A week or so back to St. Luke's for a couple of quartets from the Consone Quartet, whom I find today I last heard a little over four years ago, as noticed at reference 1. While their website is to be found at reference 2. The line-up does not appear to have changed in the interval.
Haydn Op.64 No.5 and Mozart K387.
BH was part of the party on this occasion, so train to Balham followed by tube to Old Street. A tube ride enlivened by an Asian girl in a very flashy white sari trimmed with gold, complete with an elaborate panel on her forehead. Riding with someone much more soberly dressed. We wondered whether they were off to a wedding, and if so why were they travelling unaccompanied on the tube. I did not get a suitable entry through which to inquire.
Took refreshment in a new-to-us coffee house called Trade (of reference 3). Seemingly a small, east end chain, not too long in the business. Featuring used floor boards on the walls, naked copper pipes (not all for the transport of fluids) and upcycled tin cans for the cutlery. I might say that the upcycled tin can we inherited from the naval uncle came with a handle. A rather more careful piece of work altogether.
BH took decaff with some form of croissant while I took coffee with a variation on cheese on toast. Freshly made and nicely turned out, with, by my standards, quite a high ratio of cheese to bread. But pretty good all the same.
Whatever the case, it certainly fuelled me to a fine concert. Where there was a fairly full house, no prong for the cello, two computers for the music and six microphones for the radio. One of them large and low for the cello.
The couple next to us carried a score, a very old and battered miniature score as it happened, something I have not seen at a concert for a good while. Not the commonplace yellow Edition Eulenberg. While the couple in front of us committed the solecism of filming the closing part of the concert on a very small camera, consisting mainly of the tube which one supposed held the lens. He was ticked off in absentia the following day by the lady doing the introduction - I think the chief executive of the LSO - specifically telling us not to do such a thing.
The encore was the minuet from Haydn's bird quartet. The only trouble with that being that Wikipedia does not list a minuet for Op.33 No.3. But digging, I find from reference 4, nearly all of which is far too deep for me, that the usual minuet may have been renamed 'scherzo', literally Italian for joke. Haydn, it seems, was very into musical jokes.
Digging further, I find the suggestion that 'minuet' is derived from the Latin 'minutus' for small or minute, the connection being the very small steps which make up this once French dance.
From where I associate to the claim once made by my younger brother, despite being himself very learned in musical matters, to the effect that musical knowledge of the sort exhibited at reference 4 is irrelevant to one's enjoyment - or not - of the music. The music can work its magic without that sort of help. But a tricky one to adjudicate: how on earth does one compare the musical experience of two different people without that sort of musical apparatus? And whether or not the claim is justified in the case of music, I do think that it is in the case of novels or plays. In the jargon of Sherlock Holmes, at least a three pipe problem.
None of which was an issue on the day; we just enjoyed the concert. Out to try the new-to us restaurant, also in Old Street, called Pasta Nostra, to be found at reference 5 where it tells us that the establishment is vibrant and unpretentious. We liked it anyway.
Garlic bread good, if a little dear for what one got.
We both took one of the pastas, also good. Except that I don't recognise it from the menu on the website.
For dessert, just the one scoop of passion fruit ice cream, ice cream being something that I do not take very often at all, except when they put a scoop on the side of something else, unasked. Plus grappa, of which I was expecting 50ml, but what I got was a tall glass which perhaps contained 100ml. Plus the entertainment of the waitress tripping down the stairs with it without spilling it. Presumably the hard stuff was kept upstairs for some reason.
With, a carafe of red on the side. Something else that I do not take very often, although there has been a bit of an outbreak in the past week or so.
One oddity was the window next to us which included an even scatter of small bubbles of air in the glass. Was it a flaw or a feature?
One curiosity was a hearing failure on my part. I thought the waitress was asking about whether BH wanted her green salad to start, or to be served with her pasta. Whereas in fact she was asking about whether we were bothered by the sun and wanted to move to a table way from the window. Which seems like quite a big jump, given that my hearing is not too bad in the usual way of things.
Out to a bit of the old, commercial side of Old Street. We are all creatives now.
From where we took a 243 bus to Waterloo, taking in this imperial sentiment from Bush House on the way. Not the sort of thing that one says out loud any more.
A better view of the church last snapped towards the end of the post at reference 6.
Into the station to hear the London Welsh Male Voice choir singing in aid of the lifeboats. Singing which was rather good, but which was rather spoiled by the announcer. A choir which wanted what seemed like the rather large sum of £30 a ticket for a concert in St.Clement Danes that very evening. But I did put something folding in their bucket.
Oddly, we could hear the choir much better when we moved away, towards the low numbered platforms which did Epsom. Perhaps it was all done to the placement of the loudspeakers carrying the announcements.
Checking this morning, it looks as if only a small part of the choir was turned out for the station. Which suggests that the full choir would have been quite something - although I dare say I would not have much cared for their choice of programme.
We took a train to Hampton Court, which meant a stopover at Raynes Park, with the haul snapped above. In red, on the right, the governing text used by the Quakers. In the middle, a substantial biography of a former archbishop of Canterbury, in the blue boards of OUP, and carrying the bookplate of the Reverend Paul J. Gibbons. I wonder if such people - archbishops that is - still rate 400 page biographies of this sort?
Spirits business above - companion comic to 'drinks business', noticed from time to time. Low to the right, already noticed. While Venom, also already noticed, arrived in the post while we were out. Plus BH got something about the young Attenborough and his zoological doings.
Last but not least a new inspection cover which I am sure was not there last time I looked.
PS 1: something went wrong with the paragraph spacing at the end of the references below, with return not coming with the line feed which gives a bit of white space between paragraphs. Peering at the HTML suggested that the problem was another manifestation of the tension between the '<p>' and '<div>' tags. But it does not seem to have damaged the published post and I can't muster the energy to sort it out. So I suppose I am going to have to let it go.
PS 2: search has so far failed to turn up previous notice of the inspection cover. The best I could do was reference 8, which at least show that I do take pictures of such things.
PS 3: but search does reveal a number of priests by the name of Paul Gibbons. The one that comes nearest is he of reference 9, but I don't think that a Catholic priest would have bothered in this way with an Anglican archbishop. And would he put 'reverend' on his bookplate rather than 'father'?
References
Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-near-thing.html.
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