The window

Having been prompted on or around reference 1 to take another look at the east window of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a fortnight ago I wound up going there to hear some cello and piano: Bach's cello suite No.1, three pieces by Fauré and Shostakovich's D minor cello sonata.

A day which turned out bright and trolley-full, as noticed at reference 2.

Vauxhall was shut for Epsom purposes by a signalling problem, not that this mattered on this occasion, apart from slowing the train down a bit. 

Odd quirk of vision a little before the entrance to Waterloo, with the arch of what was the Eurotunnel canopy at Waterloo temporarily acquiring two white discs, one to each side. 

Quirks continued, with my thinking that the Jubilee Line was the way to Charing Cross, and not realising my mistake until just before I boarded the train, had a long walk back to the Bakerloo Line platform. Most tiresome.

The chap guarding the entrance to the church was very impressed by my duffel coat. It seems that he had to wear something of the sort for his time at primary school.

Quite a decent audience as regards numbers, but not very well trained in that they clapped at the end of chunks, not just at the end of pieces. Not very British at all. And I certainly do not like it: it might bring a bit of community into that audience, but I find it distracting. With clapping the instant a piece finishes being irritating in a different way. The audience at the Wigmore Hall is better in that it does not clap at the end of chunks, but it can be a quick off the mark at the end proper; squashing the music rather than letting it die away.

The church was looking very handsome, although I knew about the hard pews by the end of my visit. The good news is that after a while, I decided I liked the east window. I had not focussed on the central cross before, or the role of the central oblique egg, symbolising, at least for me, both Christ on the Cross and an egg carrying the new life, the resurrection. Being oblique softened it a bit, stopping it from dominating the composition. While the special glass, not very see-through, stopped one being distracted by the trees outside. Decent, low key and well suited to the place - unlike the loud Hockney effort in Westminster Abbey. I wondered whether the Iranian artist came from a Christian family, but I have not been able to find out anything about that. Just that there was s connection between her work and Sufism, not very Christian at all.

Bach good. An awkward transition at one point in the Fauré. Cello a bit lost in parts of the Shostakovich. Maybe I would have done better had I been able to get a seat nearer the action in row G. Maybe the acoustics were not too clever. Or is the problem that the piano is reaching the older ear better than the violin? I have been conscious of drowning violin in violin sonatas for a while now.

Forgot all about checking trousers at Lipman's (of reference 7). Forgot all about checking up on restaurants in the Haymarket against an upcoming visit to the theatre there. Headed instead for the old-style cafe in Duncannon Street for a couple of their lightweight bacon sandwiches. Tea rather good, despite my forgetting to remove the teabag. A steady trade, but I got a seat inside, which suited. A place where they prefer cash and, for the modest amount involved, I was able to oblige.

Took a train to Waterloo East to avoid long walks underground; just a more modest walk above ground at Waterloo. To find delays: Vauxhall still out, Chessington very late. But for some reason Guildford via Epsom was more or less on time so I got that. A better class of passenger rates a better service? But it did mean passing on the platform library at Raynes Park - although I consoled myself with the thought that it had not been that hot of late. Things have done downhill since the waiting room was tidied up.

Glimpsed the sunflower carriage in train on the way out of Waterloo. The first time I have seen it for a bit, and I had assumed the current franchise holders had painted it out. I tried quite hard this afternoon to find its picture in the archive but failed, a picture I am sure is there. Maybe I will have better luck later.

While stuck, I read an article on my telephone about Zoltan Torey. I read that when he escaped from Hungary after the war, he was told that his chances of getting across the border were 'fair'. I have no idea how bad things would have to be before I took a chance like that. He survived to an eventful life in Australia, including being blinded by an acid accident in a factory. Most recently mentioned in these pages at reference 8.

I then got to thinking about how legalising assisted dying is dragging on. I thought, not for the first time, that if you give bored but bright young MPs without enough to do - our democratic institutions are not that clever - something not terribly important to chew on - the numbers likely to be involved, at least in the first instance, being likely to be vanishingly small compared with the number of regular deaths - chew they will, getting terribly earnest about it.

I then made my way to the terrace at Wetherspoon's for my first wine, to wonder what you did in a very small fast food van selling grilled meat to keep your meat cool during the day. No doubt the market inspector is on the case.

Then to the Marquis, to wonder where the large increase in price went - maybe three times as much. OK so the wine was a bit better and the service was a bit better, but I don't suppose the balance was profit, so where was it? Economies of scale? Ruthless cost cutting by properly entrepreneurial types?

I indulged in a spot of nostalgia for Derby Days of old when proper sausage rolls - made with Porky White's fine sausages (he operated just outside Ewell West and I even bought sone pork from him once) and quite decent white rolls - were served by way of breakfast. Much appreciated by the contingent of bookmakers from up north taking a little refreshment before going up the hill.

This afternoon, neither Google nor his AI assistant were able to help. Presumably no-one much has told the Internet about this important bit of Epsom heritage. But at least he did not offer any outright porkies. The images on offer were not very inspiring either: not unreasonable, just uninspiring.

Plenty of table reservations for later. Plenty of tattoos adorning both young ladies and young gents.

A bit later, on the way home, I came across a couple of young men who appeared to have been to a gym. Nothing unusual about that, except that one of them had lost his right leg above the knee and his right arm above the elbow. And the lower left leg was bandaged. I admired his pluck, from a distance.

PS 1: it has taken me seventy years to learn the St. Martin-in-the-Fields is not St. Martin's. 

PS 2: further search had failed to find the sunflower paint job. But I have learned that at one point we grew a whole lot of sunflowers in pots and that the Stagecoach franchise for South West trains expired in August 2017. I think the paint job was on their watch, which suggests psmv3 or psmv2. But all to no avail. Maybe something clever will come to me overnight.

PS 3: something clever came did come to me during the evening dose of 'Shetland'. Maybe it was Wimbledon where I last saw this decorated carriage? And so it proved to be, getting me references 9 and 10. Not South West trains after all. And despite there being a quite vivid visual memory of the decorated coach, it looks as if there never was a picture either. And there there the matter will have to rest. Maybe I will manage a picture one day.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/celery-fest.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/trolley-807-808-and-809.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/piano-100.html.

Reference 4: https://artandchristianity.org/ecclesiart-listings/shirazeh-houshiary-east-window.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirazeh_Houshiary. Seemingly a fairly private person.

Reference 6: https://www.piphornestudio.com/.

Reference 7: https://www.lipmanandsons.co.uk/.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/01/lithic-studies-bone-branch.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/quintet.html.

Reference 10: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/yellow-flowers.html.