Hard hat

Back on the bike again, this time for a run from London Bridge to Vauxhall.

Two noisy conversations near me on the train. From the first, I learned that Pull & Bear are foreign. Checking today, I find that this is indeed the case: a member of the Inditex family from Spain, along with Zara. See reference 2. People who once had a striking multi-screen shark display in their Oxford Street window, but I cannot put my hand on it just presently. Second, there was an extended conversation about train fares and senior railcards. It struck me that this was serving much the same function as grooming each other (for fleas) does among the larger apes. Nothing to do with trains really.

Having remarked on how the Lime people seemed to have cleaned their act up recently, this minor infestation of the Bullingdon stand at London Bridge. 

A different colour code for dustbins in Elliott's Row (known to gmaps for some reason as Lily Mews) than we have in Epsom: I think blue is for commercial with us. Something else to get to grips with should we move back to the big town. Something else for Starmer and his team to tidy up: devolving power to local authorities is all very well, but we do need a bit of order and discipline.

Had to pass on this Tesco's trolley, with the absence of a bicycle lock being sufficient excuse. And there would be the business of finding the nearest Tesco's, which might not be very near at all.

A strange turret, just after I branched right down the A3204 by mistake, rather than carrying on down the A3. Worth the detour. The turret looks to be some remnant of what was perhaps the Renfrew Road Workhouse, perhaps the Lambeth Infirmary adjacent, in its day a large, 650 bed hospital. Dugard Way, round the corner, is still home to the Mary Sheridan Centre for Child Health and the South East London Sickle Cell & Thalassaemia Centre.

Also in Dugard Way, a listed building of some sort? The same sort of vintage as the building I visited in West Croydon recently? Google Images says the Jamyang Buddhist Centre, which it is indeed what it says on the plate by the door, visible on zoom. Clearly a second visit is needed.

A gas holder, perhaps another listed building, being repurposed. See reference 4.

All in all, a lot of interesting old building and a lot of mature street trees.

Got screamed at by a young man in a large Jaguar, possibly a man of colour, because I got into a muddle about how to turn into South Lambeth Road at Stockwell. In mitigation I would say that all the new arrangements for cycles at junctions can be a bit confusing if you have not been through the junction in question in the recent past. Compounded in this case, by the turning I was expecting having been pedestrianised. 

But I just about made it to the stand for the Canton Arms, very nearly full. Just outside of which I came across a handsome black girl looking very fetching in her tight, scarlet and white gym gear.

A light and airy front bar, with most of the not very many customers preferring to sit outside. I took a pint of Harvey's Sussex Best, quite a lot dearer than the pint I had taken a couple of days previously at Borough. But it was good beer, if not quite as good as the Five Points I had taken there.

An old style older bar maid, a muscle bound younger bar man. Some people - clearly from the 'gentry' of 'gentrification' making careful bookings to dine in the evening.

Still not convenient to stock up on water melon.

And so onto the Estrela, where I took the liver of the day. Not as good as the liver on toast I had had there once, and slightly infested with their curious gravy, but not bad. Solid, substantial fare - perhaps more suitable for a working rather than a retired man. The chips, visible top right, were not cooked as per instructions: a failure to observe the rule that the customer is always right.

Taken with red, for a change. Big Internet footprint, suggesting amongst other things that the markup was only of the order of two, unusually low for wine in a restaurant. See references 5 and 6.

Passion fruit dessert missing, so I tried the strawberry version. Good, but not as good as the passion fruit.

Wound up with a spot of the local brandy. Small bananas a gift for later - which turned out to have a curiously apple flavour. Rather good.

Strolled down to Vauxhall Station where I engaged with a very cheerful police constable about her hat, something like that snapped above. It turned out that, despite appearances, it was a hard hat, with a hard shell, rather in the way of a riding hat of old. Hard enough both to protect and to act as an offensive weapon, should need arise - which, I was told, it did occasionally. She did not like it much and would much rather have had the sort of cap worn by the firearms units. She was also a credit to the force, so it was a pity that I did not think to take her number so that I could write to her station and tell them so.

Picked up some books about data from RPPL. Didn't recognise much from the one about data analysis, despite my thinking that that was something I knew something about. Further reading indicated.

Picked up a couple of trolleys at Epsom, as noticed at reference 7, then took a further spot of red on the Wetherspoon's terrace. Upon which there was a sharp shower, catching out a good number of young ladies in a state of some undress for the evening to come.

I wondered whether it was Epsom Salts coming up through the chalk which was slowing down the two trees right next to Wetherspoon's. Certainly a lot less vigorous than the others. There seem to be three varieties in the market place altogether.

Diminutive cigarettes which reminded me of my students days, on a ration of half an ounce a day.

And so rather later home than I had intended.

PS 1: depressing to read at reference 1, of the great interest taken by the arms industry in the set-to between India and Pakistan. We don't seem to be learning much.

PS 2: later: the sharks have now been run down. The search key 'shark oxford' eventually did the trick. Hadn't thought that it was all of eleven years ago.

References

Reference 1: China’s J-10 ‘Dragon’ shows teeth in India-Pakistan combat debut: Skirmish is first test of Beijing’s military hardware against advanced western technology - Mehul Srivastava, Charles Clover, Humza Jilani, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 2: https://www.inditex.com/itxcomweb/gb/en/home.

Reference 3: https://jamyang.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/better-fairer-lambeth/projects/oval-gas-works.

Reference 5: https://www.fea.pt/.

Reference 6: https://www.cartuxa.pt/categoria-produto/vinhos/cartuxa/.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/trolleys-822-and-823.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/05/takacs-quartet.html.