But you still get plenty of twaddle, even with the villages. At least, twaddle as far as I am concerned: maybe winos take this sort of stuff more seriously than I do. And someone ought to tell them that printing in white letters on top of even dark colour is not easy on the eyes.

Pill dispenser left. Identical in shape to the plastic offering at the hospital, but originally intended for the serving of English mustard - something I do not take very often these days. Perhaps with my second slice of gala pie.

The scene was decorated with our Canadian candelabra, cleaned for the occasion, once the property of my maternal grandparents and used by them on their state occasions.

The fish was finished off the next day in a fine fish pie. Prawns, fresh and smoked fish in white sauce below, mashed potato above, baked in the oven. Also improved by the use of a good quantity of fish not from the freezer etc.

PS: a little later: search of the archive reveals nothing about Patterson's, while search for Mill, Mayfair and windmill reveals far too much to be checking. BH suggests that I may have picked the matches up somewhere.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/trolley-629.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/trolley-627.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/03/jigsaw-4-series-3.html.

Reference 4: https://www.neuhauschocolates.com/en_GB/home.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/fake-174.html.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentalls.

Reference 7: https://herve-kerlann.com/en/. A rather creaky website.