Touring

Last week to London to see the sights, starting with Centrepoint and the public house formerly known as the Tottenham.

A bright morning, warm rather than hot at 10:30 which was good. The solicitors' van was parked on Station Approach again; one day there will be a driver and I will be able to ask him his business there. No trolleys, not that there was enough time for diversions of that sort. Some fancy dress, I thought perhaps Ascot. Lots more fancy dress at Waterloo and it very clearly was Ascot. The slightly later idea of passing the day wandering the houses between the station and the racecourse did not find favour, the delights of fancy dress and the possession of one day Travelcards notwithstanding.

It being a route I had not done for a while, it took me a while to find my way from the top of Drury Lane (orange dot right) to Earnshaw Street (red thumbtack left) - but I got there in the end and was pleased to find a slot on the Bullingdon stand there.

From where I was able to admire one end of Denmark Street, the centre of the popular music scene in the 1950s and still showing some signs of musical life. The building on the corner was no doubt a proper public house at the time - with drunks and warm beer - except that the corner with the turret on top looks a bit grand. Surely not a Lyon's Corner House? Maybe the whole block is some kind of heritage zone now?

The block about which there was a huge amount of fuss when it was built, I think in the 1970s. Mainly because the developer preferred to hold it empty rather than let it on what he regarded as bad terms. As a piece of architecture, I think that it has stood the test of time well.

But there is always a 'round the back' even at the best kept blocks.

A briefing meeting at the Flying Horse, aka the Tottenham, the heritage pub noticed at reference 1. There was an infestation of high chairs, but there were still some low chairs at the back, from where we were able to take in the exotic interior. It was decided that London Bridge was the way forward, with the Elizabeth Line (see reference 2) and Ascot options being discarded.

And so to London Bridge via Bank. Not quite the Elizabeth Line, but plenty of walking involved as befits the modern tube experience. Including, as I recall, a long travelator, one of those contraptions which save you the bother of walking down a long passage. Thinking with my fingers, I imagine that such a thing speeds up rush hour transit of such a passage in a useful way.

A visit to Guys and its handsome chapel, complete with one person in quiet prayer and another in more florid prayer, in front of the altar. I was reminded of reading in the Ramsey book noticed at reference 3, that there are a lot more Anglicans in far flung places these days than there are in the mother ship. We took a light lunch in one of the cafeterias around the place, this one perhaps called the Shed. Staffed up by a couple of young psychology students, presumably choosing to stay in town and make a bit of money rather than legging it for the long vac. Perhaps they did bars in the evenings.

Lunch took the form of a couple of toasties. A more high-calorie snack than I am used to, but it did the business. Supplemented with a plastic cup for 15p (water free) to get my pills down with - quite forgetting that I was already carrying a bottle of water. Cup paid for by card as the cafeteria was a cash-free operation. The transaction charge on the credit card must have exceeded the nominal charge, but I suppose it will bear down on use of disposable cups by regulars. There was also a microwave so that you could heat up your own ready meal, an option one or two people were taking.

A look around the market, where we took in the well stocked display at Ginger Pig. All kinds of stuff which is quite hard to get these days. Including liver and lights and all that sort of thing.

I fell for some broad beans, 2kg at £5 a kilo. There were some good looking cherries at around £10-£12 a kilo, but I declined, having already both declined both BH's offer of a folding shopping bag and decided against bringing the rucksack deployed on a recent visit.

We found where one could buy paella for £10 a pop, getting quite a decent portion, but nowhere to sit. In any event, we no longer needed lunch and we were certainly not going to stroll around with the stuff in the way of the many holiday makers.

Next stop a taxi to Bartholomew the Great. The driver not seeming to know where it was, managed to drop us nearer the nearby Bartholomew the Less. We peeked in but did not take a proper look, keeping our powder dry for the real thing, which was as impressive as ever, fancy Kray funeral notwithstanding. Took in the couple of pianos already noticed at references 4 and 5.

The organ, more or less in what used to be the crossing.

Looking the other way.

Some heritage pipework. We were told that the church attracted regular congregations of several hundred, including a healthy sprinkling of young families. Not just Anglo-Catholics travelling in from far and wide to take in the bells and smells.

And so to the nearby Hand & Shears, the pub which saw my bar tending exploits as a student. In those days famous for its Directors' Bitter from Courage, but still a good looking establishment with a good atmosphere. In much better shape than when I visited some years ago, in the margins of something data protection flavoured, all the thing at the time, the thing that means the surgery won't talk to me about BH's missing prescriptions and which gives stroppy young clerks in estate agents all the excuse they need to be obstructive. Progress of a sort I suppose.

I took my first bitter for a while and very nice it was too. Quite a nostalgia fest. Gives the illusion of a real pint in the snap above, but actually it was a half pint. Maybe I will start allowing myself a pint or so a week, fluid intake restrictions permitting. Another nostalgia fest in the form of the beans, visible right. We remembered back to the days when I used to grow lots of them, pinching out the leads (with the blackflies) on the morning of the Derby.

I made the mistake of taking a No.17 bus back to London Bridge, which seemed to take forever. But at least trains to Epsom were up and running when I got there.

Home to a quick dish of beans, served in a bacon & onion flavoured white sauce. Very good they were too - with a kilo of beans yielding just about 200g of beans. Say three portions to the 2kg - so not a cheap vegetable, despite their being very easy to grow - this last probably being a good part of why I used to be so keen on growing them. While Jude the Obscure used the stalks to fire his oven. Good, as I recall, for a flash fire. Not much good for the long haul.

Having shown the way, BH did very well the next day with the balance of the beans. A slightly thinner sauce, which I think was an improvement. There was probably some green salad.

PS 1: the beans were quite young which meant that we need not need to go in for two tier cooking, with the maturer beans getting rather more time. While BH does not get nostalgic about the gluts of overripe broad beans she has had to deal with over the years. To the extent of peeling them and making them into a bean paste.

PS 2: Lübeck would no doubt be an interesting visit, but a bit of a stretch to ride there on this advertisement, which arrived this morning. Even supposing that they let  me in. I had to look up what cGMP might be. Nothing to do with the Greater Manchester Police, possibly something to do with the Good Manufacturing Practise of reference 7. Important and complicated stuff, a lot of it from Europe, stuff which Farage and his kind want to go DIY on. But my money is on cyclic guanosine monophosphate, all mixed up with ion channels and neurotransmission generally.

PS 3: while over my second cup of tea I learned from the April 2023 number of 'Drinks Business', about Latour getting out of the en primeur market back in 2012. Which I from reference 8 to be a sort of futures market for fancy wine. You buy the stuff on the basis of what it tastes like in the barrel, years before it is blended, bottled and released for sale. All very speculative, but offers the wine manufacturer some money up-front. Money in the hand, rather than money which might be years down the track. And the wine might, in the end, turn out badly and either not be saleable or not fetch a very good price. A bit like the potato futures market I learned about, many years ago now, at a very wet agricultural show somewhere near Norwich. I remember that even further back, I bought my one and only bottle of Château Latour from an old-style wine merchant's shop just off Soho Square, probably on the eastern side of Greek Street, but long gone. An experience, but not one which was repeated. While the snap above, lifted from the depths of reference 10, offers a wine shop at No.3, about the right place, but I think that the Gay Hussar was there at the time in question too. More digging needed. Impressed that someone has gone to the bother of cataloguing the history of the street in this way.

References

Reference 1: https://www1.camra.org.uk/pubs/flying-horse-london-128749.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/ealing.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/ramsey.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/piano-87.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/piano-86.html.

Reference 6: https://thehandandshears.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_manufacturing_practice.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_primeur.

Reference 9: https://www.chateau-latour.com/en. A rather pretentious website.

Reference 10: https://www.alondonmiscellany.com/post/greek-street-then-and-now.