Lady Day

A week or so ago, it might have been Lady Day, but I was slated for town rather than for the Downs - it being a long time since I was good for both Lady Day and Derby Day.

As all too often, bit of a rush to get out in time for the train, despite having woken at a suitably early time. But at least the rain had stopped.

First fancy dress spotted five minutes after leaving home, but there were no fancy cars to be seen on West Hill. Then there were lots of people at the station. Mainly gents outside, but as I arrived a bunch of ladies in full dress were just coming down off the platform, which evened things up a bit.

Retired couple on the platform, just back from Stockholm (which they told me was more or less a cash free zone), then off to some sort of a naval dinner on HMS Belfast. I just about had time to make my connection with the ship when my train came in.

CrossFit at Clapham Junction open but quiet on this occasion, with no flamboyant activities out front. But I was able to pull a Bullingdon from the Grant Road stand a bit further down.

No signs of rebranding the stumpy embassy tower as a proper Trump Tower. Maybe that will come when the great man has a spare moment to consider the matter.

My landing strip at Vauxhall. MI6 behind, St. George's Wharf of reference 3 to the left. At least I think so - but maybe they have the river frontage and someone else has the road.

Inside, the box hedges were looking pretty well, unlike the box in Surrey, even if the place as a whole seemed  a bit lifeless. A bit like a fancy hotel at a slack time.

Got a bit lost finding my way to the Young's house, which I was fairly sure was there somewhere. Had it been made over? I dare say this place would have served me, but it was not what I had in mind, so I did no more than admire the antique cash register, presumably not in service. I imagine it cost rather more than the bit of antique brown wood that it is sitting on - this last being regular dark oak, nothing fancy. Maybe a hundred years old.

Nor I am encouraged today by the website at reference 4. Not my sort of thing at all.

Luckily, the Young's house turned out to be more or less next door and I was able to take a pint of their special bitter. Very good it was too.

Their brown wood took the form of an antique single scull, outriggers for the two sculls missing. I remember being told that these wooden boats were very expensive in their day. All fibreglass now I should think. 

According to Bing, sculling being what you do if you have two oars to the oarsman. Real men have just one oar - as in a trireme or something like that - in which case you can call it rowing.

Started at the Brunswick with some white, having a fallen for a cheaper wine on a dearer page of the wine menu. Bit old to be falling for that one! But the wine, from Arnaud Boué of Villers la Faye, a limited edition of 2,078 bottles, tasted well enough.

But where did this number come from, being the product of 2 and 1039, which last is a prime number? Perhaps it was 2,078 bottles after a bit of wastage down factory throats.

Google rather than Bing tracked Boué down to reference 5, from where the snap above is taken. But I failed to find someone who would sell me the stuff, although Hedonism could do something similar - a 2021 Bourgogne Aligote Coche Dury - for £275, but I would guess more like £10-£20 for this one. Say a markup of three.

Started with a potato cake, which came served on a small, rusty steel dish with green butter on the side. With a bit of greaseproof between the cake and the dish. Again, tasted well enough.

Followed by a fancy pork chop. Not bad, but a bit undercooked (for my taste) and a bit overpriced. It was only a pork chop after all: Duchy Originals at two for a fiver from Waitrose, so a mark up of ten or more.

Interesting dessert, coconut inside and something green outside, opened up for inspection in the snap above. 'Coconut sorbet, sorrel granita'. Rather good in fact. Having had a gewürztraminer fad a few years back, I declined their pairing and went for one of those - except that it turned out to be a schnapps rather than a white wine. Having made one mistake, I added their suggested yellow wine. Again, rather good, but in a rather small quantity.

Along the way, I found a bowl of fruit on the bar and the waitress explained that the fruit was part of the bar rather than the restaurant and drifted off, allowing me to help myself to an orange. Which turned out later to be rather indifferent: OK as a garnish for vodka, not much good by itself.

There were also a couple of staff troughs on the staff table, large versions of the troughs that school dinners used to come in. One veg, one maybe lasagne. Good to see staff being fed in this communal way: the sort of thing that Simenon talks about occasionally, after hours, in Parisian restaurants. Much better than the sandwiches from Prêt we caught the staff in the restaurant underneath the Wigmore Hall with one time.

A bit of entertainment provided by the entrance of two wedding parties, on their way to some function room or other.

More entertainment in the form of architectural salvage outside. Was the sign for sale?

Service good.

An interesting meal. Must take BH there one day to see what she makes of the place.

Having taken on freight, this building looked rather well in the late afternoon sunlight.

Picked up a presentation book for stamps at RPPL, 'Special stamps from the Royal Mail for 1988', finding when I got home that someone had already had the special stamps that it had once contained. But a handsomely produced book for all that.

Snap not so good, with the type being near illegible, even when one clicks to enlarge. The three snaps I took were all much the same as far as that goes, so perhaps I was not paying proper attention when I took them: usually moving the telephone about a bit brings things into a decent focus. Or perhaps it is the wrong sort of type face, not very photogenic.

Rather more useful to me anyway, the book by Fisher, already noticed, had arrived, complete with a rather tatty dust jacket.

PS 1: I was reminded by having another go at Waterloo recently, that the house was named for a Duke of Brunswick: 'In 1811 Anderson's half of the house was bought by Friedrich Wilhelm, the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, but he had little time to enjoy his riverside idyll. The Duke was a bitter opponent of Napoleon's domination of Germany and fled to England after taking part in the Battle of Wagram in 1809. He returned to Brunswick in 1813 to raise fresh troops, but two years later was killed at the Battle of Quatre Bras ... just a few days before Wellington’s victory at Waterloo'. A military family, with his father having been killed ten years previously at the battle of Jena-Auerstädt.

PS 2: the trolleys captured on return, despite best efforts to keep track, seem to have gone missing. To be reinstated shortly.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolley-874.html. Derby Day, such as it was.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/brunswick.html. The last visit to the Brunswick, getting on for a year ago.

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

Reference 4: https://www.thewaterfront.london/.

Reference 5: https://www.arnaudboue.com/fr/page-daccueil/.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gew%C3%BCrztraminer.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolleys.html. The missing trolleys, complete with error in the file name. Clearly time to take a break.