psmv5: Impromptu outing

A rather impromptu solo outing to the Wigmore Hall, the pull being Brahms' 1st piano quartet, Op.25 from the new-to-me Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. We had missed the lunchtime concert the day before on account of the festivity on the day before that, but I am at something of a loss as to how I missed out on this one in the first place.

Plus an arrangement of Clara Schumann Op.13, No.1. Plus Holloway Op.143 (of which snippets are available on places like YouTube). Plus the Rogers and Hart Blue Room of reference 2 for an encore. With the beginning fiddled with in an amusing way.

Rail journey planner down at 06:00, but up and running a bit later, and I opted for the 11:18. Starting with this rather tired detailing to an entrance to the flats next to the station.

Failed to spot any figs on the large fig tree across the rails from platform 1. Maybe it does not get enough sun, what with the station superstructure and the flats behind that.

The cantilever support to all the seats on our new (grey) trains - meaning that there is rather less to get in the way of feet than there is in the old (red) trains.

For once in a while, there was a ticket inspector on the train and my ticket was inspected twice. The inspector was very polite about it.

The tube was busy. And there was a small saxophone for our entertainment on the way out of Oxford Circus. And for once, I was entertained. Quite a decent musician and not too loud.

Ponti's all boarded up. What may have been our last visit before it closed being noticed at reference 1. A place we had used quite a bit over the years.

A fine salami sandwich, without any trimmings, toasted or otherwise, from the Mustard Café in Margaret Street. I was entertained by a young man explaining to the young lady accompanying him all about his approach to relationship management. She got to chip in occasionally. Not the sort of thing that I remember doing.

Plenty of fancy cars outside, most of them with fancy number plates, but none of them anywhere near the elusive No.39.

Some casualties in Cavendish Square. No idea where they might have come from.

Onto the hall, where I put my cycling accessories into the cloakroom, noticing an older lady usher whom I recognised from before the plague. Most of the other ushers were very young. With the two floral arrangements being white flowers on a green background. Unusual for this florist, who usually goes for more colour. But they did work.

Three ladies - just one with a computer - and a gent on the keyboard. A lady turning the pages, properly inconspicuous. The cellist seemed to enjoy herself with a lot of face action, including the occasional flash of a bit of nasal furniture.

A good concert, with the Brahms fully up to scratch. I even enjoyed the Holloway, which surprised me, not knowing anything about the man except that he had composed a short piece for my younger bother's funeral and that he was in the audience, somewhere to my right. But he did not stand up to be acknowledged, so I still don't know what he looks like.

Pulled a Bullingdon at Hinde Street and pedalled off to the cheese shop in Shorts Gardens. A quick enough run, despite getting lost, not for the first time, in the Covent Garden one way system. I dare say there was the odd traffic infringement. Bicycle locked up across the road from the cheese shop; perhaps a bit OTT, but taking the lock is not a lot of bother and having the bicycle pinched would be.

Cheese plus a few apples from Blagdon, people who have come up before. At least that it what I thought, but checking the archive draws a blank. And the website at reference 4 is fairly basic. Perhaps I misheard and misremembered. In any event, the apples were good rather than great. Nothing wrong with them, just not a variety I warmed to.

Thames Water at it again, just past the cheese shop. Does not seem that long since this road was comprehensively dug up for some reason or other. But if reference 4 is to be believed, maybe two years ago.

It took me a while to get through all the traffic lights at the bottom of Kingsway.

But I get there, to take the fourth position on what is left of the stand on the ramp at Waterloo. Pole position out of service.

A goo-free cheese and tomato baguette from Upper Crust. Cheese a bit feeble and baguette a bit undercooked, but not bad for the money. And good to be able to dispense with goo.

Advance warning of Zog arriving at Kew Gardens in time for our projected visit there. A fun-filled trail for budding dragons. And I thought that it was supposed to be a botanical garden.

After which I spent part of the journey wondering about how the carriage knows how many passengers there are.

According to Gemini today, there are several technologies available which do this sort of thing but: '... The main way the Arterio trains know their capacity is through a system that uses onboard CCTV cameras and Artificial Intelligence (AI) software ... The AI constantly monitors the images from the internal CCTV cameras to anonymously 'count' and track the number of passengers in each carriage in real-time. This provides a live picture of the train's occupancy...'. Which sounds like a lot of processing to me - processing which Gemini tells me is all done locally, rather than being sent off to some data centre.

Apparently SWR use this stuff for all kinds of purposes, both engineering and operational, with the in-carriage display being almost an extra.

By way of a check, Bing turns up reference 6 at the top of its hit list. So Gemini was almost certainly right and added a fair bit of value around the edges. Plus I did not have to bother to think up a suitable query - at least not until afterwards.