At the off, it being our first evening outing after the changing of the clocks, it seemed particularly damp and dark. Furthermore, although there were still no holes in the road under the West Hill bridge, the road was still nominally closed, the contractors being a bit lazy about this at the end of their day.
Greeted by the track cleaning train heading into town when we arrived at the station.
A fancy brick arch over a window in one of the older station buildings at Clapham Common. A fancy arch which looked to involve at least two sorts of specials: the shaped bricks making up the arch and the bits of white trim bordering the arch. Handsome, but expensive brickwork of more than a hundred years ago, which few people would attempt to replicate now. Maybe I will be able to stopover at some point and take its picture.
And then at Vauxhall we had a rather silly young lady unpacking her folding bicycle on the crowded train, rather than waiting until she had got to the bottom of the substantial flight of steps down to the concourse area.
Onto to the passage down to the tube, where we realised that the station was shut to immigrants and we able to turn around in time to get back onto the train we had just left. Which makes a change from battling all the way back up against the flow and then to having to wait for the next train to Waterloo, not all that frequent on any particular platform. We learned later that the problem was with escalators, with one being out of action meaning that the remaining two could not cope with rush hour traffic. So emigrants only - presumably somebody had done the thinking, had done the sums and decided that this way round would cause the least inconvenience.
Picnic'd at the Finery, as on the last occasion, leaving time for a quick something before the off from the bar in the Beckstein Room - where I think the young lady concerned was not very experienced with whisky, so my double was a good measure - and, relatively speaking, much cheaper than the wine there.
Haydn good, Smetana not as good as I was expecting. Plus there was a smell of the fairground about it, perhaps from some folk elements imported into this classical context. But we did well with the Beethoven, which we knew fairly well, unlike the first two pieces.
We also had the cellist putting in his usual, rather awkward plug for one of their sponsors. Hopefully they thought they were getting reasonable value for their money: I thought an auction house, the people at reference 1, but I didn't remember the name and the matter is not completely clear from the programme.
We wondered what happened after the end of the season. Would the quartet break up and go their separate ways, after all this time together? Would they still do the odd show together at some tier two venue or other? Would they pack up playing altogether? Would they sell off their expensive instruments? Maybe one of them will turn up on 'Desert Island Discs' or in a Saturday newspaper supplement, in which case BH might get to find out.
I also pondered on the fact that while we listeners might tune in, tune out a bit, the performers have to be on the case more or less the whole time. Or, I imagine, for at least more of the time: I like to think that they couldn't produce a decent performance while thinking about the menu for the fancy dinner of the next day. Need some information from the horse's mouth on that one. From where I associated to visual artists, who have to work over the whole of their canvases, while any one viewer is only going to take in a small fraction of what has been done. And much the same is true of reading a good book, with different things making it to the top of the heap on different readings - with a fair bit of what the author has put into the thing never making it to the top at all, for anyone. Or, indeed, composing a piece of music, rather than performing one. I recall my woodcutter uncle in conversation with a fellow woodcutter, telling her that she need not worry about this or that detail of her block because none of the punters were likely to notice the point in question.
Just made the 2158 from Vauxhall and so home to a starless night.
Reference 1: https://www.bromptons.co/.
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