Via London Bridge that is to say. With the rollator snapped above in its first class accommodation. not that anyone seems to care or check any more. Minor irritation in the form of a middle aged lady who did not seem to draw breath: only minor though, despite her head being less than a metre from mine. She must have been softly spoken; a good thing in a lady according to the Bard, although, annoyingly, I cannot put my hand on the bit where he says so. Probably some elderly lord boasting of the amours of his youth; but not Gloucester in Lear as I had at first thought.
I got myself nicely ensconced at the top of a blocked off escalator, only to find that I was meeting the wrong train. There had been some disturbance to the schedules - but recovery was at hand in the nearby branch of Olle & Steen where I took coffee and bun, or perhaps orange juice and bun. Plenty of tourists milling about this Saturday morning to provide entertainment.
Picked up at Epsom Station and carried off to the Rubbing House up on the Downs. A fine day, so we took a few moments out on the downs before diving into the Rubbing House. Plenty of people outside under the umbrellas, but we opted for inside: cool, quiet and out of the sun, while we had a good view of all the goings on.
With our presence up there having been clinched by their offering a decent menu for veggies: other establishments in the area which I looked at tolerated veggies rather than catered for them.
With the harissa of the first row being another culinary fad which has passed us by. We came across it for the first occasion just the other day as a flavouring for the otherwise rather bland butternut squash soup, subsequently finding that our supermarkets sold a whole range of the stuff. We are now owners of a small bottle from Waitrose. While from reference 5, I learn that it is a world heritage fad from Tunisia.
First off, the wine, without cooler, naturally. A 2023 'Sea Pearl' Picpoul de Pinet from the house of Ormarine of reference 2. An appellation which has been making steady progress into pub grub menus. Oddly, not to be found (by me anyway) at reference 2, so perhaps it is especially bottled for export to MWW of Watford, quite possibly a moniker of the Majestic Wine Warehouse. Certainly shares their postcode in Watford. Perhaps they service public houses as well as the public. The wine tasted OK, which was the main thing.
Followed up with flat bread and dips. Rather to my surprise, the standard at this house being generally good, the flat bread was not very good at all. Neither fresh nor properly warmed up. So as far as bread goes, they do things much better down at the Cappadocia in town, where they make their own.
I went for a crustacean linguine, which, not having read the menu very carefully, surprised me when it turned up red. The waitress suggested a spot of cheese. I was not sure about this and asked for it on the side, but she turned out to be quite right, with the cheese making a useful addition to the mix. Much more filling than it looks. I think the ladies took veggie and fish, all very satisfactory.
A bit full for dessert, so I probably settled for a Jameson.
Bentwood chairs. Solid, decent and comfortable and - to my mind - very 1950s, 1960s. And none the worse for that.
A bit of flash in the car park. According to carcheck, a Vauxhall VX220 Turbo with a top speed of around 150mph. Didn't know that Vauxhall made this sort of thing. But not sure that I see much fun in tearing around a race track, the only place where one could put it through its paces legally. I associate to the motorcyclist in the Organ Inn of old once telling me that doing 100mph on the A3 was quite scary, it seeming that everyone else was heading straight for you - but backwards - at 30 or 40mph.
Hopefully for Vauxhall things have moved on a bit since 2007 when we had: '... The Vauxhall VX220 may well be remembered as the greatest car that nobody bought. That might be something of an exaggeration, but after a year's manufacture, Vauxhall had managed to shift a mere 458 units, many of these dealer demonstrators and press vehicles. Although the public was aware that the VX220 was ostensibly a Lotus Elise with a nicer engine, it still ignored the roadster - due in no small part to that Griffin badge worn on its beaky nose. After all, what would you rather own, a Lotus or a Vauxhall. For those who are immune to such badge snobbery, a used VX220 is a cut price way to get your high performance jollies...'.
All followed by another short excursion onto the downs, where there were birds but no skylarks.
Onto the viewpoint by the golf course, where one has a fine view of the flight path down into Heathrow but, oddly, not an aeroplane to be seen in the quarter an hour or so that we were there. Maybe they have a spot of down time on Saturday afternoons.
Had I bothered to look to my right, I would have seen the viewpoint, which probably came with compass directions. Satellite view suggests that it faces roughly NNW. While Heathrow is somewhere around NW.
As it is, I can make out the arch at Wembley on the left hand horizon, roughly half way between the edge of the snap and the two black towers, framing the little white rectangle. Roughly north from Epsom.
But without any overlap, that does not help with this one, round to the right a bit, and I can't parse the twin cities at all, although one might think City and Canary Wharf. Must be better prepared next time and take both monocular and compass. Maybe even a map, rather than scrambling about on my telephone.
Later that day, we wandered down to the Marquis to see the young people at play, taking in this fine display of blackberries on the way, somewhere on Meadway.
Always a puzzle to me that people sitting in a million quid's worth or so of house can't be bothered to cut the brambles out of the ornamental bushes growing in the verge outside. I dare say most of them employ gardeners and you might think they would ask them to do the necessary from time to time, rather than waiting for the hard-pressed council to get around to it.
And the heritage wall still awaits the attentions of a builder. Or permission from the planners to knock it all down and build some much needed housing.
PS 1: and while we are on builders, the Google ad server has cottoned onto my recent interest in drains, with the advertisement above appearing in my email today. Unfortunately, reference 4 suggests that both sizes and patterns are wrong.
PS 2: having crashed around a bit, I was reduced to asking Gemini about softly spoken women with the prompt: 'Somewhere in Shakespeare, probably in one of the history plays, a lord talks of a wife or mistress who always spoke softly, a quality the lord valued. Have you any idea where there might be'. His first effort was a speech from Henry VIII, which I was fairly sure was wrong. His second was from a speech by Lear, after the death of Cordelia, which I am pretty sure is where my memory was grounded, if conflated with other stuff, possibly Gloucester, aforementioned. Gemini gets the right answer and I am able to check it! I also remember about the good biting falchion which follows.
References
Reference 1: https://www.rubbinghouse.com/. Possibly one of that rare breed these days, an independent. Maybe just until the present proprietor retires from the fray.
Reference 2: https://www.cave-ormarine.com/en/wines/picpoul-de-pinet.
Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/cappadocia.html.
Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/drains.html.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harissa.
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