Senior moments

A day for cheese and a day for visiting the RHS library at Vincent Square, but also a day for senior moments, some large, some small.

There were also plans for Bullingdons, and no longer knowing the area around Vincent Square very well - once the home of the late Richard Crossman - almost the inventor of ministerial diaries with his three fat volumes of same - I thought to take a map with me. I do have a map, but it is quite old and tatty and I thought that a tailor made map on the telephone might be more convenient.

But not caring to link my telephone accounts to my computer accounts, moving a picture from the laptop to the telephone electronically is a bit fiddly, so I settled for taking a picture of the laptop with the telephone. Various interesting Moiré patterns on the way, for which see reference 2, with the result included above. Not great, but serviceable. In the event, I managed without needing to get it out again. Perhaps the process of making the map had served as sufficient reminder of the geography of Vincent Square.

The next matter on the agenda was what to take to wear on back and face. The answer was nearly everything: Dannimac, three sorts of spectacles, gloves and the old-style sunhat, the sort you can just stuff in your pocket, with no hard peak to get in the way.

On the way to the station, I learned about the rather nifty Irish passport card scheme, whereby you can opt to get a credit card sized identity card to go with your passport. A card which helps with all those people who want to see ID these days. A scheme which us national-identity-card phobic Brits - several schemes for same having foundered over the years - might find helpful. If they didn't like or didn't want, the phobics did not have to play, but the rest of us could get on with our lives. See reference 3.

A first senior moment about the cradles used by people working on the outsides of tall buildings. Window cleaners and above. With this one involving a lot of clipping and unclipping of safety harnesses, which must have slowed things down quite a bit.

Not altogether clear what they were doing, but they did lift out one of the fascia panels. Reasonably heavy, but one man could manage once it was out. A senior moment in that I could not recover the name of the thing they were working from. The word 'cradle' only came back to me when I got back to Epsom Station later in the day.

Ramp at Waterloo empty apart from a few broken-down Bullingdons, this being about 11:00 on a Wednesday morning. Luckily, as a regular, I knew about Concert Hall Approach, a small stand on the other side of the tracks, and was able to pull one from there. What seemed like a cold, stiff breeze from the north on Waterloo Bridge. Lots of people on cycles, some of them Bullingdons, overtaking me. Would never have happened in the olden days.

One of the free-market hire bikes infesting central London these days. With the nerve to park on a Bullingdon stand.

But I make it to the cheese shop in good order and do my Poacher business there. Heading off to the stand at Old Compton Street, I was amused to notice that some of the sprinkling of stalls on the way sport CCTV cameras in an attempt to deter light fingered tourists. But what would the police actually be able to do with a picture of a tourist pinching a souvenir handbag or whatever? About as much as they can do with Nigerian diplomats who pay no attention to the parking regulations in their diplomatic cars?

Pulled a Bullingdon and headed down - it was more or less rolling down to Parliament Square - to Vincent Square for the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society. For public, walk-in purposes a large modern room on the ground floor.

Not all that many books there, certainly no valuable old tomes full of careful colour engravings of plants, flowers and fruits, but there was a big computer screen with access to both the catalogue and the wide world (in the form of Google) which I could use to explore the borage family and the more botanical matter of merosity, the business of controlling the numbers of parts of flowers and related structures, a business which cropped up in my not very successful attempts to identify various alkanets and comfreys of said borage family, and for which see reference 4.

More Moiré effects, but quicker than writing it all down, for which last, I was not, in any event, very well equipped. Not properly tooled up for visiting a library at all. From where I associate to the fact that as an undergraduate I very rarely if ever set foot in one - unlike most of my fellows who found such places convenient for private study. Never mind the books, but you did get quiet and a table to work on.

What you did not seem to get here, even including the books held at Wisley rather than London, was plant identification guides for what I might call the serious amateur. Perhaps the sort of identification which requires careful examination of plants has been swept away by the magic bullet of DNA analysis of very small samples. Not so much need to bother with whole plants anymore. 

But I did turn up the guide at reference 4: a large format, handsomely produced paperback from the University of North Carolina. Furthermore, after a modest amount of administration, I was allowed to take the book out for a month. I am finding it both interesting and helpful. 

Secondhand prices very a good deal on Abebooks and eBay, but I think I have picked one up very reasonably from Mishawaka in Indiana, USA.

And I have a soft spot for places called things like North Bend and South Fork, for which we clearly don't have the right sort of rivers here in the UK. And there might be a bonus in the form of various interesting bits from the library it once belonged to. Whereas the present copy has little more than the return slip of the Lindley Library inside the front cover. A slip on which five borrowings are recorded, including my own, the other four probably all the same borrower over four months 2010-2011. Maybe I will be able to hang on to it until my own copy turns up.

I was also reminded of gadgets called book snakes, handy for keeping your book open at the right page. I use a short length of some brown tropical hardwood for the purpose - maybe twelve inches by three by one and a half - but I might go for one of these snakes, as Bing turns up lots of them on 'book beads snake'. Or I might just borrow some of BH's pearls. Much more classy.

In the margins I learned about the yew forest of Kingley Vale and the ABC model of flower development. The yew forest, near Chichester, is to be found at reference 6 and looks to be a worthy target of a short break later this year. Trees for me and mounds for her.

A lift neatly slotted into the stair well. Altogether a fine facility. Relaxed and open - if not quite as grand as the new library at Wisley. Long may it last!

Pulled the third Bullingdon of the day and headed down to the Tea House Theatre, which was more or less full. I took tea and a bacon sandwich. The tea was good, once again complete with strainer, caddy and all the trimmings. Except that I started with my second senior moment, by pouring my tea, through the strainer into the little stainless steel cup intended to hold the strainer, rather than into the teacup provided. I luckily I stopped before there was more than a very small puddle on my table, soon dealt with with the napkin provided. White damask, also very proper, as recently mentioned at reference 7.

The bacon sandwich was substantial and good, the only problem being that it came in that triple decker format, hard to eat daintily and I would have preferred the same amount of sandwich organised in regular format.

Entertained by music from Classical FM Requests, which was not that loud and could have been a lot worse. Including a piece by a chap called Zimmerman requested by a lady who explained that she used it when doing marathons. Something soothing and string orchestra as I recall, but I am not sure now that it was the late Bernd Alois Zimmermann, rather than the Hans Florian Zimmer who has done lots of film music. In any event, I completely fail to understand why people doing outdoor exercise feel the need to stop their ears with music or anything else - which seems to me to be a very odd thing to do. Much worse that having it on in the background while one is supposed to be concentrating on a bacon masterpiece.

Followed up by a hefty slice of something described as a Victoria Sponge, something which BH is rather good at. I suspect this one of having seen the inside of a freezer, which did it no favours, and it came with a very large amount of jam and goo, this last a rather heavy form of butter icing, maybe a centimetre thick and probably made with vegetable oil rather than butter. Plus the red jam was nothing like the same quality as the stuff from Bugden's that they sell in pots.

Foreigners seem to be able to make goo which is probably just as calorific, but which is a lot lighter in the mouth. The sort of cakes sold in tea shops in Piccadilly, at some remove from this one.

A piano in a corner. Not scored first because I am sure I have noticed it before and second because one cannot lift the lid to check the maker.

From the tea shop to Vauxhall Station, from which the top of the Shard was visible in among the cloud. Plenty of challenging behaviour from delivery cyclists on the way there. Only the one aeroplane, as a train to Dorking pulled in more or less as I reached the top of the (many) stairs up from street level.

Did the trolley at reference 8 on exit from Epsom Station. Which came with my third senior moment as, when I was in M&S I remembered that BH was not able to get pearl barley on her last visit to Sainsbury's. So I wondered around for a bit, all ready to settle for 'ready meal joint', when a young lady directed me to the dried vegetable department, where they did indeed have pearl barley. Which, in due course, I duly and triumphally presented to BH to be told that it was tea that was the problem, not pearl barley.

From there to the Marquis. Now a member of the Mitchell & Butler family, very quiet compared with what I imagined Wetherspoon's would have been, but comfortable. On this occasion, well worth paying the extra for my glass of wine.

The bar where I have, in the past, played 'shut the box', was shut off with white goods below and a portrait above. And while I was contemplating same, the house was visited by a council inspector, the first time I have noticed such a thing. Amongst other things, he was interested in the cleanliness of the glasses, here marked down a bit, probably because they were not using a detergent in their glass washer which could cope with our hard water. He also went down into the cellar.

To my right a scene from old Epsom, a scene from which I was unable to get rid of the reflection. Furthermore, I have been unable to work out were the shot was taken from. I had thought the town end of East Street, where there are some buildings of this vintage, but which I have been unable to match with any of those above. Something else for a rainy day.

To my left a table which was a stretched version of the table in the dining room in BH's Exminster home. While that in my Cambridge home was a little newer, pale brown rather than dark brown, something from the wartime economy range. The sort of table which contained a good deal of recyclable oak and which could be picked up for next to nothing - perhaps 10/- or a £1 - at jumble sales in the 1970s. I have had quite a few of them over the years.

Walked home, taking the shorter route via Meadway, rather than going right over the hill. Having forgotten to take my midday potion, despite having carried it about all day.

PS 1: the heavy rain overnight has pushed up the jelly lichen on the back patio splendidly.

PS 2: and inspecting my email, I find another invitation from Silversea cruises to join in a spot of global warming in a spot not yet infested with tourists. But Silversea are working on it.

References

Reference 1: https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/libraries-at-rhs.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern.

Reference 3: https://www.ireland.ie/en/dfa/passports/passport-card/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merosity.

Reference 5: Guide to flowering plant families - Wendy B. Zomlefer - 1994. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Reference 6: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/kingley-vale/.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/wet.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/trolley-674.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/tax-gap.html. More musings from the Marquis.