Fishcotheque

To London a fortnight or so ago to buy cheese. Bullingdons not being a option at the moment, this meant a trip to London Bridge and Borough Market.

Weather not great, which perhaps explained why, on this midwinter, midweek visit, the market was unusually quiet. I even took the time to look around for dried figs and smokies but failed to find either. In the case of this last, because the smoked fish section of the fish stall seemed to have vanished. Plenty of other exotica to be had though; things like an entire octopus or an entire cod fish.

Despite the challenge which seemed to be involved in extracting two pieces of Poacher weighing about a kilo in all from a piece which perhaps weighed a kilo and a half, I bought my Poacher and then started to think about lunch.

Didn't fancy an outdoor paella, although the paella itself looked fine. About a tenner a portion as I recall. And I didn't fancy anything else which I passed on the way back to Waterloo, where I ended up in Fishcoteque, a place we have visited occasionally in the past, with the only recorded visit in the archive being that noticed at reference 1.

With the snap above being taken just around the corner, at the top of Exton Street, just visible far left in the snap below. I had to leave the trolley, a retro trolley from John Lewis/Waitrose, nothing like those deployed in the Epsom Waitrose store, for someone else. Maybe not even made by Wanzl. Maybe the dangling rags signal that it had been appropriated by some street person for some street purpose, and so was not eligible for capture anyway.

A bit bigger inside than the snap from Street View above would suggest, with a steady trickle of customers, some of them looking to be students from the Far East taking a gap year at King's College.

Perhaps in the building which I remember as being called Cornwall House and occupied by the records department of the Foreign Office. People who were not having any of it when I flashed my Treasury pass and asked if I could used their cloakroom. Investigation today only revealed in the first instance that it was built for HMSO, converted to a hospital during WW1, then used as government offices generally until fairly recently, say the turn of the century. For which see reference 2. But digging deeper, I get to reference 3, which denies all knowledge of Cornwall House. Perhaps whatever it did was not grand enough compared with the main building in Whitehall. But then to reference 4, which does know about the place, sometime home of parts of the Library and of the Research Department. Including, at least for a time, the Polar Regions Section. Perhaps they knew all about Greenland.

That apart, Fishcotheque did me a fine haddock and chips, washed down with a couple of teas. Lots of chips, so no need for the customary two slices.

Onto Waterloo Station where my ticket failed to open a gate for me. Luckily, my trolley quickly attracted the attention of a member of the platform team.

Onto Raynes Park, where there was nothing for me, but there was a Alan Bennet collection which BH was pleased to have. A veteran of the days when a good sprinkling of people from humble backgrounds made it to the upper reaches, often via scholarships to Oxford or Cambridge. See reference 5.

There was also a very shabby chap, in clothes which had probably once been respectable, treating everybody and nobody to a quiet, well-spoken monologue about nothing much at all. Presumably a chap with issues, but not serious enough to warrant incarceration.

Home to finish off the fine pork soup already noticed at reference 6.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/01/gyorgy-kurtag.html.

Reference 2: https://archive.org/details/surveyoflondon23londuoft/surveyoflondon23londuoft/page/18/mode/2up.

Reference 3: History Notes 2: The FCO: People and place 1782-2000 - FCO - 1991. To be found at https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/history_notes_cover_hphn_2.

Reference 4: Herald of a noisy world - Interpreting the news  of all nations: The Research and Analysis Department of the  Foreign and Commonwealth Office:  A History - Robert A Longmire, Kenneth C Walker - 1995. To be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7e0e2ae5274a2e8ab458d6/Herald_of_a_Noisy_World.pdf. 

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Bennett.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/pork-soup.html.