Chapter II, Part II

This being the second and concluding part of what was started at reference 1, starting with lunch at Manicomio (Chelsea branch, to be found at reference 2).

There was both bar and eating indoors, but outdoors seemed to be the form on this day, despite it not being very warm at 14:00 - despite having been so earlier. Luckily I had a proper woolly and my substantial Dannimac, both of which I kept on, so I was fine - unlike some of the other customers. While our waiter sported some jeans with a Rémy Martin label - which Bing declines to find for me.

For the wine, a 2022 Domaine Treuillet Pouilly Fumé, perhaps at three or four times for what it can be had online. But a good wine for all that. From a chap with plenty of Internet footprint but no website that I can find. Just email and twitter accounts.

Some rather salty bread. Some mushrooms in a Scotch egg format. I thought about calf's liver but restaurants of this sort are apt to undercook it, which I don't like, so I settled for rabbit tagliatelle to be on the safe side.

Which was rather good. 

And just in case you were not convinced that it was rabbit, a few bones had been added to the mix, a trap for the careless client. BH almost certainly went for something a little lighter.

Winding up with a tiramisu and a spot of grappa, which I am pleased to be able to say came in a traditional glass.

A selection of interesting small dogs and interesting clothes on view, both customers and passers-by.

While in the gallery, if we were into private dining, we were offered a selection of 'north Norfolk Tractor Art by the renowned photographer Alessandro Durini'. A chap to be found at references 3 and 4, who does exhibit in Chelsea and who does take an interest in the tractors of Cromer.

Lunch done, over the road to take a look in Taschen, purveyors of flashy coffee table books and art books. Affordable, holiday maker stuff upstairs, with the proper gear downstairs. Large format art book with fancy covers going for prices up to £10,000. Considering which prices they seemed very relaxed about browsers such as ourselves.

No porn as such, but there were certainly some risqué images in some of the books - probably including the one noticed a couple of years back at reference 6.

There was also a fat book of rather good images of London, old and new. But apart the the pretentiously fancy boards, the price tag of near £750 was too much for me. Even with a framed version of one of the photographs thrown in.

Followed by confusion of Soanes and Sloanes. My position remains that this one was the chap who funded his botany by being a very successful society physician and that the other, architectural one lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Another art bookshop opposite the bus stop, from where we got our bus to Clapham Junction. Passing a heron on the mudflats by the Thames on the way.

Home to inspect our one and only book from Taschen, an upside-down double as it happens. Second hand from somewhere in Lyme Regis. Quite a good book to dip into, with all kinds of interesting stuff about famous paintings. And being German, northern Europe gets a reasonable look in - not all southern Europe. But I doubt whether we will buying any more, secondhand or otherwise.

While the Proust on the left, a decent US edition of a decent translation, largely unread, on the left, came from a stall under the arches of Waterloo Bridge. Standard of books there has rather fallen off since.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/chapter-ii-part-i.html.

Reference 2: https://www.manicomio.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://durini.com/gallery.

Reference 4: https://durini.com/mules-of-cromer.

Reference 5: https://www.taschen.com/en.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/another-brasserie.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/sir-hans-sloane.html.