Churchy

Not Richard Church who has got a few mentions lately, rather a visit to a church, fitted-in in the course of a visit to London, a visit undertaken with neither rollator nor seat, just a stick.

A mild day, but overcast and dull. So the equipment was short raincoat, heavy sweater and folding umbrella.

Left the tube at Bond Street to ask in Steinway about the piano at St. George's Cathedral, noticed at reference 2. I was passed on to a very pleasant young lady - who also appeared to be very serious about selling her wares. She was not able to help, although she thought that her concert pianos generally had the Steinway name on the side, as at the Wigmore Hall. She also got in some remarks about the new Bechstein Hall up the road being delayed. I was slow enough not to think of showing my her snap of the piano in question - from which she might well have been able to adjudicate.

Next stop the Wigmore Hall to recover my dropped senior rail and bus passes. It took the young lady a few seconds to work out what I was on about, but when she got there she could put her hand on it fast enough - in a neat white envelope with my name on it.

At Hinde Street I found that Bullingdons are not all the same as far as fixing walking sticks to them is concerned, with there being a number of different configurations behind the saddle. Bootlaces did the business though. Bullingdon snapped above at Ashley Place after they had been taken down again.

From Hinde Street, I had rolled down to Hyde Park Corner without fuss, then into a rather blocked up Grosvenor Place, possibly because of a broken down bus. Took a pit-stop at Westminster Cathedral where I took in a good part of the regular midday mass, held in the body of the church rather than in a side chapel. No singing and no organ, but we did get a reading and a (quite a decent) sermon and there was a good bit of duet between the priest and the congregation, perhaps between 100 and 200 people. I found it all rather impressive, particularly visually, with what seemed at my distance like a very small priest, highlighted in the middle of a rather large space. But somehow he had the measure of it. I think both his assistants were ladies.

Also at Ashley Place. A new-to-me municipal van. A higher grade street cleaner?

After that, I pulled the same Bullingdon (as it happened) and headed across Vauxhall Bridge and parked up outside the Gail's Bakery opposite Travis Perkins. And so to the Estrela where I took a very decent oxtail soup followed by cow chop, aka Costeleta de Vaca. Salad off snap to the right. Three thirds of Sagres lager from Portugal - seemingly a member of the Kingfisher family. See reference 5. For once I was unable to finish off either the chips or the salad, although I did have a fair go at them. Had to pass on dessert.

Not worth taking a Bullingdon, so strolled along to Vauxhall for a train to Epsom. Stopped over at Raynes Park but nothing there. View of the bank not changed much either.

PS 1: further to reference 1, checking the map in preparation for this outing, I found that Oxford Street counts as the A40, which runs from there down to St. Paul's, where it gets lost - on both gmaps and Ordnance Survey. And maybe it is subsumed in the A5 in the stretch from Marble Arch to Edgware Road. Or maybe it cut north a bit to the east, before Edgware Road was laid out.

PS 2: I read this afternoon at reference 3 that HS2 was told to do work for rare bats which costed £100mn. Which must amount to a lot of pounds to the bat. Perhaps it is about time we had a debate about how much we are prepared to spend on that sort of thing. Time to rein in the heritage people a bit? And a bit out of season for a poisson d’avril - a nice French locution I was reminded of recently.

A slightly less futuristic impression. Both impressions coming from the flashy HS2 website.

Reference 4 suggests that this is indeed a rare bat, but it is found across a wide swathe of Europe and it is fairly low down in the extinction pecking order. Perhaps named for some bat-loving, renegade member of the Bechstein piano family? The people bringing us the Bechstein Hall No.2 mentioned above?

PS 3: for the avoidance of doubt, the bat shed has not yet been built. It is not clear whether it has been started or how much money is already spent or committed. But a piece in Friday's Guardian suggests to me that the whole scheme will now collapse in a cloud of ridicule.

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-matter-of-roads.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/morley-college.html.

Reference 3: HS2 spent £100mn on tunnel to protect rare bats: Kilometre stretch of steel mesh one of many planning requirements that has driven up costs, says project chair - Philip Georgiadis, Jim Pickard, Gill Plimmer, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechstein%27s_bat.

Reference 5: https://kingfisherdrinks.com/brands/sagres/. 'Smooth and moderately rich with a pleasantly bitter taste'. Almost a proper bitter.