psmv5: Dissonance

At the beginning of the month, to a Sunday Wigmore to hear the Arcadia Quartet of reference 1 give us Mozart K465 and Grieg Op.27. The Mozart we knew and liked, and I thought I would get on OK with the Grieg. Arcadia new to us.

Off to Ewell West, where the ticket office was attended and we learned from the pleasant young attendant that there had been something of a flood the day before, with water coming down through the ceiling. But at least she was able to make light of it.

Onto the the expensive new footbridge where somebody had been a bit careless about the colour of the paint.

BH's telephone had explained that we were in for a cool day with sunny intervals, but as it happened there was a sunny interval for our short wait, and we were able to sun ourselves on a bench handy for Vauxhall - having decided that it was a day for toast at All Bar One (ABO) rather than bun from Olle & Steen.

On the train, we learned that there were two driver's cubby holes at each end of the carriage - perhaps not every carriage - one on each side of the corridor, it being a walk-though train. No space for the driver to stand up and stretch his legs a bit when the train was stopped for a bit and it wouldn't do to be claustrophobic. But at least they served as places where the guard could take the weight off his feet for a few minutes.

We did not come across a luggage compartment, although the platform indicator boards did seem to know about bicycles, so one supposes that there was one somewhere.

Good viewing conditions for aeroplanes and there was procession of ones from the train, as we neared London. I would have done well on a platform.

Coming off the crowded tube at Oxford Circus, I learned of something called 'Snapdragon', presumably not the children's party game which features in one the the Miss. Marple yarns on television. On which Google soon puts me right: not Marple at all, rather Poirot in the 'Hallowe'en Party' of reference 3. And I had forgotten about the pedants' apostrophe.

I failed to work out what the real thing, to be found at reference 4, is all about, so perhaps I need to talk to someone under twenty, or at least of working age.

Interesting juxtaposition of building lines at the top of Margaret Street. It took a little while to find the name of this street as Street View insisted for some time on showing me inside the tube station rather than the streets the name would suggest. Then all of a sudden it stopped doing that and gave me the streets back. Another call for someone under twenty.

I am reminded that all these once huge shops seem a little dated now - and one wonder how long the likes of Selfridges and John Lewis are going to survive in their present form. Is the M&S rebuild going to be all retail or are they going to find other uses for some of the space?

There seems to be an obsession about carbon footprint - maybe a wheeze to see off the heritage people over deco demolition - but all I was able to spot about the new building at reference 5 was that it would be mixed use. Perhaps I will take a more careful look later.

They had changed the colour scheme a bit at ABO since we were last there, and I was quite sure, the minute that we walked in, that the uniform aprons had changed colour, without having a clue what colour they had been before. The old colour must have been in memory somewhere, but all that was made available to consciousness was the fact of the change. Maybe the colour was coded in such a way that the brain knew the code had changed without being able to say what colour had been coded for, rather in the way that one computes a hash code from a file: a change in the hash code means that there has been a change in the file, and you know that without having to check the old and new files over properly. But you don't know what has changed.

In any event, the full, smartie enhanced experience and the toast made a pleasant change from the sugary bun. Good service, good tables and a view. On this occasion anyway, it seemed like a much better deal than the rather busier Olle & Steen, just a few hundred yards away, on the other side of Cavendish Square.

A view which included a fine wagon pulling out of Margaret Street. And given that it was travelling empty, I had clearly missed out on a tower crane experience; sloppy of me. See reference 6.

Busy in Riyadh.

A window in what might have been an RBS building before the fall and the rebirth of NatWest, on the corner of Cavendish Square. What caught my eye was the fact that it was a sash window which appeared to have panelled wooden shutters behind it, the sort of thing you get in heritage buildings like Somerset House and which, I imagine, rarely if ever still work. By the time they built GOGGS at the end of the 19th century, they were still bothering with sash windows - framed in varnished oak if you please - but no-one bothered with shutters by then, not even fake ones.

Once again, Gemini provides a nice little essay about it all, the start of which is reproduced above. And in response to a supplementary, he asserts that there was not a fashion for fakes. Buildings moved to thin walls with no room for shutter boxes and wives moved to fancy curtains. A whole new way to show off. I dare say one could pick him up on details, but I would be surprised if he has gone far wrong. Not that I am ever going to know.

A trolley of unknown origin in Cavendish Square, not that capture and return was an option. Don't recognise the trim at all.

A flash motor in a not particularly flash parking spot. According to CarCheck, a 2025 Bentley Flying Spur Azure Hybrid Auto (Flying Spur W12). Capable of 200mph. Perhaps the owner sends his chauffeur out to some race track so that he can tell his friends & flunkeys that it really is. At Owen's, prices seem to run from £50,000 to £200,000. Well out of our league - and it might be a bit wide for our suburban gate posts, even though the gates themselves are long gone.

Wigmore Hall was full. The flowers were a handsome mauve-pink centre on green back, left better than right, once again. BH is convinced that it is the apprentice that does the right, but I am not so sure that it is not all a trick of the lighting, as we nearly always sit on the left. It is also true that the appearance of the flowers varies hugely with the lighting, and I imagine that the designer aims for them to look their best when the house lights are down and the stage lights are up. Or does she? What would Gemini make of that one?

As it turned out, I liked the Mozart, as expected, but failed to connect with the Grieg, which seemed to stop and start rather a lot for my liking. Didn't settle down to it somehow.

Out to Jubilee it to the Italian restaurant we liked at Waterloo. Seems extraordinary that the last visit seems to have been way back in June, as noticed at reference 7 and to be found at reference 8. Where has all the time gone?

The place was pretty busy when we arrived, but they could do us a table near the bar. Part of the entertainment was the brothers (of the name of the place) chattering away in Italian all through their service. Cheerful bunch.

Our Webster's, which has an Italian section at the back, confirms today that 'fratello' is indeed the Italian for brother, as we had thought at the time.

A 2024 Vermintino to drink. Going in by the label with 'tarra noa vermentino di gallura saraja', Google finds plenty of people who would sell me the wine, but not the people who make it, although I do learn that Gallura is the north eastern tip of Sardinia, to the west of Naples. Maybe the language of the label is that of Sardinia rather than regular Italian (from Etruria). And going direct to the website on the back takes me to reference 10.

From which I take the image above. Hilly sort of place and I think I have been told that they do hard core cycling holidays. The sort of thing that muscle-bound patrons of CrossFit might go in for.

The wine was fine, but for once Street View fails me, and I fail to find the place on the map, although I do get as far as Telti. And the countryside looks a lot more countryfied than it does in, say, Devon.

We both took soup of the day, described as pumpkin, which I thought pretty good for a vegetable soup. The white bread was pretty good too.

Followed in my case by a steak, also a dish of the day. The first one was not cooked enough to my taste, but they brought me another one fast enough, which was spot on. Not the fanciest bit of meat but it was of a good size and went well with the white bread.

Being pretty full by this point, I hesitated about dessert, but I was sold this confection, which went down well enough. Plus a little supplementary grappa.

Further entertainment provided by a party of ladies on the table next to us, up from Dorchester for a couple of nights, with the main business being Mamma Mia at the O2, which they thought was great. A couple of nights in Airbnb and now they were filling in a bit of time before they caught their train. They knew all about the Nag's Head at Poundbury, a place we have stayed at from time to time and hope to stay in again. Faketown from our very own King Charles III.

It all looks very jolly at reference 11 and I dare say BH would go for it. A party in the big tent. Not sure about myself though.

Out to catch our train, from which I had a really good sighting of an aeroplane sinking down to the west, probably at Vauxhall. Failed to convert it to a two though, as the views above and to the east were very restricted.

And at Raynes Park we spotted an Aterio train called the 'Red Rose'. Further evidence that some of the fleet have been given names. So why not the trains on the Epsom line?

Plus deep thoughts about acting, probably brought on by the grappa. I have always thought it a bit odd to spend your working life pretending to be someone else, but on this occasion I saw the point. You could spend your life doing all kinds of risky stuff without, as it were, having to pay the bill at the end. A grown-up version of the acting out that some young children seem to be very keen on - at least our granddaughters seem to be.

PS 1: in the course of checking the archive for arcadias, I came across reference 2. Back in 2021, I seemed to be able to get beef with a better blanket of fat than they seem to be able to manage now.

PS 2: a correspondent has alerted me to the existence of a small chain of restaurants called St. John, to be found at reference 9. In many ways the right sort of place - except that a peek at a menu for lunch says halibut, partridge and venison for main course. Not keen on halibut, my experience of venison is rather mixed and I imagine partridges are rather bony - although Miss. Marple tell us she is rather fond on them in one of her television yarns. The one involving a coach holiday and a mystery bequest. So we shall see.

PS 3: another correspondent has alerted me to real men's football in Canada. Can't see our lot playing in the conditions of references 12 and 13. I don't suppose we even have any of the special orange balls which are needed.

References

Reference 1: https://arcadiaquartet.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/beef-two.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallowe%27en_Party.

Reference 4: https://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/overview.

Reference 5: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/12/17/m-and-s-oxford-street-demolition-fred-pilbrow/.

Reference 6: https://www.wolffkran.com/website/en/gb.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-day-of-rabbit.html.

Reference 8: https://www.4fratellicaprini.co.uk/.

Reference 9: https://stjohnrestaurant.com/.

Reference 10: https://www.saraja.it/.

Reference 11: https://mammamiatheparty.co.uk/.