Last post for Tippett

Friday past to the last St. Luke's of the season to hear the last of their Tippet+Beethoven concerts. String Quartet No.2 from the former, String Quartet No.16 (the last), Op.135 from the latter.

The Bullingdons

A cold autumn morning, with a brisk north wind coming down Farringdon Road. Four lights contraventions on the outward journey, two Bullingdons, one a red hire bike (Uber?), one old lady - that is to say a lady about my age - who should have known better.

Whitecross Street and Market Restaurant both busy. Bacon sandwich on good form, despite my doubts about whether the waitress had got my order right. Notwithstanding, I thought that checking that she was not going to get it toasted would probably add to the confusion.

Checking the trolley scene on the way up to St. Luke's, I came across five non-returnable trolleys. One from Waitrose, very much in the orbit of a market stall. One from Waitrose, more or less derelict. Three from an oriental food wholesaler, substantial affairs such as you might use at a builders' merchants like Wickes.

The programme

The hall seemed a bit quiet at five minutes to the off, but busy enough by the time that we started.

A young quartet who played standing to real music, that is to say sheet music rather than computers. Three similar beards among the three young men, two of whom put in a fair amount of movement with the music. Plenty of eye contact. I thought a light and pleasing sound.

Two democratic pieces of music, democratic in that everyone seemed to get a go. And, for the first time, I rather liked the Tippett, albeit not in the same league as the Beethoven. They also gave us 'Memento' from James MacMillan by way of an encore. Quiet and slow, slightly folksy. A folksiness which is confirmed by the B&H website at reference 3. See also reference 4.

Near porn or art porn?

Lots of trolleys to be seen back in Whitecross Street as the street food wound down, most of them proper market trolleys, some old and chunky. At the margins, two from Tesco, but I had no idea at the time where the Tesco's was, and could not be bothered with asking my telephone, so not returnable. But I now remember that there is a branch in Central Street, opposite the Bullingdon Stand for St. Luke's and I have now learned that there is another in City Road. The relevant one is probably the latter. This afternoon, the website for this last saw fit to offer me the photograph (snapped above) by one Claude Guillaumin for £2,580 or make an offer. Whatever could it be in my Google file which prompted the suggestion? I settled for Snip & Sketch and a quick peek at reference 5.

Underground church?

The curious (Catholic) church of St. Joseph in Lamb's Buildings. For once, I did not feel it proper to intrude. I also completely missed the Royal Statistical Society which I ought really to have known about, said by Google to have been around the corner and which appeared to be building site.

Down to the Barbican Theatre to inquire about Shakespeare. I asked the first ticket person whether any of the three Shakespeare's on offer came with more or less the original text and costumes - and without cross-dressing. I tried to explain what I meant - no sex changes for big roles - but she passed me onto the second ticket person who did seem to understand what I was on about, but did not know the answer, although he was able to rule out one of the three. I have now ruled out the other two. Much cheaper to go to the Globe if I want that sort of thing!

Pulled my second Bullingdon to take me down to Borough Market where I tried and failed to buy some walnuts. There were two stalls offering wet walnuts (which I do not care for) and one offering English, but I did not like the look of them either. They were also rather expensive. So I almost fell for an Arbroath Smokie, which I rather like, but in the end passed as we had had kippers in the recent past. Mustn't take too much oral nicotine. Lots of tourists and lots of street food by way of compensation.

So I made my way into Southwark Cathedral, not visited for a while, paying the sum of £2 for a handsome cardboard guide which came with permission to take photographs (something which is, quite reasonably, not allowed in the very much busier Westminster Abbey). Captured two pianos, already noticed at references 7 and 8.

I had forgotten what a handsome building the Cathedral is. I thought, wrongly, that this might have been the result of rebuilding after being damaged in the second world war, but actually the rebuilding seems to have been done in the first half of the nineteenth century, with the aim of returning the then dilapidated church to the thirteenth century. I think that they did rather well. While in the present century they have added a very decent chandelier in the crossing and stained glass that I do not approve of in the east end. Do not approve of on the grounds that the design cuts across the mullions of the large windows: the design should play to the mullions, not ignore, a maxim I picked up from Pugin. Plus, modern stained glass designers, as a gang, seem to be much too fond of expanses of blue.

Harvard Chapel, east end

Curious container

Curious tooling

A substantial chapel to the founder of Harvard College, a butcher's son, baptised in 1607, who did Emmanuel College in Cambridge before going on to Massachucetts where he founded the university of his name. Didn't get to find out what was kept in the curious box, but I did notice the curious tooling to its plinth. I also noticed that the lamp was lit.

Retro chapel for those with AIDS

Marchioness memorial tablet

An oddly large tablet marking the Marchioness disaster of 1989. From where, with little respect, I associated to the monument lottery noticed at reference 9.

Tea and chocolate cake for a fiver in the cathedral cafeteria, both good. Staff friendly and not particularly young.

Refurb at the Shard

Builders hard at work on the lower reaches of the Shard. Presumably the owners - I think Arab - want to extract more money out of their investment. I hope they don't spoil the rather handsome lines of the building they put up in the first place.

And so back to Waterloo. No books or magazines at the Raynes Park Platform Library. I associated to the immortal word Louis XVI entered into his hunting log on the day of the fall of the Bastille, shortly before he got the bloody news from Paris: 'Rien' - for which see reference 6. But there was a young man making a great fuss into his telephone about using his litter picker to put a dead pigeon into a clear plastic bag. The sign on his back said something about welfare, possibly animal welfare, but I could not get enough of it to make any sense.

PS: the journey times being about right. The first being Stamford Street plus two sides of a rectangle, the second being the other long side of the rectangle, the third being the short side plus Stamford Street.

Reference 1: http://www.heathquartet.com/. Only sporting two beards here. Memory error?

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_MacMillan. Another lapsed lefty!

Reference 3: https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/James-MacMillan-Memento/3747.

Reference 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kpb3t7b-Ro. For the full kilt (and trews).

Reference 5: https://guillaumin-gallery.com/. All sorts of stuff here. Seemingly a French art photographer.

Reference 6: Louis XVI - Jean-Christian Petitfils - 2005. Beginning of chapter 21. Page 690.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/piano-34.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/piano-35.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/tombstone.html.

Reference 10: The stained glass of A. W. N. Pugin - Stanley A. Shepherd - 2009. A book which I seem to have bought about the time it was published, and going so far as to visit the masterpieces of Ramsgate noticed at reference 11 below.

Reference 11: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/05/ramsgate-5.html.