Cheese

Artisan label

Last week to London to replenish supplies of Lincolnshire Poacher from Neal's Yard Dairies, possibly the same people as we use to buy a very fine brown rice from, near fifty years ago, not long after the Covent Garden market closed down and the new Covent Garden scene was only just being cranked up.

A cold, wet day and it was not clear that it would be cycling weather at London. Puzzled by some huge concrete blocks at Ewell West lined up along the side of the town platform. Entertained by a crying baby, which made a change from young adults banging on about football. Decided at Waterloo that it was not cycling weather: given that I don't carry my cycling cape in town, one can get surprisingly wet cycling across something like Waterloo Bridge. So for once, got some underground value out of the Travelcard which I almost invariably buy.

Into Shorts Gardens, to find a queue of young ladies outside a shop between the monument and the cheese shop. Plus a couple of security people to make the event look important. I did ask a couple of the young ladies and, in between giggles, they did try to tell me what was going on, but I did not get more than the idea that it was perfume related. Gmaps no use on this occasion as its Street View from April last year features retail opportunities rather than retail shops.

Cheese fine, and for once they managed slightly less than the quantity I asked for, rather than slightly more. Must have been a mistake.

Next stop Stanfords, and it turned out to be the day after they moved out of their long-time premises in Long Acre, where they were putting the finishing touches to their removal. The new shop is rather smaller and rather tucked away. Staff all a bit flustered & harassed, trying to get everything up and running again. And they did not have the sort of map I was looking for, or, seemingly, much knowledge about alternatives. I wonder how long they will last in their new home, the world having moved on since their glory days, when you went to Stanfords to stock up before shipping out to the North West Frontier or Darkest Africa. See reference 1.

Onto Terroirs for lunch, the first time since last September. See reference 2.

As it happened, for the main course, I took the very same wine as on that last occasion. A wine from the people featured at reference 3, although they do not appear to be into websites themselves and the label has a whiff of wine growers cooperative about it. A Laški Rizling from Štajerska in Slovenia. I thinks its rich flavour and rather yellow colour is something to do with maceration, maybe something to do with the skins of the grapes involved.

For that main course, I opted for black pudding, which turned out to be OK, if a little soft, but not very good value compared with the dish of the day, sausage and sauerkraut.

Bread as good as ever.

Calvados presentation

Wound up with a fine Calvados, served in a novel, fancy way, including a new-to-me verre de degustation. Including a glass full of small lumps of ice, from which we deduce that there is a new fashion in France for taking their Calvados with ice. All those traditionals from the Pays d'Auge must be turning in their barrels.

There was talk of the more or less complicated arrangements for distribution of tips and service charges in restaurants, last mentioned at reference 4. The story on this occasion was that when advertising for staff, at around the minimum wage, restaurants normally included expected dividends from the tronc in the headline hourly wage. There was also talk of worker-led tronc management committees. Perhaps Corbie the Crow knows all about this cutting edge of left-leaning activity. Along the way we learned that one of our waitresses came from Marseilles, a town I have banked with but never visited - although I do recall reading about that what used to be the old port, the old dock, having been covered over to make a prize winning pedestrian piazza, for the same sort of people as might frequent our own Covent garden - in this last case, just repurposed rather than covered over. See reference 5.

Outside, sorry to see some small tents lined up on the pavement outside. Mystery to me how the homeless are organised enough to get such tents and - usually - mobile phones, but not organised enough to get proper homes. I suppose part of the answer is that most of them have some kind of mental disorder and this is what care in the community does for them. But scarcely an advertisement for the good state of our country.

Rather a damp walk back to Waterloo, taking in the rather curious archway, somewhere near Villiers Street, included below.

Archway

Several rather trashy looking Russian novels - that is to say ladies' romantic fiction - in the platform library at Raynes Park. Nothing for me.

Reference 1: http://www.stanfords.co.uk/our-history. I had thought that they had been bought up by Smiths or some other large outfit of that sort, but no mention of anything of that sort here, or elsewhere. But there is mention of a transient association with George Philip & Son, the cartographic publisher, swallowed up in 1988 by Reed International, now a chunk of the RELX group. So perhaps still an independent?

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/cheese-hunt.html.

Reference 3: http://www.indiewineries.com/slovenia/zorjan/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/11/to-rose.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/02/simenon-1.html.