Hammond

A couple of weeks ago to the Wigmore Hall to hear Hammond on the piano. Not to be confused with the organ Hammond of reference 1 or the journalist Hammond of reference 2, this last appearing in these pages from time to time. Rather the Clare Hammond of reference 3, one time pupil of the Ronan O'Hara noticed at reference 4. Something of a specialist in contemporary music. Not that there was much of that in the programme above and with the pull for us being the Moonlight, Beethoven's Op.27 No.2.

The day started with blood for me and hair for her, so a rendezvous at Epsom Station. The only point of interest being that I found that as my appointment had been organised by the blood department at the hospital, I got to wait in the corridor with a letter, while other punters got to wait in the waiting room with a number. A variation on the system which used to be used at the delicatessen counter at Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane - a counter which vanished two refurb ago.

Made our way to Olle & Steen on Wigmore Street, where, by accident, we took a new sort of bun. And where our coffee was served by a cheerful & handsome chap who was very tall and thin. I wondered whether he or his forbears came from the Nile valley (the home of the sometimes very tall Nilotic peoples), but I did not like to ask.

The concert was very good, serving to remind us, inter alia, why the Moonlight was such a popular piece. But I was not sure about the pianist giving us little introductions to each section: difficult thing to pull off to my mind. I associate to Andrew Watkinson of the Endellion Quartet who was apt to try his hand.

And we did get a contemporary encore, probably Piano Étude No.5 (Toccata) by the Korean composer, Unsuk Chin. YouTube has Hammond doing it again at reference 5. She told us that it was the hardest piece she had ever learned - it would have been interesting to hear about why this was so - not being obvious to this casual auditor.

For lunch to the new to us Delamina of reference 6, founded by a couple from Tel Aviv, getting here via Shoreditch. A blend of Central European and Middle Eastern cuisines? We started with a cheerfully labelled wine, moving on to what for us were quite exotic starters. 7.25 euros from the people at reference 7 - which makes what I paid the healthy multiple of 8.5. A touch greedy? At least it went down well enough.

Good, even if the bread was not up to much.

For main course, I took lamb, which was interesting, if a little underdone to my mind. BH did rather better with her chicken.

Dessert, something of a surprise and good.

An interesting meal and it will be interesting to see if we return. In the meantime, I wonder about the staffing of restaurants with a geographical flavour: presumably they all draw their staff from the same pool, so while the menu might be geographical, the staff are unlikely to match.

Home via Raynes Park where we acquired a fat dictionary from Longmans, weighing it at just 5lbs, much bigger than the Oxford Concise and much smaller than the Oxford Shorter, But it can sit on the table of play and will make a lazy option for Scrabble: no need to go to the next room to check in the Oxford Proper. Matter clinched by its inclusion of 'zo', a sort of Tibetan cow, in the Oxford Proper as Somerset dialect, but allowed by custom. 

The dictionary is properly made and stays open at the selected page without having to weigh it down. It also has a respectable pedigree, with an early Longman being involved in the publication of Johnson's famous dictionary in 1755. The present dictionary claimed to be more up to date and more useful than some other, older (but unnamed) dictionaries and drew on a huge citation database maintained by Merriam Webster; materials collected during the Survey of English Usage and held by University College, London; and, the considerable resources of Longman's own dictionary department. Useful introductory material at the beginning, abbreviation, person name and place name sections at the end - the last two of which being a slimmer version of those offered in my Larousse. Altogether, entirely respectable.

BH won the first game played against the new dictionary, while I won the second, by a much bigger margin.

PS 1: by some quirk of NHS IT, my having had a warfarin test or two in Brading in the past, resulted in a letter to me from a London Hospital being routed via our then holiday address in the Isle of Wight. Luckily the owner of the cottage was fairly quick about forwarding it - and to be fair, my copy was not terribly important, it simply confirmed the outcome of a consultation.

PS 2: somewhere along the way I came across this advertisement, for what I presume is a few thousands pounds worth of watch. What on earth would one want with all those dials? Why not just buy a bit of old fashioned bling and have done with?  But that said, there clearly are people who want such things and there are certainly at least some jewellers who appear to make much more money out of watches than they make out of bling.

References

Reference 1: https://hammondorganco.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.ft.com/george-hammond.

Reference 3: https://clarehammond.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/to-london-town.html.

Reference 5: https://youtu.be/U605KtkEuO0.

Reference 6: https://www.delaminakitchen.co.uk/delamina-marylebone/.

Reference 7: https://www.bodegasjucar.es/es/.

Reference 8: Longman dictionary of the English language - Longmans - 1984.

Reference 9: https://www.pearson.com/languages/educators/connected-english-learning-program/longman-english-dictionaries.html. Now swallowed up by Pearson.

Reference 10: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english/survey-english-usage.

Reference 11: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice-gb/beta/getstart2.pdf. For the more serious student.