The Palace

Towards the end of last month to Hampton Court Palace, it being the first fine day, suitable for such a place, for a while. Our first visit since last November, as noticed at reference 1.

We could not get onto our usual road to the Palace at the junction of Hook Road and the A3, so had to go through Thames Ditton, which perhaps doubled the journey time to an hour.

Walked across a cyclist infested bridge, but at least, at the Palace end, a young man and his son had the good manners to dismount, as was proper.

Red great coats at the Palace were patchy, a mater of personal choice according to the chap we asked. But then I thought he was a bit coy on the subject of subcontractors, so perhaps he was one, not actually entitled to a red coat.

The Tilt Yard cafe was busy at noon and I took what might have been called bacon bap but was actually a confection involving chutney and other stuff suggestive of a burger. To think that they once used to sell Maids of Honour Tarts, until the inbound concession holder decided that they did not pay. Last sighted something over six years ago at reference 2.

Onto the wilderness, where some snowdrops were showing, but not the daffodills. And we did find some winter aconites, a flower I am fond of, even if our efforts to grow them were not very successful.

Then just the other day, BH told a story about snowdrops being named for a variety of earring popular in Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries. Wikipedia corroborates at reference 3, while pointing out that there used to be plenty of other names for them; snowdrops is just the one which happens to have won out. A story which is not mentioned by OED, although it does point to various foreign names for the flowers.

They clearly need to do something about all the mistletoe, or it is going to throttle the avenue trees beyond the wall. Given the way it grows out of a branch of the host, I would have thought that just cutting it out from its base would suffice. No need for chemicals.

More of same. Somewhere along the way we found a bench in the sun for a bit of a sit. Very pleasant. And another bench a bit after that.

The once magnificent herbaceous border along the east front might have vanished under grass but there were still some fish in the round pond in the privy garden.

The halo around the central fountain in the pond looked surprisingly different from this angle, some of which is preserved in the snap above. But while the camera might play tricks, tricks in the sense that what you get is not much like what you see, except in detail, the privy garden is still a fine place, especially on a fine day like this one.

We passed on the Cumberland Gallery on this occasion. The Canaletto sequence will have to wait.

Back over the bridge, where we faced one chap down off his bicycle, at least while he passed us (going the other way). He got up again when he was a decent distance past us.

Chicken baguettes at our usual café at the river end of Bridge Road. Very good at the time, although mine, unusually moist and savoury for chicken, was implicated in an alimentary disturbance which followed and knocked me out for most of Sunday. Not proven, but implicated.

Planning consent may at last have been granted, but no action on the prestige corner site. Maybe it has all taken so long that the money side of the operation has got to be put together all over again.

See references 5 and 6, from which last the snap above is taken. Dated September last year. Is that the last word, or do the heritage people and their lawyers get to have another round? Will Starmer manage to get to grips with all this nonsense?

By the time we got to our car, say around 15:15, the sun had dropped down behind the clouds and the warmth had gone out of the day. Time to go.

So home to snooze and then to knock up the soup already noticed at reference 6.

PS 1: lots of stuff out there about mistletoe management and control. Cutting it out works - but is expensive if you have lots of trees to clear. See, for example, the Australian essay at reference 7.

PS 2: it struck me later than one way of looking at our planning system is that the housing that we so badly need does not get built, but the lawyers get fat on the otherwise non-productive planning process. They get to buy even bigger and better houses than they have already. Although I dare say most of them work so hard that they don't get much time to enjoy them. All that energy going up in smoke.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/parking-at-palace.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/palace.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galanthus.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/04/tulips-at-hampton-court.html.

Reference 5: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-development-of-land-adjoining-hampton-court-station-site.

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

Reference 7: https://ecosystemunraveller.com/connectivity/ecology-of-parasitic-plants/mistletoe-management/. Sadly, now complete with irritating advertisements - which, curiously, did not appear when I got to the page via Bing.