Kronberg

A fortnight ago, off to town to hear soloists from the Kronberg Academy give us some sonatas. Cello from Debussy, violin from Mozart (K305) and cello from Beethoven (Op.102 No.2).

Something like one of our colleges of music, seemingly scattered across Kronberg, a modest town a little to the northwest of Frankfurt and to the east of Luxembourg. Street View seems a little creaky in Kronberg and I was unable to run down one of their buildings just off the suburban looking Station Road (aka Bahnhofstraße), which zigzags up from a railway station. Maybe what I am doing wrong will come to me. But see reference 1 for a better story.

A day for the Stockholm rather than the rollator. Half way back to the stick!

On the train, we were entertained by four men of middle years on their way to the F1 exhibition at Excel. They may have been train drivers, but one of them had a carrying voice which was deployed more or less continuously. Tiresome.

Then at Olle & Steen we took the deal of the day, an almond flake pastry. Some of which flakes went down the wrong passage and caused a fair amount of spluttering. I associate to those who suffer from more serious problems with peanuts. Some compensation in the form of a very pretty barista, demurely dressed in the Muslim way - with demure not excluding nose furniture. She had a very nice smile too.

Onto the Wigmore, where among our near neighbours we had one large man chewing the cud, one lady wearing smelly perfume and one man who liked to whisper to his lady friend, more or less during the proceedings. Also tiresome.

The musicians were in dark, smart casual. Which in the case of one of the cellists ran to a fancy shirt and a medallion. Two of them used computers rather than sheet music. With the music being rather more lively than I expected. And with the Mozart being unfamiliar - while I had thought I knew his violin sonatas pretty well, ever since we did the whole lot in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, getting on for fifty years ago now. Radu Lupu and Syzmon Goldberg. I remember a member of the audience from the US remarking that they were an unlikely pair and that it would interesting to see how they got on. Too deep for me: I just liked - and still like - the sonatas.

And I still own the very disc.

Out to All Bar One, where we repeated our food order from last time. (Stone baked garlic pesto) flatbread and paella for him. Better than two paellas which can be a bit much. Maki bowl with chicken for her. Just switching to Corona in place of the wine I had usually taken in the past.

The place had been quiet when we arrived, which meant that we got very good service. But busy enough by the time we left. Perhaps 13:45 on a Sunday afternoon. We were told that it had been very busy the day before and that staffing had been cranked up a notch in anticipation of a repeat. The ups and down of business!

A visit to St. Anne's in Margaret Street for a sit in the peace and quiet. And to soak up the rather splendid atmosphere.

And so to Tottenham Court Road, Waterloo and Raynes Park. Where we continued in the botanical vein by scoring the heaviest book yet. A well made book published in 1976 running to 1,290 pages.

Red stamped inside for 'RAINBIRD Natural History' - which I thought would be the name of some library or collection - but search has so far failed to reveal what this might be or have been. There is an archive of this name at Oxford Brookes, but that seems to be more picture books - which this book does not really qualify as with its modest number of black-and-white line drawing of plants. And then there is an irrigation company of this name in the US, a company with a training operation, but not the sort of training which would carry a book of this sort. 

Abebooks offers quite a few copies, nearly all from North America, mostly around £20 including postage. Which, given that it must once have cost a good deal more, at least in real terms, suggests that the market for a book of this sort is quite limited now.

I have yet to spend quality time with it, but an innovation (for me anyway) is that it is not pedantic about the taxonomic status of the entries: they do not have to be genera or families, although a lot of them are. There is, for example, a useful article on the cultivation of apples.

And the green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) of reference 2 gets just a column inch on page 843. More or less dismissed as European. Maybe it can't cope with the heat and cold of North America. Likes such things in moderation. Maybe the word cultivated is the problem.

Two species of liriodendrum, noticed in these pages from time to time, for example at reference 3, get about three column inches on page 669. Not much considering that one of them, the tulip tree, grows up to 200 feet and the timber is widely used. Presumably cultivated. See reference 4.

While asters get nearly four pages.

Taxi home, from which it looked as if the new grocer in Waterloo Road had gone down. Walking round later, I found this rather stroppy notice stuck to the window. Presumably the landlord had sent in the heavies in response to non-payment of rent. I suppose the existing grocer up the road, the chap I buy water melons and walnuts from, will be relieved. He does not do meat, but there must have been quite an overlap in other respects.

Seat from Stockholm not much used, but it did serve to prompt young people to give up their seats on tubes and trains. Faith in human nature restored.

PS: at least I had thought it was a repeat order at All Bar One. But inspection of the archive suggests not. Memory error.

References

Reference 1: https://www.kronbergacademy.de/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/trolley-733.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/trolley-572.html.

Reference 4: https://www.wood-database.com/yellow-poplar/.