Grilled chop ends

Ten days or so ago to London Town for cheese from Borough, followed by a visit to the Estrela in Vauxhall.

A cool and cloudy day to start, with rain looking quite possible, although it was not forecast. I decided against folding umbrella.

On the way to the station, I learned that the yellow plastic gas main recently installed across Clay Hill Green does not go anywhere, it is not joined to anything at either end. Apparently installed because they happened to have the gear on the spot - being busy in nearby Hookfield - and because it will probably come in at some point in the future.

On the platform I sat next to a lady watching a film in foreign on her telephone, which I found sufficiently irritating that I moved along. Which meant that once on the train I was entertained by the chatter of three middle aged ladies out on some beano or other.

Pulled a Bullingdon from the ramp at Waterloo and headed off down Stamford Street, heading for Southwark Street. Somewhere along the way I passed a Santander Bicycle Engineer pedalling away on one of those goods cycles with a big box in front. Presumably all tooled up to do light repairs at stands. While for some reason, Southwark Street was unusually busy - its usual form at my times being more less empty.

Slightly put off in the cheese shop by a young far eastern couple making a bit of a production out of choosing a small amount of cheese - this while the young man was stuffing his face with a large sausage roll or something of that sort. When I was young, the drill was that you did not eat in the street, let alone in a shop.

Compounded by the lady counterhand having a bad day, only cutting my two pieces to a total of 900g or so - when her target had been 1,000g. Usually they do much better, often getting both slices within 25g of the nominal 250g.

From there off to Vauxhall, via the Elephant & Castle by-pass, that is to say a rather tortuous route which means one does not have to brave the roundabouts - something which I took in my stride when I was young. Except that somewhere I got it wrong, despite having used the route a dozen or more times in the last couple of years, and wound up going the wrong way around the Imperial War Museum, probably adding at least 5 minutes to my journey.

I think my confusion was compounded by the fact that I was familiar with the wrong road - so it took a while for me to work out that it was the wrong road.

Parked up for a pick-me-up at the Canton Arms, a place with quite a long wine list for what used to be a very shabby and ordinary pub. They also appear to do quite fancy food. The barman told me that they actually were an independent, quite rare these days, although they did have arrangements with some other nearby houses, perhaps the three listed at the bottom of their home page, snapped above. Quite a fierce looking reservation policy there, so maybe they are busy at weekends.

At the Estrela, the usual wine - Deu Deu - and trimmings. Then soup - which probably came out of a can - all a bit soft and texture free - and then grilled lamb, which looked well enough, but which turned out to be the scrag ends of some lamb cutlets, that is to say mostly bone and fat. So not bad, but not great and I would have preferred to pay the extra for whole cutlets which I quite like.

Furthermore, I think that they have changed the recipe for their passion fruit dessert, making it much more like a regular, commercial cheese cake. Not an improvement to my mind.

I learned that a former colleague - rather a senior colleague - was already picking broad beans from his allotment - while I, in my allotment days, only used to pinch them out on Derby Day. Perhaps he grows some special early variety.

Fed and watered, I - for some reason which I cannot now fathom - I felt the need to talk to a computer and crossed the road to the Tate Library to exercise my account there. Where it took me a while to work out that, when typing in one's registration number, as printed on one's library card, one leaves the first two letters off. A trap that I have fallen into before. However, in due course, I got in and did whatever it was that I wanted to do.

Out to stroll down to Vauxhall Station, picking up a small armful of mint condition books from a litter bin on the way. Not particularly new in that I think they dated from twenty years ago, but they were in mint condition. Snapped above, with the exception of Volume 129 of the Morley Magazine, with Morley College being an outfit which I have come across before, either by passing by or by reading about it in connection with the Old Vic. See reference 3.

On the left, we have a rather pretentiously got-up edition of 'The nature notes of an Edwardian lady - Edith Holden - 1989', complete with the sort of heavy slip case used for more weighty tomes. A sort of compendium of nature notes, water colour sketches of plants and birds, bits and pieces of poetry. Perhaps transcribed from something rather less pretentious. But turning the pages, I was amused to come across a poem by one S. T. Coleridge headed 'Dousland, Dartmoor, Devon', a not particularly pretty village on eastern edge of Dartmoor which we happen to know as one of BH's brothers used to live there. Not clear whether the author wrote the poem into her notebook when she was visiting Dousland - probably something of a base for Dartmoor holidays in its day - or whether Coleridge wrote it when he was there. For one of our visits, see reference 3.

Never got in, which is a pity, as it might well be quite interesting inside.

Their stone is mostly about an inch thick, not the eighth of an inch observed recently at the Wigmore Hall. Could they do me some thin stuff?

Once on the platform, I noticed that the fairly new franchise holder is gradually sweeping away the red and yellow of its predecessor with its two shades of blue.

While in the taxi at Epsom, my driver, who was from Kenya, was talking Swahili into his mobile phone. He told me that Swahili did not do clicks, that was something that you got further south, say in Zimbabwe - which is from where I last heard them, in Tooting. You can read all about clicks at reference 5, while I contented myself with a couple of pages from reference 6, learning in particular that these (consonantal) clicks are pretty much confined to southern Africa and that much academic ink is spilt on why this should be so.

PS 1: notice that I managed to pull the same Bullingdon on both legs of the outing. Got used to the saddle and all that sort of thing.

PS 2: by the next day, the gas trench was all nicely tidied up and the pigeons - and presumably others - were happily feeding on the seed. But I dare say there will be enough left for the area to grass over again. For the trench in an active state, see reference 4. Will the council mowing men and their tractors just roll straight over the patch or will they go round?

References

Reference 1: https://www.cantonarms.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.morleycollege.ac.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/devon-continued.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/trolleys-693-and-694.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant.

Reference 6: The origins of language: A slim guide - James R. Hurford - 2014.