Alien cheese

Last week back to the cheese shop in Short's Gardens.

The day, in fact, of the local elections here in Epsom. As it happens, for our ward we had nine candidates for the three regular parties, three for the Residents' Associations, strong here in Epsom, and one for the Greens. Given that I am usually a Labour voter and given the European failure of the two main parties, I thought of not voting Labour. The residents' had the advantage of not being tarred with the European brush, the disadvantage of being crypto-Tories. Not keen on the Liberals or the Greens. Thought about spoiling my vote with some suitable comment about the whole pack of them being useless, which I was once told was an entirely honourable option in Italy. Pundits paid attention to the number of spoiled votes. Eventually voted Labour on the grounds that they would never get in, but it would help to keep their popular vote up a bit. In the event, the Residents' swept the borough, although in our ward they lost one of the three seats to the Conservatives.

On the way back from the polling booth, passed a large house backing onto the allotments where I used to grow broad beans (and other things), now into its third year of building works. First year insides, third year outsides. The young man working the cement mixer told me that the young lady of the house was OK with things, now that the work was outside. I was not so sure.

Ivy

Intrigued while I was waiting for my train by the way the ivy was growing right up to and then under the live rail. At least where the trees were strong, as because where there were gaps in the trees the grass and the mares' tails were doing better. So perhaps my fancy of trying to grow some mares' tails down the side of the house is a forlorn hope, there not being enough sun there to get it up and running. But maybe one day I will get to try.

Onto Epsom station to pick up a train to Waterloo, sharing my carriage by the time I got off with another young lady, this one with two little ones in the double buggy, one walking and one in the can. I must say that she looked very cheerful on it all, and responded very cheerfully to remarks about twins, which turned out to be the non-identical sort.

Bullingdon

The ramp at Waterloo contained just two Bullingdons, both broken, this being late morning. Re-arousing my suspicions that the mayoral relic of the GLC was squeezing the maintenance funding. But by the time I had walked down to the bottom of the ramp, two had been returned to the top of the ramp, one of which I took out. Just over 11 minutes to get to Drury Lane, despite the gentle north wind on the bridge and signs alleging the closure of Drury Lane, fortunately just beyond where I wanted to get to.

Talking about how much cheese the 350 odd cows at the Lincolnshire Poacher farm could produce, I learned that the Orgo Regs were getting rather onerous, and this particular farm had dropped out. While my contribution was the the big supermarkets did not care for the capricious governance of said Regs. In any event, I also learned that the Poacher people made around a cheese a day, sold fresh milk and certainly did not buy milk in, as I had suspected. And, for a change, fell for a bit of cheese from Mull, in addition to my usual kilo or so of Poacher. The Mull of the houses, noticed at reference 1, which BH thought was jolly good stuff. Except that I muddled up Arran and Mull, which may confuse the shop man. They are on the same side of town though, as it were, so the muddle is understandable.

Cobbles

Late picture framer

For once, I paid a quick visit to the Crown at Seven Dials, where I was able to admire the various cobbles in the street outside. Far smaller than the rough cast cubes of granite slowly going onto the hard standing at the front of a house in Manor Green Road. Rough cast cubes which must be very expensive as they seem to be getting delivered in very small batches. Perhaps they want to be sure that the reinforced concrete underneath has gone properly off. Less pretentious people go in for the much cheaper and smaller setts, while we were not cheap at all, going for fine slabs of heritage concrete, with proper inch and a half sea-pebble (aka shingle) in-fill between the slabs.

I also wondered about the fashion shop snapped above, across the road from the Crown, once the picture framers Blackman Harvey. Did the shop start life as a dairy or something, with the tiles being the sort of thing such shops sported a hundred years ago? It took me a little while to trace Blackman Harvey this morning, partly because I got the name wrong, partly because they don't seem to figure on the helpful NPL list of same at reference 2. Who would have thought that there were so many of them? Luckily, it turned out that they framed our Cezanne reproduction of the 'House of Père Lacroix' hanging next to the laptop I am using.

On to Terroirs, where there was no problem getting a table, while the place was comfortably busy. And the staff are getting to know us which is nice. A new to me wine, Alexandre Bain's Pierre Précieuse Pouilly-Fumé. A hint of a fizz about it, like some Rieslings, very good it was too. The chap at reference 3. A small grower who seems to use a horse to turn the ground between the rows of vines. It has to be said that Terroirs is the only place I know carrying a good range of reliable wines at reasonable prices; a very agreeable change from the very limited choice usually available.

Taken with a salad made out of winter tomatoes, called black tomatoes, new to me and good, probably the tomatoes at reference 4. Then some of their excellent bread and the day's special, a chicken Kiev looking rather like an outsize, orange sausage roll and sat in a small bed of what might have been some sort of crème fraîche, which served to lighten the whole - but odd how adding a whole lot more calories serves to lighten things which already have plenty of calories. Notwithstanding, good and filling. The whole washed down with a few spots of their cheapest Calvados - the other two being a bit strong for my purse.

As we left, most of the staff then present (it being just after they changed shifts) seemed to be settling down to a spot of serious wine tasting, with a lady wine buff in the chair.

South Bank

Waterloo

In my enhanced condition, very impressed by the sky over and the buildings on the South Bank. Also by Waterloo Station, and I wondered whether the new buildings around it would stand the test of time as well. It also occurred to me, I think for the first time, that the station must have been a bit of a monster at the time it was first built, dwarfing everything around. Did they have heritage people at that time to do the moaning?

Arbus

Passed on what was probably my last chance to do Diane Arbus, of which I had had two good reports. But I did manage to use the self service machine at Smiths, while lamenting the passing of the honesty buckets that they tried out for a but, probably more than twenty years ago now. To find that not enough of the people passing through Waterloo Station were honest in that way. More depressing.

But spirits perked up again by an infant on the train, noisy and bossy female variety. Mum looked a bit flustered when I congratulated her.

Hawthorn

Hawthorn looking rather splendid when I got home too, although the snap does it scant justice.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/arran-and-its-houses.html.

Reference 2: https://www.npg.org.uk/research/conservation/directory-of-british-framemakers.

Reference 3: http://alexandrebain.over-blog.fr/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_tomato.